The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-08-05

cause they have no tankage or minerals, which are so essential to their well being as well as good pasture. I have seen corn, oats and cotton put up in torn and dirty covers thereby giving the middlemen op- portunity to penalize the farmer far be- yond. the amount of the actual damage to the products. simply because the unat- tractive appearance of the goods renders them less desirable to the consumer.
 MORE WORK TO DO
 aThere were many proclamations is- sued before planting time of this year and showers of exhortations from cham bers of commerce, banker-farm com nnittees MT Hoover and Mrs. Mathis for the farmer to show his patriotism in growing feed and food. The result is extremely creditable to the farmers of Alabama, as shown in the bountiful feed and food crops throughout the state
 "It is now squarely up to the same procaimers and propagandists to see to it that we do not have a repetition of the demoralization following the slump in the cotton market in 1914 While the marketing of the crops is now only few weeks off, the newspapers that were so active in the above propaganda are at this critical time entirely too silent on this subject. t is more vital to market crop properly than it is to make it. Should the farmers enthusl- asm be paralyzed as a result of the mar keting of this years tremendous crop, 1t will drive many thousands more from the fields to the industrial plants of the north with a resultant reaction on the ultimate consumer as striking as the re- action at present upon the cotton spin ners of England and France, due to scarcity of cotton brought about by io, Of
 INSURE FAIR PRICES
 "The truth of this becomes apparent when we recall that the English cotton spinners demanded, under the leadership of Sir Charles McCara, that cotton be made contraband, which virtually placed the cotton situation of the world under the dictatorship of the English cotton spinner and forced the farmer to sell his cotton below the cost of making it and drove him into crop diversification or into other lines of industry. The pres ent scarcity of cotton makes the spinner pay about four times the 1914 price for cotton Would it not have been wise from the economic standpoint for the cotton spinner to pay the farmer in 1914 a price above the cost of production, thereby conserving him as a cotton grower instead of leaving him as wreck
 
 passing of the storm? Let the consumer of today take warning and pay the southern farmer for his product some what in proportion as the western farmer is being paid for his product
 Wheat has gone from 75 cents before the war to a government stabilized price of g, having gone unrestrained as high as ss25. Then, would 1t be out of req son for our food propagandSts to urge upon our Congress a stabilization of cotton at a minimum of 25 cents pound, Of corn at $.50 a bushel, and of peanuts at $1.50 bushel?
 T am exceedingly anxious that the vast good to Alabama made possible by the food propaganda--be not even now lost by a failure on the part of the propagandsts to stand for fairness in prices for those products they have en- couraged the farmer to raise. I would also warn the farmer to conserve his crop by more careful handling and to pursue better methods of marketing if he would reap the full benefit of his present strategic position"