Milk and the Milk Market

You get to the very foundation of the supply of milk in Professor Parson’s and Dr. Edmund Owen’s article Mammary Gland (Vol. 17, p. 528), in which the comparative anatomy of the milk yielding organ is fully treated. The article Milk (Vol. 18, p. 451) discusses the chemistry of many kinds of milk and the diseases carried by milk, and deals with the gravest problems of the industry: the difficulty of sterilizing milk, so that tuberculosis and typhoid cannot be carried by it, and the difficulty of sterilizing cream, so that butter may be quite safe, without making the milk less nutritious and the butter less delicate in flavor. The article Bacteriology (Vol. 3, p. 156), by Professor H. Marshall Ward and Professor Blackman, goes to the root of this whole question of infection. Milk is, on the other hand, used to convey into the human system the “friendly microbes,” and the use of soured milk and cheese for this purpose is explained in the articles Therapeutics (Vol. 26, p. 800) and Longevity (Vol. 16, p. 977), which deal with Metchnikoff’s system of treatment. Pepsin (Vol. 21, p. 130) describes the process by which milk is rendered more digestible, and Infancy (Vol. 14, p. 513) deals with the preparation of milk to be sold for the use of young children. There is so general a demand for prepared milk which is from every point of view wholesome that you will find it worth while to read, in this connection, Food (Vol. 10, p. 611), Nutrition (Vol. 19, p. 920) and Dietetics (Vol. 8, p. 214).

Products and Marketing

Butter (Vol. 4, p. 889,) and Cheese (Vol. 6, p. 22) are brief articles which you should not overlook, although they refer you to the key and article on dairying for details; and Oils contains (Vol. 20, p. 47) an interesting analytical table in which butter is compared with other animal fats. Food Preservation (Vol. 10, p. 612) deals with the cold storage of butter, cheese, condensed milk and milk powder; and Refrigerating (Vol. 23, p. 30) with the processes and machinery employed. Koumiss (Vol. 15, p. 920) describes the milk-wine or milk-brandy prepared by fermenting mare’s milk, and the similar product “kerif” made from cow’s milk. Although the special developments of dairying in various parts of the world are discussed in the article Dairy and Dairy-Farming, the articles on individual countries also contain information of value. The section on dairying (Vol. 5, p. 154) in the article Canada, and the account of co-operative dairying (Vol. 7, p. 87) in Denmark should not be overlooked.

In reading these articles in Britannica, and thinking of the present conditions of this great business, you will be reminded that dairying is an industry of peculiar importance to the whole people of the United States, not only because of the money made out of it, and not only because it gives hundreds of thousands of men employment on the land instead of in crowded cities, but also because it promises to develop the co-operative action which harmonizes with the best ideals of democracy. The co-operative plants which are beginning to be established by dairy farmers are the only institutions our modern civilization has created in which you find the neighborly spirit that the first American settlers showed in the days when they joined to defend themselves against the Indians. At political meetings, in machine shops and cotton mills and shoe factories, you hear unhappy talk about the relations of capital and labor, about strikes and trusts, about the man on top and the man underneath. But where the farmer’s wagons clatter up to the separator platform, there is combination in the best sense of the word. The Britannica article on co-operation says that the word “in its widest usage, means the creed that life may best be ordered not by the competition of individuals, where each seeks the interest of himself and his family, but by mutual help, by each individual consciously striving for the good of the social body of which he forms part, and the social body in return caring for each individual; ‘each for all, and all for each’ is its accepted motto. Thus it proposes to replace among rational and moral things the struggle for existence by voluntary combination for life.”

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ARTICLES IN THE BRITANNICA ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH FARMING, STOCK-RAISING AND DAIRYING

(The more important articles have already been mentioned in the preceding pages, but the following list includes many others in which valuable information will be found.)

CHAPTER IV
FOR MERCHANTS AND MANUFACTURERS: GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY

Technical Education for Manufacturer and Merchant