Over Spilt Milk: The Fight for Fair Price and Fair Profit in Depression Era New York.

January 30th – May 3rd 2009

Consumer-Farmer Milk Cooperative pamphlets and broadsides, vintage milk cartons, and miniature dioramas on display.

The show will feature documents and artifacts from the 1930s, when immigrant Meyer Parodneck and a handful of anti-poverty activists founded the Consumer-Farmer Milk Cooperative to ensure farmers received a fair price, and consumers paid a fair price, for milk. The Co-op played a pivotal role opening the market controlled by milk distribution giants. With their own processing plants and distribution stations, the Consumer-Farmer Co-op sold milk to consumers at the lowest possible price, and paid farmers the highest possible return, for nearly fifty years. Overcoming a mountain of obstacles, this organization made a difference to hundreds of struggling farmers and to the children of low-income New Yorkers.

The exhibition includes period Co-op newsletters and advertising campaigns, vintage paper milk containers, and cooperative movement propaganda. Pivotal moments in the Co-op’s story are illustrated with miniature dioramas.