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313
If we place the two sums, £219,267, and £51, side byside,
we can see that the profits of adulteration are about
4,000 times as great as the losses. On looking through the
list of fines, I note that the highest fine for the year is £5
and 12s. 6d. costs. The average penalty including costs is
just under £2.
Magistrates can surely not understand the magnitude
of the fraud which it is then duty to suppress, and small as
the powers are that the Law gives them, they rarely or
never exercise them to their limit.
The Food and Drugs Act, and its amending Act, and
especially the Margarine Act, may be looked upon in one
aspect as designed in the interest of the agriculturist, and
every conviction for milk or margarine is a direct gain to
the producer of genuine milk and butter. If the above
Acts were energetically worked throughout England there
would be much less cause for farmers and others interested
in agricultural land to talk about the decay of agriculture.
So long, however, as people are content to consume milk and
water as milk, and margarine as butter, so long will agriculture
remain in a depressed condition. There are, of course,
other causes at work such as the lamentable want of enterprise
and absence of organization existing among English
dairy producers. If Denmark can create, and she has
created, a large industry in dairy products, it is surely open
to England to follow and even outstrip her. When
creameries are dotted all over the map of England that
would contract for all the milk in their respective neighbourhoods,
they would be able to produce butter of high quality,
and from working on the large scale would be able to