The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1910-02-06
Communication

Editor Herald-Republican: From
what little investigation I can carry on
am led to believe that these high
prices of food products We are having
are general all over the world. l re-
ceive reports from Germany, Denmark
and England, and meats, butter and
other products seem high in those
countries also.
The basis Of cost of meats, butter,
poultry, eggs and other products lies
exclusively in the cost of wheat and
corn, and you will find the relative in
crease in all food products corresponds
exactly with the increase in wheat and
corn. In fact, these products have in
creased in value at a greater rate of
proportion than have finished food
products. If you will check back ten
years and twenty years you will find
this theory is correct. The price of a
bushel of wheat and bushel of corn
is really established in the European
markets where our surplus is sold,
namely, Liverpool and London. In
these markets we compete with all of
the wheat and corn producing coun-
tries in the entire world.
When the Kansas and Missouri farm
eT is paid 65 cents a bushel for his corn
d
will sell same instead of feeding it to
livestock, and it is true that the farm
ers in Denmark, Holland and France
buy hundreds of millions of bushels of
wheat and corn in these countries, which
they feed to dairy stock, hogs and cat
tie. and market their butter, beef and
pork in England in competition with
the United States. These European
farmers can do this and make ii UP by
being scientific farmers and thorough
ly understanding farm work, and then
il is my opinion that before permanent
relief comes the farmers in our state,
and all states, must learn to farm bet
ter. They must become more scientific,
and when they do, 1 will venture to
say that We can double, if not treble,
the production on the farm, and the
farmers will make more money and be
able to sell cheaper.
We must also realize that the Eu-
ropean countries are receiving their
share of the prosperity wave that has
gbne all over the world in recent years,
and the people Of England, Germany,
Denmark and France and other coun-
tries are living much better and Sc
curing more of the good things to eat
than they did in former years.
| well remember in my childhood
days how my good old parents had to
figure and economic in order to raise
US children. There were ten of US, and
we very seldom had meat more than
once during the week days, and then
on Sunday, and the balance of our
meals consisted more or less of a veg
etarian diet, but We always had good
butter and bread, pancakes, buckwheat
cruel, potatoes and carrots went a long
way with a little butter on top of it.
OleOmargaTine was known in those
days, but it never found a friend at
our house, and we figured pretty close.
About I or cents a pound was the
price of oleOmargarine in those days. 1
wonder if the people or consumers in
this section realize that when they pay
80 cents for oleomargarine that they
are contributing to the greatest graft
ever known.
Just keep in mind that oleomargarine
is made up of about so per cent refined
cottonseed oil, about IS per cent oil
made from tallOw and about Is per
cent neutral lard. Oleo is retailing in
Kansas City at 20 cents a pound, and
as low as 171a cents.
l hope there may be a few thoughts
in this letter for your readers. The
cry against the middlemen does not
come with good grace from anyone 10
Gated in a large city. What is a city
made up of? Any large city, or for
that matter any sized city, is made up
of middlemen. If there are 125,000 peO-
pie in Salt Lake City today at least
10000 people directly or indirectly Sc
cure their living as middlemen between
the consumer and the producer, or in
the handling of minerals and other ar
ticl2S If commerce There fS tba ro-
taller, the wholesaler and the manu-
facturer which is the basis of a city's
Then there are the doc
tors, the lawyers, the preachers, men
with trade, and then the people en-