Cry Over Spilt Milk (1954)

From the July 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “Villagers blinked in surprise when a 3.000-gallon milk tanker drew up at their disused coal mine. They wondered why. But they were not left wondering long—for the milk was poured to the bottom of the pit.”
   “The tanker came again and again and the people of Tunley. near Bath, found that their pit had been turned into a 60,000-gallon ‘milk bottle' ”—Daily Herald, (2.6.54.)

The milk was skimmed and had been left over from butter-making. “Transport and other difficulties” allegedly prevented the farmers having it for animal fattening, yet the tankers could make 20-mile trips just to dump it. The Milk Marketing Board offered the explanation that when sold at 3½d. or 4d. a pint was hardly economical. Milk, of course, is today produced to sell, and if it can’t be sold then the cows are just wasting their time.

Ironically enough, on the same day the Manchester Guardian carried a report that a record number of one million cows were artificially inseminated in the year ended last March. These dumb animals had better realise that, along with their human counterparts, they are in grave danger of working themselves out of a job. Not only that—their work seems to have been deprived of pleasure, too.

STAN.