The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-09-24
A CREAMERY LESSON.
Effects of Industrial Depression in Cities Brought Home in
 @ Practical Way.
STORY OF A KANSAS FARMER.
Decrease in the Consumption of Food by laborers Affects the Sale
 of Farm Products.

A stock-feeder of Kansas, recently in
 Kansas City, tells q story that IS worth
 repeating for the excellent lesson which
 it teaches. In certain town was creamery. It gathered the cream from the farms within radius of ten miles and manufactured about 400 pounds of butter per day. Beyond the limits of | this circle from which cream was gath l cred there were number of farmers who desired to sell cream, but were not | able to do SO because the wagons from the creamery did not reach their farms.
 One day Q delegation of these farmers l called at the office of the creamery to consult the manager with reference to the enlargement of its business so as to | include them and their neighbors. They l explained to the manager that by send | ing his teams few miles farther in nll directions he would double the quan- ,ity of cream gathered, double the amount of butter produced and consequently double the profits of the creamery. The farmers were disappointed when they saw by the look on the managers face that their proposition was not favorably
 received. There had been a great deal of gossip among the farmer patrons of the creamery that the price paid for cream was too low and that the profits of the concern were larger than they ought to be, and now these farmers could not understand why business which was making eXorbitant profits should not be willing to enlarge itself, to double it's output and consequently to double its profits.
 The manager explained that to enlarge the circle of their farmer patrons would require an additional number of men and teams to gather the cream. would require additional machinery and an en- larged plant with more buttermakers and other operatives, all of which meant an additional investment of money in which he did not feel justified at this time.
 He explained that the price of butter was low. that thousands of laboring men in the cities being out of employment were not eating butter, but were buying oleomargarine and other cheap imita- tions of butter. and because of all these hiscouraging circumstances he was unable to consider proposition to enlarge the business of the creamery. The manager went on to explain that creamery in Kansas, Nebraska or Iowa depended upon the big cities for its customers.
 In small towns many of the people keep cows of their own, but in the big cities such as Denver, Kansas City, Omaha. St. Louis. St. Paul, Minneapolis and Chicago, where thousands of laboring
 men are gathered, the farmers find their best customers not only for dairy nroducts but all the other food products of the farm. The families of these la boring men are cxtravagant eaters and extrayagant buyers of farm products when they have the money to buy with. When the laborng men in these cities are employed they consume vast quanti- ties of butter, eggs, flour, meal, beef and poultry. The thousands of creameries in Kansas. Iowa and Nebraska had more orders for their product than they could supply before the Democratic panic stopped the industries in the cities and threw the labOring men out of work
 In the last two years the demand for food products have been less and less, showing that the families of the laboring men in the cities are growing more and more economical in their consumption of food. In long conversation with the manager of the creamery. these farmers gathered the idea, as they had never understood it before, that the fOod-prO- ducing farm is dependent upon the food consuming city for its market and that the price of food and the demand for it depends upon the employment at good wages of the laboring people of the cities. This much the farmers had al- ready understood in a general way, but they had never stopped to realize the far more important truth. that the manage ment of these great labOring employing industries devolves entirely upon the trained business minds of the heads of these industries whom the Popocratic or ators now denOunce as plutocrats, and enemies of the common people. It is very fine sport for eloquent office-seek- ing politicians to denounce the men who manage the labor industries, to call them "plutocrats," "goldbugs." robbers" "op- pressors" and other offensive names, but after all these eloquent speeches have been delivered and after all this mis- chievous tnlk has had its effect