The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1920-01-01
M|DDLEMEN TAKE
BULK OF VALUES
Instance Shows Consumers
Paid Thirteen Times What
Farmers Got.

Five farmers recently sat down to
a meal in a moderate priced" hotel
in Washington, D. c. 1t consisted of
beef-steak, corn, potatoes, bread, but
ter, coffee, and nothing else. They
were charged $11. This rather large
price for this quantity Of simple food
caused these farmers to do q little fig
uring for the purpose of finding out
the difference between the price of
What farmer gets for his food prod
ucts and what the ultimate
pays for them. They discovered that
the farmers who grew this food with
the exception of the coffee got only 80
cents for it.
Twelve Thirteenths to MiddIemen.
1t had increased in value in passing
from the hands Of the producers to
the stomachs of the ultimate consum-
ers more than 1900 per cent. Of the
money the paid for the food
the farmers got only one-thirteenth
and the various kinds of middlemen
between the producers and consumers
got tWelve-thirteenths of this money,
or twelve times as much as the
farmers.
The question brought up by these
Illuminating figures is, whether or not
the actual work done by the middle
men was worth twelve times as much
as the actual work lone by the farmer.
Farmers Work Worth Most.
The farmer maintained at great ex-
pense and risk a farm with all its
improvements worth at least $4,000.
He furnished the seed, the land, the
labor, the machinery, the farm build
ings and the. livestock, the risk and
the care to produce the wheat that
made the bread, the milk that made
the butter, the potatoes, the corn, and
the steer from which the beef-steak
was taken.
The potatoes and corn passed from
the farm to the table of the hotel al
most without change except the
change entailed in cooking. All the
added cost to the corn and potatoes
was c~hargeable to handling and cook
ing. For handling and cooking the
middlemen got several times as much
out of these two fOod products as the
farmer got for furnishing the land, the
labor, the seed and the risk connected
with growing them. Instead of pass
ing these products through as few
hands as possible and making the
middlemen charge as light as pos
! sible, they were passed through as
many hands as possible and the mid
dleman charges were made as heavy
as possible.
Too Much Handling.
In the, case of the butter, if the
farmer did not make it on his own
farm, it went through one process of
manufacture at a creamery. All the
charges above the original charge of
the raw product accrued from one pro-
cess Of manufacturer and the process
of transportation and handling. For
these processes the middlemen again
got several times as much as the
farmer got for the raw product.
In the case of the bread, the raw
product was wheat and had to be han
died, transported, manufactured into
flour and cooked. But for these pro-
cesses the middlemen got probably
twenty times as much as the farmer.
In the case of the beef-steak, although
butchering, packing, transporting,
handling and cooking were included
In the middlemen processes, the diff
ference in price again wal perhaps
as much as twenty times as much as
| thu fO n0f %h@ ~~L> - A0 m
for a meal the few ounces of beef
steak eaten must have cost more than
a dollar. The farmers, consequently.
paid several dollars a pound for meat
which they sell on the hoof for prices
ranging from s to Is cents per pound.
The Way Out.
These figures show conclusively that
middlemen are tremendously oyerpaid
for the work they do in comparison
with the farmer and that between the
farmer and the ultimate is
an enormous wastage and an unneces-
J sarily long process of passing produce
through many sticky fingers. This ire
mendous margin for these simple food
products of 1900 per cent indicates
what a big field there is for the organ
lied farmers and organized workers to
systematic and reduce to the princi-
pies Of economy. It is probable that
when the farmers and workers have
bridged this abyss of middlemen and
! non-producers with cooperation, pub
lie ownership and control, system and
organization, that the farmers will get
more than twice what they are getting
now for their produce and the con-
sumers will pay less than half what
they are paying now for their food.