Norwich bulletin. [volume] (Norwich, Conn.) 1895-2011, 1920-06-11
PRODUCER GETS IT IN THE NECK

Assuming the weight of quart of milk
as two pounds pints a pound, the
world around" you know--this gives the
farmer a trifie over five cents a, quart for
the milk and the handlers three cents
quart for transporting and selling it at
stores. How much more do you pay?
Perhaps you pay 15 or IS cents
quart. Taking the lower figure of is
cents, you will notice that the farmer
gets a third of it or five cents for the
milk; the distribution actually costs a
fifth of it or three cents, making eight
cents in ALL The extra seven cents which
you pay goes neither for the milk, nor
for the transportation of it, nor for the
pasteurizing of it, nor for legitimate
profit, but to somebody somewhere, who
doubtless needs it to buy his limousnes
and town cars and keep them fed with
gasoline. Atf~>
Hog" or "hyena"
Wen leave that for you to say
But when the farmer gets five cents of
your Is, or at the rate of 33 cents of
your dollar, and this mysterious in
almost AZ cents of your dollar, which is
the one for you to call names-whichever
of those names you shall decide may best
fit?
And If you really want to get cheaper
milk, and have intelligence enough to
know how much seven and eight come to
when added together, which do you think
is the one for you to put out of business
the farmer with his milk-giving COWS
or the Limousine driver with his glittering
car?
Now, there's no use beating around the
bush or trying to stop an Atlantic tide
with Mrs. Partington's broom
Nor of trying to butter parsnips with
soft words alone.
Nor of sticking ones head into clump
of weeds to shut out the sight of the on
coming mad bull.
Nor of ignoring hard facts and inexor-
able conditions.
If proflteers in the cities are making
so much money that they can afford to
pay workmen $40 wages where 50 wages
were the former rule, then farmers, to
obtain their former amount of help must
also pay $40 wages where 50 wages used
to secure it. And, if they've got to pay
five times the wages they used to, then
they must get five times the prices they
used to for their products.
What's the use of blinking and bIather-
ing about it? Five times two is ten, Just
factories. It's a question of the simplest
arithmetic. If the wages which must be
paid for raising bushel of potatoes or g
peck of peas or a hundred of oats or a
quart of milk are to be five times what
they used to be- then the man who pro
duces potatoes and peas and oats an6
milk must get five times as much fol
| them-or crawl into his hole and pull the
! hole in after him.
There's no trick about crop production
| by which it can be accomplished without
| work-hard work, steady work, fuIl-daJ
| work. And the crops must sell for enough
to pay for that work or they won't BE-
| riased-can't be raised
That's all there is to it.
II n man who used to get SO day or
| the farm can now get SO a day in the
city, he cannot be very harshly blamed
for going where he can get it. If thu
| farmer wants to retain him, he mus
equal the bid And if that farmer mad,
a bare living from the sale of his crop
| produced for So a day, how in the namt
| of Daboll or any other arithmetician q,
you figure that he can pay five times a
much wages unless the crops bring him il
| that fivefold return?
AS matter of cold fact. they do no
| bring anything like that quintupled price
| Consumers kick like Kentucky mules be
side hornets nest if they are asked t
pay double, even.
The farmer simply cannot pay wage
in competition with city industries wit
| prices for his produce anywhere nea
present levels. Very we'll, then. Yo
think the Egyptians were cruel slave
| drivers when they demanded that tn
Israelites make bricks without straw
That impossible exaction drove a Who'll
nation to its exodus, and changed tn
history of the world.
Do yOH expect twentieth centur
farmers to produce crops under wors
conditions than those imposed on tn
Hebrews in Egypt? Do you expect ther
to furnish you food when they cannot &c
the help to plant it or cultivate it O
harvest it? Do you demand that the
create something out of nothing? s
If you do, or if you blame them fo
conditions which are not of their maxim
and which they are powerless to chang,
you are doing great injustice.
Moreover. you're making a big mistak,
And one which somebody. sometime, wi
have to pay for-to the last red cent
THE FARMER.