If television ever comes up with a “Corporate Survivor” series, McArthur Dairy — now 86 years old — would be a winner.
The Miami-based company was founded in 1929, just in time for the Great Depression to kill off many established businesses and put potential milk-consumers out of work.
James Neville McArthur, a Mississippi-born World War I veteran and educator-turned-dairyman, started the company in Hollywood that year: He used a $4,000 loan from his father to buy 20 Jersey cows. Not only did milk prices promptly collapse (from 21 to six cents a quart), but McArthur couldn’t afford to hire any help, so he fed and milked the cows himself, cleaned and filled the bottles and made deliveries on a 120-mile route, according to an account published by members of the McArthur family.
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