Norwich bulletin., 1913-07-05
EYE-OPENING FACTS FAVORING CO-OPERA-
 TON

Cwritten Specially For The Bulletin.)
 Last fall the author of an article in The Worlds Work hauled a hundred barrels of fine Baldwins to the rail road and dumped them into freight car at a dollar a barrel. That was the best he could get for them, as a prducer, in quantity.
 At that very time apples no better were retailing at from two to five cents apiece in a city only five miles away.
 MT. Producer got less than one twentieth of what MT Consumer paid.
 One day this spring the manager of a certain New England Cooperative enterprise bought a lot of fine pars- nips at twenty cents a busheI of about forty-five pounds. Just for informa- ton he asked his cook to buy some from the retail market for dinner. She paid five cents a pound.
 Mir Parsnia-G Grower got less than a cent for fhat Mrs. Parsnip Eater paid ten cents for.
 The Worlds Work writer tells of another c%se where a truck farmer near Boston hauled load of lettuce to market a month or two since There happened to be plenty of lettuce, that day Several dealers declined it at any price. At last one offered him five cents each TOT ms elgnLeSn-4eAu crates. This was less than the crates cost. The farmer turned his team homeward and fed his lettuce to his hogs.
 That very day the retail price of lettuce in Boston ran five to eight cents a head.
 Mir. Lettuce Raiser was offered about a quarter of a cent for what Mrs. Let tuce- Buyer was charged twenty five to forty times as much.
 That reminds me of the time hauled plums to my nearest city market, and was offered thirty-five cents a bushel for them, though they were regularly priced at ten cents quart. $3.20 a bushel, by all the re- tailers of the place. l had already used all I could, had given all they would take to my immediate neigh bors and didn't believe they were good fodder for hogs or horned crit ters. So I hauled my eleven bushels of fine Lombards to a swale l knew be- side the mountain road, and dumped them off there, for the birdy- birdies to feast on
 Those birds are of some use in the world and some occasional service to us bug-chased farmers. The men who wanted to buy a bushel of plums at thirty-fve cents to sell again at s3-2O are in a lower category.
 Taking all the crops that farmers produce and also taking one season with another, satsticians agree with in reasonably close limits that the farm producer averages about thirty five or forty cents in payment for the goods which the consumer pays an even dollar for. From sixty to sixty five cents of every dollar the consumer spends for farm products goes,-not to the farmer and not as pay for the catabIes-but to the oli-takersl who stand along the road and grab tfibute oG every passing load.
 This is a knife with two edges,- one which cuts both ways It swindles the consumer out of more than half his annual food expense bill: it swindles the farmer out of more than half his honestly earned income.
 The only visible weapon with which to meet it is cooperation of producer with producer; of consumer with con sumer;-and then mutual co-opera- ton between the two sets or classes.
 Take the morning vegetable and fruit purchases of an average consul mer costing, say, one dollar. Wouldn't she be mighty glad to get that same lot for seventy cents?
 The farmer got thirty-five cents for
 
 sixty cents2
 Exactly that is what cooperation between the two might effect. Then why in the name of vanished common sense don't they cooperate?
 Well, there are two reasons, at least. Perhaps l ought not to say "rea- sons" for that word implies intelli- gent ratiocination. Perhaps I should say that there are two explanations.
 One is in the laziness or careless ness or ignorance of the consumer He-or she,-wants to be waited on He,-or she,-wants to order goods by telephone. have them delivered at the door, and, generally speaking, would be glad to have them cooked and dish ed and cut up into convenient mouth fulIs before being presented on the able! He,-Or she,-would rather pay lot of go-betweens for doing his or her work than save money by doing T. in person. Consumers of this class deserve to pay high prices. There is