THE PROBLEM OF A PURE MILK SUPPLY.

THE problem of securing a thoroughly reliable supply of milk is of great importance to every community. This fluid may be called the universal food, as it contains in itself all the food principles necessary to sustain life. The problem, however, will never be solved until consumers understand what constitutes good milk and the methods that must be employed to secure it. The dealers are ready to furnish the best quality of milk in unlimited quantities when the public demands it.

The opinion so generally held that poor milk is always watered milk is based on a fallacy. Indeed, the addition of pure water to milk does not hurt it in the slightest degree. The harmful changes that take place in milk, as well as the diseases that may be transmitted by it, are caused by certain kinds of bacteria or germs.

Here, again, there is much general misapprehension. In the popular mind the mere mention of bacteria suggests disease, and the statement that a teaspoonful of milk may contain several millions of bacteria is likely to produce a resolve never to drink milk again. There is no necessity, however, for any such feeling; for the mere presence of bacteria in milk is not necessarily a sign that it is unwholesome. We all use with safety buttermilk, pot-cheese, and fresh June butter, yet all these contain thousands or even millions of bacteria in a single teaspoonful. Bacteria occupy a very important place in nature; their function being to reduce lifeless organic matter to its constituent elements. As soon as an animal or plant dies, it is attacked by bacteria and soon destroyed. It is now recognized that bacteria are absolutely necessary to life in plants and hence to animals. Before this fact was recognized it was thought that all bacteria should be destroyed, but now it is known that their destruction would prove a great calamity. It would be about as senseless as the attempted destruction of all vegetation because a few plants are poisonous.

Over two hundred different kinds of bacteria have been found in milk. The majority of these are not only harmless, but of great value in practical dairying. The delicate flavor of new butter and fine cheese

is the result of bacteria growing in the milk. Indeed, these articles would find few purchasers if it were not for the activity of certain bacteria. Milk becomes sour because several kinds of bacteria live on the sugar found in the milk and change it into acid. When the cream has "ripened" or is sour enough to churn, a teaspoonful will contain one billion bacteria. The principal change in milk, as every one knows, is souring. Sour milk is employed in cooking, and, before bakingpowder became so common, was frequently used with baking-soda to make cake and biscuit rise. There are several purposes for which milk containing these sour-milk bacteria may be used with impunity. The mere number of the bacteria in milk has no special significance, but their character is more important.

The question may be asked: How do bacteria get into milk? Are they found in milk as it leaves the cow? A few may be in the milk at this time, but the great majority get into it during the process of milking. Several hundreds of bacteria have been counted on a single cow's hair. If a cow is not kept clean, dirt is sure to fall into the milk pail; and when it is remembered that some cows are plastered with dirt and rarely cleaned, it is easy to see how impurities may get into the milk.

The harmful bacteria found in milk may be roughly divided into (1) putrefactive and (2) pathogenic, or disease-producing. The uses and comparative innocuousness of sour-milk bacteria have already been noted. The putrefactive bacteria are the result of dirt, manure, and various kinds of filth coming in contact with the milk. They may produce acute decomposition in the milk after it is ingested, as well as in other food that may have been taken. Severe and acute digestive disturbances may be thus produced, especially in the young. The diseaseproducing bacteria do not usually come from the cow, but through secondary contamination. Perhaps the milker has the disease or is nursing some one who is infected, or the water used in washing the dairy utensils has been taken from a polluted well or stream. Typhoid fever, scarlet fever, and diphtheria are the diseases that have been most frequently known to be transmitted by milk. Within the last few years as many as fifty epidemics of typhoid fever have been traced to milk.

The danger of contracting tuberculosis from cows' milk has been greatly overestimated. Tuberculosis is a dust-born disease. It is very prevalent both among human beings and animals where there is a lack of proper ventilation; and is not so common where the ventilation is good. It is extremely probable that the variety of tubercle bacillus causing the disease in man is slightly different from that which produces it

in the cow. It is interesting to know that while tuberculosis in mankind is decreasing in all civilized communities, tuberculosis in cattle is increasing very rapidly. The recent statement of Dr. Koch that it cannot be spread from animals to man is not accepted by most scientific observers as an infallible rule, but doubtless the cow has been unduly maligned in this connection.

When milk is kept at body temperature the bacteria grow with great rapidity. In six hours every single germ may produce 3,800 more. If the milk is rapidly cooled to below 45° Fahrenheit the growth of bacteria is hardly perceptible; hence we notice that in summer fresh milk improperly handled sours in a few hours, while in winter it will keep for days. Of the many kinds of bacteria getting into milk, the conditions are generally most favorable for the growth of the varieties which cause souring, and these tend to kill off the other kinds.

