Norwich bulletin., 1918-07-05


 Furthermore, I resent the action of those who do seem to think these things. and who conduct themselves accordingly as very real insult, the more offensive because of the supreme contempt it's holding indicates, no matter how camou1aged.
 If profiteering is disloyalty when practiced by the leather dealer or coal seller or a door knob maker. it is just as truly disloyalty when prac- ticed by farmer.
 There is no making flesh of one and fish of another: Profiteering these days, no matter by whom committed. is fragrant and contemptible malfea sance. It is no offense to say - so, whether to a farmer or anybody else. But it is an offense and an insult to pretend that farmers mustn't be treat ed like other men and musn't be sub jected to the same criticisms or re- strictions.
 Having said so much on behalf of the farmers right to fair and equal ! assortment with other citizens, let me add that, as things are in New England, there is mig -h-ty little danger of any of us farmers becoming profteers.- --.---.-.- ->.-.
 
 nit, if we wanted to.
 A profiteer. as understand it, is 8 man who seizes the occasion of his country's urgent need to exact for himself an excessive and undue prof it: excessive because greater than normal: undue because tending to 1 the impoverishing of others for his own enrichment
 1 In my neighborhood, farmers raise very little wheat or corn to sell. They keep some cows. fat some pork. sell some butter and eggs and potatoes 1 and hay and vegetables and the like. Now butter and eggs and potatoes and l hay are selling hereabouts for even i less than last year at this time.-Im not talking about what city consumers 1 pay for such things; I know little about that: I'm talking about the price we local farmers bet-Milk is 1 higher. So is pork. So are certain vegetables. Now let's see how much reason there if far suspecting profit eering' in those things.
 The local dairy farmer gets about fifty per cent. more for his milk than he used to. That milk is the joint product of feed and labor. The same farmer who gets fifty per cent. more for it, has to pay from 150 to 200 per cent. more for his feed and fully 100 per cent. more for his help. Does an increase of fifty per cent. in his income against an increase of 150 per cent. in his outgo indicate any undue or excessive profit taking The pork fattener IS faced by prac- ticaHy similar conditions. He gets al most double, now, what he used to for dressed pork. Fer the feed and labor which go to produce that pork. he pays from three to four times as much as he used to.
 1 Does a doubling of his income against a tripling or quadrupling of his outgo indicate any undue or ex- ccssive profit taking?
 The vegetable grower gets slightly
 higher. prices for most of his truck The increase varies from ten to fifty percent. I happen to have heard Of
 only one case where the latter in
 crease was obtained. In my own case
 1t doesn't average twenty five percent
 Yet seeds last spring averaged more l than double former prices. and labor costs quite double Fertilizers ot : poorer quality cost more than double in money.
 Does an increase of even fifty per cent, in income against an increase ot fully 100 percent in outgo indicate any undue and excessive profit taking: Any 'profteering." that is? don't know what Mormon farmer.
 are making, or any other farmers three
 thousand miles away. I don't know but they may be profit. I eerlng to beat the band. . But how any reasonable and aver. ? agely intelligent human being can set any profiteerinS among farmers il
 New England,-or any possibiblt
 chance for it if one were mean enougl to attempt it.-that puzzles me, I con.
 fess.
 don't know what all farmers wou!e do, if some unexpected and semi T miraculous eruption in the market: should suddenly give them the chanc, F to profiteer,-which they haven't go now.
 We're all weak critters, and Tn : afraid some would fall under tn
 temptation. Just as some in othe
 lines of business have already fallel !, when they found the chance. As wit
 ness few already in Atlanta ant ' more who aren't there yet but ough
 to be!
 Anyway, it would be a new ex = perience to us to have the temptation
 and. thus far. we don't need to pra, e the good Lord to deliver us from it
 The market maripula.ors are airead, e on that job and don't need any out q side assistance. They'll see to
 that that particular enticement ism . put before us.
 Instead of .arousing .resentmen
 among practical farners. NIr. Hoover