Társadalom-, gazdaság-, kultúra- és politikatörténet
Történettudomány
The aim of this study is to highlight the significance of the interactions between
the modern dairy economy, urban and rural society and politics in the context of the
crises of the period during and after the First World War. After sketching the national
context, I outline the political aspects of the presence of milk in villages, towns
and cities, on the basis of newspaper articles about the urban milk markets in Szombathely,
and then I try to explore the characteristics of the Vas County (in western-Hungary)
milk cooperatives that played a key role in the urban-rural relationship between 1918
and 1930.Milk production in Hungary became an issue regulated by political institutions
in the first three decades of the 20* century. The political decisions embodied in
legislation interacted with certain social groups, including the professional staff
of manorial estates, individual farms and the increasingly important role of skilled
women in dairy farming, through the laboratory system of institutions created by the
regulations on quality and control. The actions of the government,municipalities and
administrations in the dairy sector reflected both the already decade-old issue of
security of supply, uncertainty and threats to milk quality, and the role of interest
groups as economic policy and the state became more closely intertwined. One of the
most interesting questions in the context of Vas County is the interaction of post-war
conditions and the prolonged consolidation of the new state borders with the dairy
economy.Looking at the case of Szombathely, a city traditionally well developed in
terms of dairy farming (and also prominent in smuggling butter to Vienna, which was
also suffering from food shortages), the daily news reports on milk adulteration and
the organisation of the supply chain are dominated by the lack of milk. The solution
offered in the newspapers was the establishment of a well-controlled room in the city
milk hall, to be set up by the state authorities and initiated by the government or
local authorities. The control and controllability of the milk market were seen as
crucial issues in the establishment and operation of the milk hall. The focus of milk
control was mainly on procedures exploiting shortages, such as watering.The example
of the cooperatives and sources examined in the paper shows that in the early years
of the 20* century- milk cooperatives enjoyed greater autonomy, while in the 1930s
they increasingly came under the aegis of the OMTK, a state company. It is true both
before and after the First World War that annual profits were in fact minimal, while
cash flow and the equipment and infrastructure purchased were more significant. Thus,
dairy cooperatives were more important for raising the technological level of farming
and building market links for households. Typically, it was indeed households that
were the members of the dairy cooperative, with only occasional entries of persons
having outstanding numbers of animals being observed in the membership lists. Increasing
state intervention and expectations have had a negative impact on local and micro-regional
supply chains, what is now described by social science as food self-sufficiency.
