The Old is New -- G.K. Chesterton on Milk and the Problem of Our Society

What is wrong with the man in the modern town is that he does
not know the causes of things; and that is why, as the poet says,
he can be too much dominated by despots and demagogues. He does not
know where things come from; he is the type of the cultivated Cockney
who said he liked milk out of a clean shop and not a dirty cow.
The more elaborate is the town organization, the more elaborate even is
the town education, the less is he the happy man of Virgil who knows
the causes of things. The town civilization simply means the number
of shops through which the milk does pass from the cow to the man;
in other words, it means the number of opportunities of wasting the milk,
of watering the milk, of poisoning the milk, and of swindling the man.
If ever he protests against being poisoned or swindled, he will
certainly be told that it is no good crying over spilt milk;
or, in other words, that it is reactionary sentimentalism
to attempt to undo what is done or to restore what is perished.
But he does not protest very much, because he cannot; and he cannot
because he does not know enough about the causes of things--
about the primary forms of property and production, or the points
where man is nearest to his natural origins.

--G.K. Chesterton in The Outline of Sanity 1927