Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1914-09-04

sign their fat stock, the meat from
which Is then sold to the consumer
without passing through the hands
of an interminabls line of middle
men, each OF whom takes his toll"
have been in the sheep business,
living within 80 miles of the popu-
lous anthracite coal fields of Penn
sylvania, yet l could find no market
for my fat ewes, and in order to dis
pose of the sheep, had to load them
on board of cars and ship them to
Buffalo. And at the same time lots
of mutton is used in these sections.
But small abbatoirs have disappeared
one after another until hogs are the
only meat animals that are slaught-
cred IN the few remaining ones The
individual butcher of years ago is not
much in evidence. He is supplaLted
by the meat dealer, who buys fr IN
the bis packing houses. In fact, in-
dividual butchers who determined to
do their own slaughtering were put
out of business. Our farmers who
were raising few head of cattle
found trouble in selling them, and
this led The farmers of the east, who
are admirably fixed for the raising of
cattle and sheep, to drop that branch
of agriculture. 1t will take some
time, under favorable conditions, to
return to stock raising. Strange as
it may 9eem, we often receive less
for our stock than what the western
producer received who is located
from 1900 to 1000 miles away from
the point Of consumption.
In this country the farmer receives
only a small fraction of the price
paid by the consumer. Enormous
packing establishments have monop-
oiized the neat business and there Is
little or no competition in buying the
farmers stock. The enormous fort
unes that have grown up in this
business in recent years show that
to pay high prices to monopoly, the
farmer has not been getting enough
to induce him to keep up the supply.
The way the farmer has been
robbed of his profits in stock raising
and discouraged from keeping up
the meat supply is largely duplicated
il all lines of produce, as few ex-
amples will show. o. H. c. Becker,
farmer of Suffolk county, N. Y,
the garden truck section of Long Is
land, writing of his experience in the
American Agriculturist, said: 1T is
about time that something is done
to give the farmer fair share of
what he produces. Some city people
have an idea that a farmer gets
great deal for his produce. Last
year on shipment of % crates of
caulifloWer | got net .oceeds of II
cents; the empty crates cost me
$3.50, SO | was out $1.73, besides
labor, fertilizer, seed, ETC.
''On another shipment OF four
crates and 10 barrels | got Al cents
net proceeds; cost of empty crates
and barrels $1.81, leaving me a net
loss of S1.40, not including labor,
fertilizer, seed, etc. On another
shipment of II barrels | got net pro-
ceeds of Il cents; cost of empty bar
rels $1.21, and a loss of $1.10, not
including labor, fertilizer, seed, etc.
If-tfff44s continues, subscribing for a
paper at the small price of 81 year
will even become a luxury" An
other example somewhat similar is
that of large crops of apples, when
the price to the ultimate consumer
is about the same as when the crop
is small, so that many producers can
not sell their apples at any price, be-
cause the consumer does not get
some of the benefits of a bountiful
harvest. l could multiply these il
lustrations indefinitely. Not a farm
er but what can give experiences of
this kind.
For every dollar the farmer gets,
speaking on the average, the con-
sumner pays three dollars. Two
dollars go to the middlemen. Isn't
that a pretty big price for the con-
sumer to pay for getting his supplies
from the farm to his home. The
farmer is naturally wholesaler and
so the question of economical dis
tribution will not largely be solved
by him. That is a question for the
consumer. The farmer as a con-
sumner has his own problems to work
out and he can not and does not ex-
pect the machine man, the fertilizer
man, the feed man, and the seed
man to come among farmers and
work up cooperative business in
order that he (the farmer) may get
the benefit of wholesale prices.
They simply put an agent In the
comm unity and the farmer paws the