The Milk Shed Built Over the Sewage
A Seattle weekly prints a photograph of the city's largest dairy depot — a ramshackle shed on pilings over the tide flats — and dares the health inspectors to explain why nothing is being done.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There is probably not another city of its size and importance in the Union where such a disgraceful condition of the dairies and milk depots is tolerated as is found in Seattle. The engraving herewith is a bona-fide photograph of the milk depot of the largest dairy company in Seattle. This ramshackle building is stuck up on piles, in a choice part of the tide flat district, where the sewage, stable refuse, etc., is wafted underneath by the tide. Most people in a city don't know where their milk comes from. If they had ever stopped to investigate, they would not permit such places as this to operate.
Seattle has a milk inspector, who claims that he has no authority to deal with the conduct of the milk depots. The state dairy law gives the dairy commissioner ample power, but that genial official says it isn't etiquette to interfere in the city inspector's territory! And there you are.
The publication of this photograph last week by the Argus aroused a good deal of indignation among the citizens, and it is hoped that the agitation will grow until the citizens are assured of a sanitary milk supply. They pay enough for it — and they ought to have it.
“Most people in a city don't know where their milk comes from. If they had ever stopped to investigate, they would not permit such places as this to operate.”
The shed in the photograph stood over the Seattle tide flats, ground that was filled and is now the SoDo and Industrial District — the same land Seattle still argues about. And the bureaucratic dodge at the heart of the story, each inspector insisting the other one has jurisdiction, is a move every city health department still runs. Food-safety scandals and 'who's responsible?' standoffs remain a reliable local-news genre.
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