Milk’s history in America has been one of downs and ups

By JENNIFER MOONSONG
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW June 27, 2008 04:54 pm

— In this day and age it is easy to take milk for granted. Wheeling a shopping cart through the grocery store and pulling a plastic jug of pasteurized and calcium-fortified milk from a cold cooler is common place, but that wasn’t always the case.
Until the early 1960s, milk came in now collectible heavy glass bottles and for many it came right to their front door. The first glass milk bottle was made in the late 1870s.
In Glasgow, Border’s Milk Company was what area residents got if they had milk delivered to their front porch. Border’s was located on Front street, but the milk was not processed there.
Border’s operated in Glasgow from the mid-1930s until the end of the 1950s.
“The milk was processed in Bowling Green and brought to the Glasgow store,” Dee Ramey said.
As a boy, Ramey worked for Border’s delivery man, Bruce Page.
“I washed down the concrete on the delivery bay and sometimes I went out on the delivery route in the truck,” he recalled. “Border’s ran the route Monday through Friday. Border’s milk could also be purchased at the store for a small price.”
The bottles were returned to Border’s where they were washed and refilled.
Brown’s Ice cream was another local dairy institution.
“All of the stores sold it and you could by it right from the plant,” Ramey said.
The ice cream was made and sold from the same location.
“Back then there was a little grocery store on every corner, not like the supermarkets today,” Ramey said. “People bought a lot more locally.”
Changing times and a flux in eco-social needs caused door-to-door milk delivery to go under in the early 1960s.
Border’s heyday in the 1950s was what the International Dairy Foods Association refers to as The Golden Age of Milk in America.
Prior to the 1940s when the Workers Progress Administration (WPA) launched a poster campaign to up milk’s popularity and sales, America’s beloved beverage had a near villainous reputation.
The bad rap for milk began in 1913, when the New York Times reported that the deadly typhoid epidemic was largely caused by contaminated milk.
By 1917, a mandatory pasteurization act was formed and the law helped to get milk back on its feet until the 1930s when the milk wars began.
The Sioux City Milk War was the most infamous of the milk wars because milk producers didn’t only strike in order to raise the price of milk, but they also set up roadblocks that halted the delivery of milk to the Sioux City plant.
After the death of the glass milk bottle in the 1960s the square paperboard carton was invented and revolutionized milk advertising and delivery.
“It was a light bulb moment,”said Dean Wheeldon, a historian who focuses on the 20th century. “It lowered the cost because cardboard cartons were not as expensive to make as the bottles had been.”
It also changed the way milk was marketed.
“All of a sudden there was more than a clear bottle to work with,” Wheeldon said. “There was a carton with four sides that could be utilized to grab the customer’s attention and make milk more desirable.”
The innovative change greatly affected the dairy world and by the early 1970s, milk could be purchased in cartons or in plastic jugs.
In more recent times, milk’s popularity soared again after the launch of the “Got Milk?” slogan in 1995.
The simple slogan that has been used, reused, and reinvented has become a widely known phrase in modern American pop culture. Celebrities with milk mustaches, T-Shirts, even a “Got Milk?” Barbie doll have furthered the campaign to keep milk a top seller.
The popularity in recent years doesn’t mean that everyone is on the milk bandwagon.
For as much positive publicity as the drink has had, there has been an equal amount of controversy. Several activist groups have launched Web sites questioning milk’s greatness and a lawsuit was filed against the California Milk Board after the start of the Happy Cows campaign.
Whatever one’s feelings about milk, no one can deny that the dairy industry has kept the heartland afloat and that milk packaging and advertising has impacted American culture from the cow all the way down to the milk bottle.

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