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Show i ' if1 i t? During the last twelve ' months the American coJb helped her master make 1 (iWe a half billion ! dollars Old Bossy ts a regular gold mine when I given proper treatment 4 By ROBERT H. MOULTON. ""HE vnlue of the products of the T American dairy cow is greater than the value of all the metallic metal-lic minerals produced, such as gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, )wiiiili; pig iron, etc. It is also larger (JcSSSflX than the total value of the non-metallic non-metallic minerals, namely, bi-Bf!!j?pSJ bi-Bf!!j?pSJ luminous coal, Pennsylvania an-t an-t thrncite, petroleum, natural gas, hrlck clay and cement. Milk production of the 'Vnited States for 1915 was 11,590,000.000 gal-lions, gal-lions, or an average productRm of 537 gallons !per cow. This production is equivalent to about 115 gallons per capita population of the country. At an average price of liO cents per gallon, the year's production of milk is valued at about IS-'.3L'0.(X0,(HH to the farmers. On January 1, ImiO, there wore estimated to be 21,9SS,000 dairy 'cows in the United States, valued approximately :at ?."i.'?.00 per head, or an aggregate grand total valuation of $1. 185. 119,000 for all milch cows. The lUniti'd States exported 9,8,10.705 pounds of butter, Valued at S2.H9-J.4S0 during 1915. Americans are great consumers of butter, and really more than 1.S00. 000.000 pounds is manufactured manu-factured in this country, a large proportion of 'which is made at the farm home. The rural creameries cream-eries have proved a big factor in farming business, mud form the center of marketing operations. The Ivaluation of butter made in factories approximated approxi-mated more than JMS'J.OOO.OOO last year, while this isenson gives every indication of reaching the $200,-HXKUXH) $200,-HXKUXH) mark. Farmers are finding that co-operative effort in the manufacture of butter obtains a !liii:lier market for them. The loss made in butter on farms has been tre-imendous. tre-imendous. Dairy experts, by actual investigations, icalculate that of the annual $182,000,000 product, on the basis of 30 cents per pound for butter at the local market, the annual loss averages between Itwo and live cents per pound, or from SJiO.OOO.OOO to SNO.000.000. due to the careless methods employed em-ployed on the average farm. This great item of lloss would save enough in a year almost to buy a moderate-prieod automobile for every farmer not (today owning one. The increased high cost of dairy feds has de-Imandcd de-Imandcd that the dairy farmer become a specialist i in cow rations. The profitable production of milk in a dairy farm involves two very difficult problems: prob-lems: The formation of a herd tha v-MH give in the milk pail liberal returns for the cost of feed and care, and caring for the milk to keep It in the ibest marketable condition. It was found several years ago that two or three cows might be large producers while the remainder of a herd of a dozen cows would possibly fail to give sufficient milk to :pay Jhelr board bill. This fact has caused the organization of the community cow-testing associations asso-ciations In various parts of the country, this work , liaving as its object the calculation of the Individual Indi-vidual cow's production. By the aid of the Ilab-k-ock testing apparatus, modern dairymen place their cows on record, giving due credit for bntter- fat produced. This work has built up one of the jiiu'hest specialized features of present-day farm- A great and intricate problem a? -evolved in supplying cities with milk and in meeting the growing grow-ing demands of such centers with pure milk. Chicago Chi-cago alone consumes 1,000,000,000 quarts of milk annually, while thousands of cans of condensed milk and pasteurized milk are used for breakfast. Milk is shipped from farms as far as 300 miles away, reaching the city in time for breakfast the next morning. Because of the immense demand for milk, the necessity of having it of the highest quality and the need for an economical method of collection and distribution, great milk companies com-panies were formed several years ago, which erected milk-collecting stations in Illinois and ad-Joining ad-Joining states, along the railroads, where milk is received for shipment. The milk thut, received direct from the farmers is handled in the best possible pos-sible manner, shipped In 40-quartjcans, by the carload. car-load. The "milk train" is one of the common phases of all railroads connecting with a large American city today. The task of supplying ?;reat cities with milk has become a highly specialised Industry. The process of gathering, transporting and distributing the fresh milk supply of a large city Is one of the complex tasks confronting those who provide the country's