Norwich bulletin., 1920-10-15

maIkeL report. GTOWerS are receIV1nB | from TO cents to s1 per bushel in various | parts of the country" In three daily | papers which I received this week. rep l resentingN New England, New York and Ohio, the retail price of potatoes to the consumer varied from 45 to 55 cents a peck. This makes the average price to the grower S5 cents bushel and the av- craze price to the consumer s2. This isn't quite so bad. but it's bad enough. If it's only 'rth S5 cents to grow a bushel of pot,,S es, certainly 1t isn't worth $1,15 merely to weigh them out and pass them over the counter to a customer consumer. Per contra, if 1t really is worth that S1.15 to handle them, once, in city store, then it's worth a good deal more than S5 cents to handle | them seven times, cultivate them four | times. spray them three times and haul | them an average of nine miles, which is the producers part of the stunt. 1 Apples next. I've already told you the | experience of a neighbor who was charged | S2 apiece for empty apple barrels, and | could get an offer of but s2 barrel for | the same barrels filled with good fruit Another neighbor, who has bigger or | chard and even better fruit, is selling such as he can sell at all for $150 a barrel, delivered.
 These go to city where similar apples l are retailing at 35 cents a peck, or sass for an eleven-peck barrel.
 Once again, let mo note that if $1.5e a barrel is proper price for apples to the orchardist, then $3.S5 barrel to the consumer is next door to robbery. Or if S3.S5 is a just price to charge consumers then $1.50 is an indecently unfair price to pay producers.
 Take tomatoes for another example. 1 Quite few are grown in my neighbor- | hood. If we pick them judiciousIy sort them relentlessly. pack them with finicky care, and transport them, unbruised and fresh, to our nearest city market we growers will be offered 35 cents a bushel for them.
 The consumer in that same city will pay seven cents pound for those same tomatoes, at retail, or about S350 a , bushel Of course. no producer can break , even, or anywhere near it, with labor seeds and fertilizers at present prices, ii he sells at the offered wholesale price : NOT can any consumer really afford tc ! l buy freely at the quoted retail price Tn, same general condition exists all over tht Q country. letter from Maryland, wher, = l tomato canning is an important industry t says: "The odor of rotting tomatoes uer 7 vades all the roads in every direction s and the loss to the farmers is pitiful. fo g III this section every farmer usually plant a field to tomatoes"
 r Once again, I want you to take not 7, that the difference in the prices offere d growers and those charged consumer represents something so near akin to rob e bery that the very copious English Ian e guage doesn't afford a word to denote tn E distinction
 l. And yet both producers and constirner a wiggle along under this system of two
 handed extortion. and plume themseIye on their patience"
 q There might be an explapatiop 1rh d one class should bear it. But what wor 10 can describe the way in which both bea e It at the same time?
 le One of the leading farm papers of ii, l. country, The Rural New Yorker, edito rlaliy says This year hundreds of ton d 9I cherries remained on the trees in Nev e York state. Apples are wasting afl oye the state. Tomatoes by the ton rot c, the ground. At the same time city peopI
 groan under the burden of high foo1 prices. and many go hungry"
 How long, Oh, Lord. how long?" Hov long will the ten millions of producer and the hundred millions of consumer stand for this sort of double-action bar rowing, which tears the bowels out of th, tanners ana starves the stomachs of tn, consumers? W
 SAu one 1nnpuis1V0 city woman will
 whom was discussing the situation re
 gently: That's the sort of thine whiol
 makes bolsheviks." Heaven forbid W
 all trust and believe that the vast ma
 Jority of American producers and con
 sumers are too level-headed, too sane to
 securely based on the principles of ave,
 lasting righteousness, ever to be stan
 peded into that cessDooI and latrine z
 detestable horror in which Russia is .
 present wallowing
 Murder and arson and pillage and rir
 are no answers even to profteering E,
 pecially when the proper answer mad
 ready and fitted right to our hands h
 our present form of government, is u,ii
 as effective and much easier
 There are hundred and ten million
 of us who are being plundered by a fe
 hundred thousand profteers. And tfaI
 a country by whose fundamental law fl
 majority rules-whenever it will take fl
 trouble to do so.
 We let cabals of self-seeking politicia,
 select our government for us-because ii
 too much trouble for us to govern OH
 selves! We let organized gangs of pro
 iteers pillage us from years end to year
 end-because it would involve a lit
 self-sacrifice for us to choke them in
 submission by strangling their pocke
 books, which are their most vital organ
 Is this sort of conduct "patience?" is it something much less praseworth,
 Something deserving of much less 1o
 orable title?
 'rWho would be free, themselves mu
 strike the blow" That isn't hghfaluti
 campaign cry; it's the simple stateme
 of primary truth.