NY Sun, Nov. 21, 1897
AN IDEA WORTH MILLIONS.
(Written by Ed Mott who has been stopping at the Howland House, Chester NY)
The wealth that milk has given to ORANGE county
A Contractor Named Sellock that First to Conceive the Plan of Shipping It to New York - Rapid Growth of the Business - The Many Millions It Has Brought to the Farmers.
CHESTER, N. Y., Nov, 20.-There are 7,000 milk depots in New York, selling 750,000 quarts of milk a day. Hosts of New Yorkers can remember when there was not one milk depot in the city. It is doubtful, however, if there is even one resident who remembers when the first depot was established there, or knows that the great milk business of the country began with that depot and its original consignment of 240 quarts of milk.
the idea of offering milk fresh from country dairies for general sale in New York was conceived in Chester, Orange county, by a railroad contractor named Sellock. He was the father of the business of shipping milk to market by rail, and the first milk that ever went to market in that way was shipped from Chester.
The New York and Erie Railroad, the Erie of to-day, was building through this part of Orange county in 1841. Sellock had a contract for the superstructure on a section of the road. The excellence of the county's milk attracted his attention. He was a practical man, and suggested to the farmers to send their milk to the New York market as soon as the railroad was completed. At that time the main milk supply of New York came from the cows kept by the brewery and distillery stables. In those days also it was no uncommon thing for truckmen in the city to keep a cow or two in their stables, which they fed on brewery and distillery refuse. They had their own customers for the milk thus produced. Farmers from Long Island and Westchester supplied some families with milk from their dairies, but the great supply of the city was from the swill milk stables. The Orange county farmers treated Sellock's idea with ridicule. That milk could be shipped more than fifty miles, especially in hot weather, and subjected to the jolting and jarring of a railroad train, and still be fit for use when it at last received at its destination, was regarded as preposterous. At any rate, whether the milk shipping business was feasible or not, the Orange county farmers had built up a highly profitable trade in a certain product of their dairies, and had made a national reputation for it and themselves, and they were satisfied with that.
This product was butter. The first butter made for the New York market as a matter of systematic and regular supply was manufactured in this portion of Orange county and in the bordering portions of Sussex county, N. J. As Goshen was the centre of that region, the product in time came to have the name of Goshen butter.
The great business in Goshen butter was built up without the aid of railroads. In fact, with the coming of the railroad came the beginning the end of Goshen butter as a factor in the trade of the country. There were no commission dealers in the city, either, for many years, and the farmers were compelled to place their butter on the market themselves and be their own salesmen. It was transported from the farms in great covered wagons to Newburg, where it was put on barges and towed down the Hudson. Some farmers carted their butter all the way to New York. All those in this part of the country and the region lying about Middletown, Goshen, Unionville, Westtown, Ridgebury and other villages in Orange county, and about Beemerville, Deckertown, Newton and Clove Valley, in Sussex county, had an agreement or combination by which they marketed their product on the same day, which was the second Tuesday of November in each year. There are old farmers living in that great butter district who remember seeing, when boys, the long trains of big market wagons, laden with the golden product of the dairies, passing in almost endless procession over the roads of Orange and Sussex counties annually on that day, all bound for Newburg and the river. That day was known as "the day of the big trip." The price of butter to the farmer averaged from 12 1/2 to 15 cents a pound. It was Packed down in firkins during the winter and summer, and none was marketed until fall.
