, 1924-04-02
General Plan for Marketing
of Fluid Milk

of the local milk station.
Here's my three cans he called to
the manager. Three cans every morn
ing from now on. l signed a market
ing contract yesterday
Three other dairymen droYe up and
left their morning and evening milk
ing, pocketed their delivery receipts
I'D drove away. John watched while
the local manager weighed the milk
and carried the cans into the cooled
storage oom to await the morning
train.
Three hours later the cans were In
loaded at the Chicago freight depot
into the waiting trucks of the Milk
Producers Marketing company and
hauled to the company's plant on
South Canal street. Here the milk was
tested and put through the processes
of pasteurization. Three hours later
it stood bottled and capped ready for
delivery to Chicago consumers. Only
ten hours before it was being strained
in a farm kitchen almost forty miles
nut of Chicago.
Six o'clock the next morning n
white truck stopped at the back en-
trance of a large Loop hotel. The white
clad driver lifted ten cans out of the
wager and carried them into the sup
ply kitchen. The next stop left five
cans at the door of a nearby fashion
able French restaurant. The truck
belonged to the Chicago Milk Pro-
ducers' Marketing company. 1t was
delivering the milk that John Martin
and his neighbors had hauled to their
local shipping station just "a hours
earlier. 1t Is very nearly Cow to
table, service.
This type of city distribution Of pro-
ducers' milk is a part of an enormous
marketing plan that the farmers hem
selves + building up around every
great city. 1t is cooperative market
ing On a scale SO large that dairymen
of u half-century ago would have
Knocked the suggestion.
The cooperative marketing Of fluid
mink didn't get its start until America
began to build cities So big that there
wasn't a lot left on which to picket
the city COW. The cities grew too big
for cows, but not for milk. So the
farmers close into the towns raised
more cows and sold their surplus to
their city neighbors. The cities grew
still larger and the milking radius in
creased accordingly. Farmers now
lived too far out to make their own
deliveries. They shipped their milk
in to the city dealer who handled the
direct selling and delivering end of
the business.
Formed Associations.
The dealers formed associations to
set prices and the dairyman didn't
always get his just share of the con-
sumer's dollar. Then the dairymen
Joined forces and formed cooperative
bargaining associations which would
<eet with the dealers and arbitrate
prices. Sometimes the dairymen or
ganized cooperative sales agencies n
handled the selling end of their own
business. This all came about slowly
over a period of more thar a hundred
years. By 1929 there were ia CO.
operative milk marketing associations
ranging all the way from loose bar
gaining units to million-dollar dis
~tributing plants.
There is no one general plan for the
cooperative marketing of fluid milk.
The dairymen of every big district
have worked out their own individual
problems; they have made an individ-
ual plan to fit their own case. In the
Chicago district a particularly unique
plan has been put into Operation a
plan that could be used in any metro
politan dairy district.
1t must be remembered that the
dairy ~co-operatives are of two distinct
types-the dairymen of the m%etropoli-
tan districts, that is the fluid milkmen
around our large cities, and h dairy
men of the strictly rural district. In
the remote dairy district ZACH manu-
featured product is affected little, or
not at all by the other. This is not
true in the districts around large cities.
y Here four belts-fiuid milk, butter,
condensed milk and cheese-are each
influenced by the market conditions
of the other.
1t was to eliminate the evils of the
inter-belt influence that the Chicago
dairymen organized the MIX Produc-
ers' Marketing company under a four
pool contract. By this plan the fluid
milk man pays a premium to the but
ter man in order to keep him off the
fluid milk market. The best market
is taxed for the benefit of the member
in the poorer market. In that way all
are satisfied and no two markets can
consolidate to break n of the other
two. More han 1000 contracts have
been signed under this plan, but the
organization is barely complete.
Largest Marketing Concern.
The largest cooperative milk mar
keting enterprise in the world is the
Dairymen's League Cooperative Asso-
citation, Inc, of New York. In a way
Ia l.. l.il4 -. Ala co a fa11r1nna hnoiS