daily food. The entire milk production of the country must be cared for every day. Fresh milk is the only product that must quickly come to the consumer. It cannot be stored when there is a flood of It and carried over until there is a shortage, short-age, although modern refrigeration has served to solve a part of this problem. Today's supply must meet tomorrow's demand. When one realizes that the city of Chicago must have 5,000,000 pounds of milk daily, it is easily understood that prompt conversion of this product into money is no small task. The changes in the geographic distribution of the population of the United States, in the centers of agricultural production, pro-duction, and in the methods of transportation have had a marked influence on the localization of the dairy Industry. In early days the dairy farmer supplied demands within a restricted area, but the development of railroads and refrigeration has had considerable effect on the character of the Industry In-dustry in its centralization. Milk has been a food and drink for young and old ever since prehistoric times, and the reason for this is that milk is one of the most desirable of human foods. It remained for modern analytical processes to prove that milk is the cheapest and most valuable of food products, especially when compared with meat. The department of agriculture agricul-ture has discovered that for 25 cents worth of a given product, milk is a more valuable food than meat. The grim words employed by the South Carolina board of health, "A fly in the milk may mean a baby In the grave," have gone over the land and left their Impression upon the minds of farmers and milk consumers. Flies bear germs, and a single sin-gle germ in a milk bottle breeds a deadly million in a few hours. Too often during the last 50 years we have read of epidemics of typhoid and similar diseases being traced directly to a contaminated contam-inated milk supply. Of all human foods, possibly none is more suc-ceptible suc-ceptible to ccaTrrfnation than milk, particularly in hot weather when in the months of June, July and August, the babies of the country die by the thousands. Diseases of t lie digestive organs cause 40 per cent of the deaths in many cities. Cow's milk is the exclusive food for a great majority of the American children up to the time they are one year old, and it is the chief food of practically all children from the age of one to five. The whiteness white-ness and opaqueness of milk serve as a covering and shelter for insoluble substances. The theory that clean milk possesses long-keeping qualities has been found true with certified milk. Instances are on record where certified milk has been taken on an ocean voyage and not only brought back in good condition, but also kept sweet until 80 days old. When your milk is sour after a few hours, it is certain that it is not clean milk. A number of cerr'lied milk dairies in the United Spates sent exhibit.1 of miik to the Paris exhibition in 1900, and the milk k"Ot sweet for two weeks, V Lr4 ajrfW f y Y; vV- Y-k-v" Yv ! : ioge cfruj 'jw,c& coiy and in some instances 18 days, after being bottled following a summer journey of 3,000 and 4,000 miles. This merely serves to illustrate what milk consumers may expect for the future pure products. American cheese, of which the exports decreased from nearly 150,000,000 pounds in 1881 to less than 2,500,000 in 1914, is again finding its way to foreign for-eign markets In rapidly increasing amounts. For the last half of 1914, 2,500,000 pounds were exported, ex-ported, while January saw some 3,000,000 pounds shipped to foreign countries, and February 7,500,-000, 7,500,-000, so that the aggregate for the first three months of 1915 amounted to 13,000,000 pounds. ' The demand for ice cream has been a great benefit ben-efit to the dairy industry by the absorption of the milk surplus. Millions of gallons of ice cream are manufactured from artificial ingredients, due to lack of dairy products to meet the growing demand de-mand for this toothsome and refreshing article. Nevertheless, nearly 18,000,000 gallons of Ice cream are annually manufactured from cream and milk. This branch of the dairy Industry has achieved Its greatest growth during the last decade, de-cade, owing to the increased number of sumissr resorts re-sorts and parks. The ice cream factories of the United States annually an-nually demand 30,000,000 gallons, or 250,000,000 pounds, of cream ; 250,000,000 pounds of whole milk, and 15,000,000 gallons of condensed milk. Taking 14 cents as the average price paid for each gallon of milk, ice cream factories each year pay the enormous sum of $32,000,000 to farmers for raw materials. The Ice cream when retailed brings a price of $160,000,000, standing foremost among the popular luxuries of the day in the United States. |