The New York and Erie Railroad was opened between Piermont and Goshen in September, 1841, and communication with the New York market became a matter of only a few hours instead of the best part of two days. For months the butter trade was the mainstay of the railroad. The present manager of the Erie may not know that it was the butter of Orange and Sussex counties that made it possible to keep the road in operation during the first few months of its existence; but such is the fact. It was the butter of Orange county that founded the old Bank of Orange County at Goshen, one of the wealthiest local corporations of the country, and in recognition of this fact its notes were printed on rich yellow paper and were known all over the Union as "butter money"
Wedded thus as they were to butter making, the Orange county farmers were not ready to see any reason for the faith of Contractor Sellock in the idea that there would be an increased profit for them in abandoning that branch of the dairy business for the simple selling of their milk. The railroad had been in operation more than half a year before the first shipment of milk was made to the city. In fact, the trade in butter increased greatly during these months, owing to the quicker and more economical means of transportation the railroad afforded. But Sellock did not abandon his idea. He at last interested some of the leading farmers of Chester and Oxford in his scheme, among them Philo Gregory, James Durland, Jonas King, and John M. Bull. He was willing to open a depot in New York for the introduction of the milk, if he could be assured of shipments to meet the demand which he was positive would soon arise for it. Philo Gregory agreed to make an experimental shipment of milk in the spring of 1842. Sellock fitted up a room in the city at 193 Reade street. Gregory thereupon made the first consignment of milk ever shipped, on a railroad, and the first that eyer entered New York city from a dairy to be offered for sale in public market. The milk was shipped in the blue pyramid churns of that day. There were 240 quarts in all, the equivalent of six of the standard cans of to-day. The freight was charged by weight, at 20 cents a hundred. Gregory got 2 cents a quart for the milk delivered on the cars. This first shipment of Orange county milk arrived at Sellock's depot in good condition, the weather being cool. Sellock had notified many New York families of his intention to have for sale fresh milk from the dairies of Orange county, and the contents of Gregory's churns were not sufficient to supply the first demand. The next shipment was larger, and then other Chester farmers, and the farmers about Oxford, seeing that there was more money in simply shipping their milk at 2 cents a quart that making it in butter t 15 cents a pound, began sending their milk to Sellock, and the milk business of the country was born-a business that has alone built five railroads in Orange county at a cost of $4,000,000, and returned to the county more than $100,000,000, in spite of all drawbacks and blunders.
It was not long before Sellock's milk depot was unable to supply half the demand for Orange county milk. People abandoned the swill milk dealers, and flocked to Sellock's for pure milk. It was a daily spectacle, on the arrival of the milk from the boat in the morning, to see men, women, and children standing in a line a block long, waiting their turn. Then milkmen began getting their supplies of milk from Sellock, and he was on the point of establishing more depots in the city when his business was purchased by a company known as the Orange County Milk Association, which, foreseeing the great proportion the business must assume in the city, had been formed to control as much of it as possible.
The shipping of milk being an entirely untried thing, the farmers and the railroad company both had their troubles for a long time. While the weather was cool the milk reached New York in fair condition, if it was not detained on the way; but when the hot weather came much of it soured before it reached New York, thus working loss to the farmer and injury to the reputation of Orange county milk. The farmers did not know how the milk could be treated to keep it sweet. It was shipped both morning and evening, but much of it soured nevertheless. The railroad had its troubles in trying to find out how the milk could best be handled in transportation. At first the churns were put on a four-wheeled truck or car, which was in turn run into a freight car. At Piermont, the railroad terminus, this truck was run out of the car onto the Hudson River boat, and the churns were not handled until they arrived at New York. As the business grew and cans took the place of churns and miscellaneous receptacles, the use of those trucks became impossible. It was not until after many months of experimenting that the cars were designed for carrying milk alone and the problem of easy transportation was solved.
But this did not keep the milk from souring in transit, and many farmers abandoned milk shipping and went back to butter making. It was not until the fall of 1842 that it was discovered how to treat the milk to insure its keeping sweet a long time. Farmer Jacob Vail of Goshen made up his mind that if the milk was lowered in temperature by sufficient cooling before shipping, it would get to New York all right. He fitted up a hogshead with a coil of one-inch lead pipe inside. He packed this pipe with ice, and ran his milk slowly through the cooled coil. This expelled all heat from the milk. The weather was very warm, but Vail's milk reached market in prime condition, and remained so until it was all sold. Acting on Vall's discovery, the farmers cooled their milk before shipment, and the trouble ceased. That idea of Farmer Vail was the last blow to the butter business in Orange county. In less than two years there was scarcely a farmer within reach of the railroad who did not ship his milk to New York, and genuine Goshen butter, as a commercial article, became a thing of the past.
