The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-09
LETTERS TO EDITOR
Practices of Oil Mills

To the Editor of The Age Herald:
 If you will allow me to infringe upon your courtesy by giving me space in your valuable paper to answer one MT. O. IT. Bowen in regards to my article In issue of December ,, I would like to state that Mir Bowen's defense is. when summed up, exactly the same that has been used by schemers for ages. He will place his cotton seed oil and beef tallow in one and Ione- half pound moulds. identically as butter is moulded, and color it the same as butter. and retail merchants all over the United States will sell this compound to the consumers for butter. The same is be- ing practiced today in the way of olive oil Where it should be branded as a mixture of cotton seed oil certain per cent and olive oil a certain per cent, instead it is being sold as pure olive oil.
 MT. Bowen says the oil mills have much difficulty in securing the CO., operation of the farmers. l would like to say that l was e ginner 10 or 12 years ago and I would receive quota tions of the same dates from various oil mills, all quoting prices of seed identi- cally. What inducement has a farmer to cooperate with a set of men who will set price on his hard earned prod ucts. and has to submit to said price or else keep his seed?
 Mir. Bowen seems to think that I have displayed gross ignorance of the entire subject. but if he will note on the first page of today's December 3 issue, he will see that the Dallas county grand jury has indicted five different oil mills for combina tion. just like I stated in my article of December ,. And for that matter there is hardly a county in the state but what has one or more oil mills which should be dealt with similarly to those in Dallas county. But possibly Q better plan would be, as I have before stated, to have the United States en- force the Sherman act.
 Mir. Bowen spoke of the cotton seed oil mills being in "a bad position fi- nancially. I have never heard of but one cotton seed oil mills failure. and if they are such poor paying proposi- tions, why does capital keep placing it's money in them?
 MT. Editor, as farmer all that and my associates ask of the public is a square deal. If a dairyman should put a per cent of tallow into his butter and put it on the market as butter, he would have stolen the difference be- tween the prices of tallow and butter on the amount of tallow that he might dispose of in that way.
 I did not think that would be drawn into controversy, but in self defense I feel 1t my duty to reply to MT. Bowen, and hope that the public will realize that I am not antagonistic toward cot ton seed oil mills when they are op- erated on the square. But when they have the power to take seed from 2 farmer at s30 per ton one year and at s15 per ton the next year, and the by products cheaper with the $30 seed than with the S15 seed if you will think one moment of the tons of seed crushed into oil, assumming that all the seed arc crushed into oil, and placing the cotton crop at 16,000,000 bales. and assum- ming that all the seed of said crop were crushed, there would be 5000, 900 tons And the difference in price paid for seed that year and the year previous would be $15 per ton, and this would amount to the enormous sum or $780, 100000 that the farmers of the southern states (to put 1t plain). are being robbed of by the said Cotton Seed Crushers' association and its allies. as I stated in my previous article.
 T. M. ADERHOLD.
 Anniston, Ala. R. F. D.. December z. 1912