THE PRICE OF MILK
SIR,—We hear much of the British gift for understatement, but your contributor, Mr. P. Lamartine Yates, in his article " The Price of Milk," gives a classical example of this quality when he writes: "the operations of the Milk Board have coincided with all-round price- increases." I wonder what my friend, who was fined £roo for selling milk in Manchester for 5d. per quart instead of 6d., thinks of this. It cost him nearly £zoo before he got rid of the bailiffs who came on to his farm to enforce the fine. In the early numbers of the Milk Board's journal, The Home Farmer, can be found lists of farmers who were fined " for selling milk at less than the prescribed retail price." Sir J. B. Orr, when he was a member of the Milk Reorganisation Committee, wrote in the Farmers' Weekly of Novem- ber 9th, 1934: " Before the minimum retail-price was fixed the public in some districts were buying milk for as low as is. 4d. per gallon. Mr. J. H. Maggs, chairman of United Dairies, said: " Since the Board's inception the consumer has had constantly to pay more. As a consequence less milk per consumer has been consumed." It is, alas, only too true that the operations of the Milk Marketing Board have coincided with all-round price increases. If not, what is the Board
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