Jacob Vail's appliance for cooling milk, it was soon found, was not only cumbersome and costly, but also entirely unnecessary. All that the milk required was to be cooled sufficiently, and this could be done simply by placing the pans and cans in springs of water until the proper temperature was secured. In time the capacity and convenience of the springs were not equal to the demands made upon them, and the farm icehouse came into existence, something that had never been heard or dreamed of in the history of farming. To this day many farmers still cool their milk in their springs, just as their fathers did before them.
The condition of the milk business at the end of the first year was briefly recorded in the Goshen Independent Republican in the spring of 1843, thus:
Fifty dollars a day being received by the railroad as freight on milk. This would give, for the working days, an income of nearly $16,000. And should the milk carried by the road come into general use throughout the city, as we have no doubt it will, an annual revenue of some thirty or forty thousand dollars will accrue. By this unexpected business the freight on the is greatly increased. And while the road by this operation finds its income vastly increased, we presume the interest of the farmer is also advanced. But we would caution our agricultural friends against rushing in too precipitously in this business. There are symptoms of it being overdone. Should this be the case, it must result in reaction, loss, and inconvenience.
In round numbers this would have been 12,000 quarts a day that New York city was receiving of fresh dairy milk, or less than one-sixty-third of the amount now consumed there daily. The only stations supplying this milk were Middletown, New Hampton, Goshen, Chester, Oxford, Monroe, and Turners. The farmers do not seem to have feared an overdoing of the business, for the same paper, at the close of the year 1844, says that, during that year they had shipped "6,138,840 quarts. The farmers are getting 2 cents a quart for their milk, and the price of milk in New York to the consumers has been cut from 6 to 4 cents, a saving of $120,00 for the year to them. It requires twelve quarts of milk to make a pound of butter. This year's shipments of milk would have made 500,000 pounds of butter, worth $75.000, or less by $45,000 than what the farmers have got for their milk, and saving dairy labor besides. Orange county milk is driving swill milk from the city."
As early as February, 1843, the local papers were chiding the farmers for "using chalk and water in their milk, which is causing loud complaints from the consumers in New York. This deleterious quality of the milk is causing the demand to fall off." The down-trodden farmer, it would thus seem was beginning early to get his work in on the unsophisticated New York milk consumer.
In the early years of the milk business cans of five different sizes were used, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 quart cans. This great assortment was thought by the farmer to be necessary to avoid waste, as it was the belief then that what was left over from one milking was unfit to put in with the next shipment for fear it would sour on the way; so the smaller cans were used to hold these broken lots. That idea was in time found to be wrong, and all cans but the 40 quart one were discarded, and that is now the standard milk can the country over.
From the first shipment of milk by Philo Gregory in 1842 up to the early years of the war, the farmer made his own price for milk. The rate was so proportioned to the different seasons that the average price for the year was 3 cents a quart. The freight rate was half a cent a quart until 1857, when the railroad company advanced it to 1 cent a quart. When the fluctuating prices of the war came the farmers were at a loss how to arrange their price for milk, so they made the mistake of fixing no price, but sent in their bills to the dealers in blank, permitting the dealers to mark the price according to the fluctuation of the market. This was all satisfactory and profitable for the time, but after the war, when affairs had settled down to something like a substantial basis once more and the Orange county dairyman essayed to resume his place as the maker of the price for his milk, the New York dealer refused to consent to any such thing. He had made the price for years, and he proposed to continue making it. The farmers made a show of rebellion, but it amounted to nothing, and they have been at the mercy of the dealer ever since. Their greed during the war brought them large profits, but it was at the cost of their independence.
The success of Sellock, the pioneer of the milk business in New York, was quickly followed by the opening of other milk stores in various parts of the city, one of the early ones being established by Philo Gregory, the pioneer milk shipper of Chester. Gregory was a New York man, and although he lived in Orange county he had for years been a merchant in the city. He owned a dry goods store in Spring street, near Thompson. He opened his milk depot in Thompson street, just out of Spring. Another of the famous early Another of the famous early Orange county milk depots in New York was Barton's, in Bedford street, near the old Bedford Street Methodist Church.
