Norwich bulletin., 1917-10-12
SENSIBLE TALK BY A CITY MAN

farmers, who must supply the even more essential food for all the soldiers | and sailors and workers of the world. fairly entitled to be paid back their | expenses and at least an equal profit l Mir. Yoakum maintains that they are.
 He says:
 | Let the man who farms, after 1 ation, interest on his investment, and | allowing the market price for his own
 and family labor, make a net profit of
 from Is to 20 per cent. When the | farmers of New York can feel reason
 ably sure of making a profit on their l business, they can and will produce on | the present farm acreage of the state 1 three times as much foodstuffs as at | present"
 1 As I said at the outset, there is | nothing especially new about all this.
 It is something you and have talked | over. several times, and something | which has doubtless impressed itself,
 more or less clearly. on the mind of | every producing farmer in the coun | try. But it is something which the | average city consumer can't or won't | take into full consideration.
 He used to get milk at about half what it costs him now. Why can't l the farmers De cOT1pelleQ to sell IL at l the same old price? They didn't starve to death then: why should they now? Something like that seems to be the easoning" of the average consumer MT. Yoakum very curtly remarks that this average consumer usually works jess and enjoys a better and steadier income than seventy-f1ve per cent. of the state farmers, who work the year round, run the risk of all kinds of weather, of oEop-destroying germs, of every disaster known to agriculture, in many cases suffering total losses" It is true that the farmers used to sell their milk for half what they get now. Yes, true; absolutely and arith medically true. And just because that price was so low that it failed to give any profit, failed in thousands of cases to return even expenses hundreds and thousands of milch cows in New York state have been turned into beef, hum Greds and thousands of heifer calves have been sold for veal, and the pro- duction of milk so curtailed that there actually isn't enough now produced in the whole state to supply the states real needs. Driven to desperation, the remaining and surviving veterans of the dairy industry have at last com bined to force increases in the price of their milk. Yet, even with a doubling of that price, the best figures obtain able by their representatives show that they are making only two-tenths
  cost of producing that quart. This isn't fifteen per cent. profit: it isn't even four per cent. profit. It isn't as much as their money would earn if they should sell off all their cows and invest the proceeds in four per cent. | bonds or put them in a savings bank. |
 Why? Why don't the dairymen | make more money, now they're getting l so much more for their milk? For the | simple reason that the rise in all other | lines has so increased the cost of | producing milk that it's advance hasn't ! even kept up with the advanced cost of 1 producing it, Says MT. Yoakum, again:
 Every item of farming expense in cludinS labor, has advanced from 75 | to 200 per cent. Unless the farmers can pay as much as others for labor, they can't get the help; and without the help, they must shut up shop. the same as other business under similar conditions"
 What is true of milk is true of prac- ticaIIy every other form of farm pro- ouction. Potatoes and onions and | beans and corn meal and wheat four and the rest cost more to. produce | than they ever did before because ev- cry single element which enters into II the cost of their production has gone up in price. From seed and fertilizer | to sieves and burlap bags, everything costs more. Those added costs must be paid, or farmers will have to stop producing. There's no other horn to the dilemma. If we can't pay our way we shall stop going that way.
 Mir. Yoakunn calls attention to an other factor in the problem which all of us will appreciate when it is stated, l but which I don't happen to have seen noted before. That is the stead fly deterioraing quality of farm tools and farm machinery. While the buy ing cost of all these things has risen as sharply as any other line, the in ferior materials used and the incom- petent 9s Workmanship work applied result in such loss of life and efficiency in F tolls and machines as to add another heavy expense to farming. Flows etc, don't last half as long IS they used to; horses need shoeing twice as often when shoes and E poor material; gasoline for farm en- s-nes and farm delivery trucks cost |. -wentyf five to twenty-eight cents | sallon against twelve cents, the ante var price, and so on and on. Let me luOte again:
 'NThe war is responsible for these armers must foot the bill Flows are wearing out with one-half the use; races breaking under a half load; lorse collars wearing into shreds in a ew months, making an average in reased cost in farm equipment of rom 125 to 150 per cent, including irst cost and loss in efficiency. Farm ITS know these conditions are unavoid- . -ble, and that they must pay the price, But they also know that in common | 5 ustice they are entitled to demand IT equivalent advance for their prod Icts to keep them in the same relative position as prior to the war"