In summer the high death rate from intestinal diseases among infants is largely due to the effect of improperly prepared cows' milk given to sick or weak infants; such milk containing many bacteria of cows' manure, which are largely of the putrefactive variety. At all seasons it is desirable to have milk drawn from clean cows, by clean, healthy milkers, into clean vessels. The milk should then be rapidly cooled to 45° and kept cool until used. If milk is produced and delivered in this way it will contain few bacteria; and it is for this reason that a very good way to judge of the fitness of milk as a clean food is by counting the number of bacteria it contains. A dirty, careless milkman cannot supply milk containing few bacteria. It should be remembered, however, that the best milk will soon have enormous numbers of bacteria if left in a warm place.

A competent authority has calculated that it takes at least one and six-tenths cents' worth of food to produce a quart of milk, and that the best kind of cow will produce about eleven quarts a day when in milk. With the milk retailing in a large city like New York at from three and a half to five cents a quart in the grocery stores, the farmer receives from one and eight-tenths to two and a quarter cents per quart for his milk, giving him a profit of a fraction of a cent a quart, or five or six cents per day per cow. It has been reckoned that the cow's manure is worth the care of the cow; but on such a margin of profit it cannot be expected that the farmer will groom and wash his cows, cool his milk, and ship it on ice. Legislation cannot remedy such a state of affairs. People must pay a fair price to get clean milk. In a city like New York, which uses in the Boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx 1,250,000

quarts daily, the milk business is chiefly divided into two branches; one branch selling milk as cheaply as possible in bulk to restaurants, grocery stores, etc., and the other selling direct to families. The dealers that sell in bulk, at wholesale, take from any source any milk that will just pass the legal limit, namely, three per cent fat and twelve per cent solids; while the dealers with a family trade usually have bottling stations out in the country, where they buy their milk from the farmers, bottle it, and pack it in ice before shipping it to the city. This milk is good, a great deal of it being all that could be desired, and, in fact, much better than the supply of many villages and some cities. These milk dealers pay from three to four cents a quart to the farmers, who can take care of their stables and cows and make a living at these prices.

According to the milk dealers, the great trouble is that the public cannot see any difference between perfectly clean milk and the ordinary article. For this reason people are not aware of being made sick by milk, and will not pay the price which extra cleanliness necessitates. This state of affairs has led to the organizing of milk commissions by medical societies, to stand between the milk dealers and the public, examine the milk at stated intervals, and issue certificates of cleanliness to those dealers whose milk contains few bacteria. The use of milk thus certified is to be recommended for infants, invalids, and all who wish an extra clean article. Even milk sold at a price that barely exceeds the cost of production, when the least possible labor is expended, is generally safe for adults with healthy digestions. It is true that disease has been transmitted by such milk, but it must be confessed that this is the exception, not the rule. Many people are frightened by alarmist reports into giving up a nutritious and valuable article of food. What is needed is public education as to the value of good food, and general willingness to pay for it. Honest and conscientious producers will thus be encouraged to supply the best article.

HENRY DWIGHT CHAPIN.

THE EXAMPLE OF FRENCH INDUSTRIAL ART SCHOOLS.

ONE of the most hopeful signs of our times is the interest which is taken in the question of the free education of the masses. The sums annually expended for this purpose attest the growing conviction that the safety of nations rests more securely upon a foundation of education than upon one of armament, which takes a great part of the male population from the field of useful employment. The sum now devoted by France to public education equals two-thirds of the entire budget of the monarchy prior to the revolution of 1789. The total annual expenditure of the elementary schools of the United Kingdom is now about $75,000,000. The expenditure of the United States for school purposes amounted in the census year 1890 to $138,888,053. The census of 1900 will show an expense of $240,000,000, if the ratio of increase from 1880 to 1890 was maintained.

Ten years ago a comparison of systems of education would, perhaps, have given the leadership to France, and even to-day Paris is still far in advance of New York in the attention it gives in its free schools to manual and technical training, design, and art instruction. On visiting Germany in 1887, full of the impressions received in France, I was much surprised at the little that had been done in manual training. When I inquired after it in Berlin I was referred to Leipsic, where, it was said, wonderful things had been done in that line; but Leipsic was no more prepared to present a sign of progress in manual training than Berlin and other cities had been. I was assured, however, that I should find in Dresden what I was looking for. After considerable search I found the manual training schools of Dresden all crowded into two rooms in the upper part of a dwelling-house. The school had not yet been opened, and its tools, therefore, had not been installed. Several years after the publication of my report on "Industrial Education in France," the Berlin City Council sent a commissioner to France to report on the system of education there; and his report created a sensation.

Whatever improvements may have been made since that time at Berlin and New York in instruction in manual training, Paris still