The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1894-12-13
THE BUTCHERS APPEAL.
Farmers Complaint Against spec.
tai Privileges and Class
Legislation.

! teEtstottOn.
! EDITOR HERALD: The butchers OF your
city are becoming audacious. They APP
peal to your city council to enact mu.
Dicipal law imposing fine on the far ner
every time he carts butchered hog to
town to sell to his friends or patrons ~ho
are not in the butcher business. This IS
outrageous. II other sections of the
state, whose inhabitants are not vitality
interested in the prosperity Of this city
and county, were locally overrun with
meat supplies and sought to unload their
surplus on us at any price, the right and
expedency OF protecting the honest pro.
Queer at home would not Ice questioned.
But, should the city council say that the
country producer must sell his meats and
vegetables and fruits directly to the town
dealer in these articles, or he shall not
sell at all at home, it issues an edict for
which there is neither warrant in the
science of government nor pardon in the
ethics Of business. Such = course would
discourage the producing energies Of
the country districts by depriving the
farmers of privilege vouchsafed in the
! very principles that underlie the broad
( structure of free government. Should
such move prevail, both the farmer and
the consumer of his products would be
wholly at the mercy of the dealer to
whom the farmer must sell his meats and
! fruits, if he sell them at all. If he can
not dispose of his goods at home without
being made to pay for the privilege, and
he cannot produce in quantaties sufficient
to justify his counting distant market,
why will he not simply limit his products
to his own domestic wants?
raise hogs, for instance The butcher
will give me four cents on foot for them.
| He sells them to the consumer for twelve
or fifteen cents. A sufficient profit. is it
not? But can dress my meats and cure
them, too, more cheaply than l can hire
the butcher to do it for me. can sell
them to town consumers who cannot pro-
duce them, and get for them from fifty to
one hundred per cent. more than the
butcher will pay me, and yet greatly I'M
dersell the regular dealer. Both and
my patrons are satisfied with the bargain
but the butcher is not.
/ Some of the local dealers in meats raise
their hogs and other meats. They fatten
and slaughter them in the country. The
farmer has no right to object to that.
! They take the dressed carcasses to town
and retail them from q given place by
special delivery. That's exactly what
the farmer does, only he has no special
headquarters in town.
l. may be urged that the town trades
man should be specially protected be-
cause he pays town taxes. Let me say
in reply to this that the farmer pays taxes
in the country, too-and they are so dog
gedly high sometimes that he is COM
PEELED TO mortgage his home to do it.
! There is no local or general law that COM
pels man to do business in town, any
more than there is a law to compel the
tablishes himself in the city does 90 be-
cause there is more money in his business
so located, Notwithstanding the extra
taxes, than there would be if his trade
headquarters were outside the city limits.
He is free, however, to take his choice.
So is the farmer in the location of his
chosen vocation-save and except the
blessed privilege of conducting a hog
ranch in town
! am sure that North Yakima lsgislat-
i've intelligence is too substantial to be
misled by this selfish within Of the butch
ers. II their course be just in this in
stance. why could not the grocer reason
ably solicit similar legislation against
the farmer; so could the marketmen of
all classes who handle farm produce OF
any kind. Would this not take away
from the farmer a valued and valuable
right? Would it not give into the hands
of local trsdesmen an exclusive cinch"
on the struggling farmer?
! North Yakima owes too much of its
sturdiness of character, its prosperity,
growth and substantially, to the busy
farmers about it to attempt thus to cur
tail their already mesgre privileges or in
any manner to legislate against their vi
/ tai interests CLoDHoPPER.