Almost everyone in America knows Elsie the Cow, the bright-eyed, smiling Jersey with a curl between her horns and a chain of daisies around her neck. Yet, few people know the fascinating tale about how the country’s most famous cow became a household name.
Elsie first appeared in 1938 as a cartoon-like cow that advertised products for Borden’s Condensed Milk Co. During the late 1930s, three large milk companies – Sheffield Farms Milk Co., U.S. Dairy Products Co. and Borden’s – sold two-thirds of all the fluid milk consumed in New York City. Without outside competition, the companies cut the price they paid farmers who supplied them with milk. As a result, large numbers of New York farmers organized, declared a strike and began dumping their
