Baraboo weekly news. [volume] (Baraboo, Wis.) 1912-197?, 1919-10-30
ANOTHER SHOT

from ones own side. There is the
packers side, the side of high wages
the side of over capitalization--what
may be called the water side--and
then there is the retailers side. That
might be called the goats side. For
the retailer is after all the goat. He
hears the sin of the High Cost Of
Living into the wilderness of mon
keys" where it plunges into chaos.
Yet behold a mystery about this
retailer and his blame in the high
cost of living: Individually he is in
nocent: collectively he is a scarlet
sinner What retailer of food or
meat is making much money? Does
the grocer go rumbling by in high
powered car? When the meat dealer
hits the boulevards on Sunday with
his wife and the girls-no iron gray
battleship carries him along with the
broker and the milliner and the fash
ionable doctor The meat market
man rides in a little rebuilt 1909
model with an oil cloth fore door,
that sounds like a boat full of rocks
going over an iron bridge. Yet the
meat dealers gross margin is high,
quite an altitude. Then why does
the meat dealer have to make his
suspenders creak when he even flags
his monthly bills as they pass? The
answer is profound in it's simplicity:
The meat market man happens too
often; he is too pervasive has too
high frequency; in short he is born
too often and not made The aver
age butcher at the block can cut up
and sell eight times as much meat
a day as he does cut up and sell.
And so he has too much time for CON
sidering Higher Things. And we the
Ultimate Consumers, are going to
the meat market for pork chops. sir
loins and spare ribs, and paying 8 or
per cent profit on food and 60 or
20 per cent on the Maiden Medita-
tons of the Butcher Divide the
number of butcher shops by eight.
and we sould have a miracle in the
reductions of prices. In a town of
10000 four shops could feed the peo-
pie. That is one shop to every $500
people. Generally the American ay-
erage is one shop to 500 people.
But to cut down the number of
meat shops-or grocery stores (for
the same need is found in the gro
Gerry business)-would be curtailing
the royal American right to go into
any business that one pleases to en-
ter. The royal American right to
trade an upland farm for a grocery
store or meat market run it
year, go broke, get lot of bad
debts, owe a whacking lot to the
wholesale house or the packers. and
trade back the grocery store or meat
market to another sucker on a meas
lier little upland farm, was one of
the things for which the embattled
farmers fired the shot heard round
the world. To abridge that right
would cause revolution. Yet if we
don't abridge it we shall have a
revolution. For much of the high
cost OF living is in the excessive diff,
ference between the cost of food to
the retailer, and the cost of food to
the consumer. Yet because of the
tremendous overhead, the large mum
Der of unemployed hours, the waste
IN rent, the waste in delivery and the
waste in light, heat, water and Jaw
power. the grocer and the meat men
make no considerable profits. They
are called s.profiteers' when they
do nothing economically worse than
shine their pants on the chair by
the stove. waiting for trade.
There Ought to Be a Law!