One peculiar effect of the rise of the Orange county milk business in New York was the great increase in the sale of hay there. The swill milk dealers, seeing their business leaving them, attempted to recover it by lessening the quantity of distillery and brewery refuse they fed to their cows and substituting hay, something their cattle had never tasted before. It is recorded that in the year following the introduction of Orange county milk into New York there was more demand for hay in the city, than in any five years before.
"From 1844 until 1849," said H. Wisner Wood of this place, who was one of the pioneers of the milk business, "I represented the farmers of Orange county in New York as their agent. There was no business done by means of bank checks in those days and the currency was chiefly notes or State banks, quoted at a discount of from 1 to 5 per cent., and old Spanish coins in sixpences, shillings, and quarters. The old-fashioned big copper pennies were also largely in circulation. A week's collections for milk bills, from dealers in all parts of the city, were a sight to see. I would have firkins full of pennies and Spanish coins. The pennies I would have to dispose of in small lots here and there in exchange for larger money. The Spanish coins the brokers would take at a discount. I had to carry a bank note detector with me - in fact everyone in business had his bank note detector, which had to be consulted every time a bill was offered in payment for a purchase, to see whether it was genuine, or whether it was at par, or quoted at a discount.
"None of this money was bankable, but after getting my collections turned into notes, I would take them to a broker named Selah Vanduzer in Greenwich street, near the old North River Bank, and he would exchange them, through that bank, for Goshen money, and in this I would make my returns to the farmers. In collecting amounts due from city milk dealers I was in many instances compelled to accept at their face value bank-notes quoted anywhere from 1 to 8 cents below par, for the farmers soon fell into the habit of taking great risks with their customers there, and were easily led to abandon one who was perfectly good for his account for one they knew nothing about, but offered a quarter or a half cent more a quart."
There are farmers in Orange county who scouted the idea that milk could be shipped fifty mlles successfully and have lived to see milk sent to market from dairies more than 300 miles distant. At present the milk of the Orange county dairies, near the New York market as they are, is gradually reverting to its old-time uses in manufactured products of the dairy. At Chester alone 10,000 quarts of milk that formerly shipped to New York daily, are now sold to a local creamery for the manufacture of cheese. This is but one of many stations in the county where milk has been withdrawn from shipment and is now sold to be manufactured. There are those who profess to read in the signs of the times the coming of the day when there will be almost as little Orange county milk in the market as there is Goshen butter, and when the county will renew its fame for its butter and its cheese.
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Mr. Cullen's Remarkable Ear of Corn
From the Philadelphia Record.
An ear of corn which Patrick Cullen believes to be worth a small fortune is being carefully preserved by that individual, who recently found his prize on Farmer Upright's place at Merion Square, Montgomery county. To the ordinary city man there is really nothing remarkable about the ear of corn. Its kernels are not of sold gold, nor are there any diamonds concealed about the cob. Its value lies in the fact that somewhere at some time or other some agricultural society offered a reward of $1,000 to any one who would find a perfect ear of corn with the kernels growing in an uneven number of rows. It has always been found that the rows are even, say ten, twelve, or fourteen to a cob. This ear which Patrick Cullen found, however, shows thirteen row, around the butt and eleven around the middle of the cob. Many farmers to whom Cullen showed his prize assured him that the ear was as perfect as it could be, and that it was really a curiosity. Cullen is now looking for the agricultural society which offered the $1,000 reward.
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Easy Rabbit Hunting for Wheelmen.
From the Philadelphia Press.
BRIDGETON, Nov. 18. - Rabbits are unusually numerous in the lower part of Cumberland county. and two wheelmen, Ezra Shropshire and Oliver Friant, captured a couple in an unusual manner last night while on their way from Haleyville to Dividing Creek.
They had gotten off their wheels to walk over a sandy woods road when they came across a rabbit, which seemed to be blinded by the light from their lanterns and sat still, allowing Shropshire to fire five times with a small pocket pistol.
Upon remounting Friant ran directly over another rabbit, which had also been stupefied by the light, and this, too, was captured. They are now planning an all-night hunting trip with their lanterns.
