Middletown transcript. [volume] (Middletown, Del.) 1868-current, 1920-08-14
SUPPLY AND DEMAND

this spring she paid $1.50 to 81 peck
for old potatoes. q price at least four
times the amount the grower received
for those same potatoes. The dealer or
speculator will justify that price by
saying there was a shortage and the
demand 80 far exceeded the supply that
an exorbitant price was inevitable.
Now the potato grower knows that the
law of supply and demand has been
changed to the Law of Supply and De-
mand and Company, and that the Com
pany" is the most potent factor in fix
ing prices. He knows that when time
for marketing the 1919 potato crop
came the speculator had secured large
part of the scanty supply of railroad
cars available for handling potatoes and
that with this weapon and with con-
troll of storage and marketing facilities
could and did hammer down the buying
price and in turn raise his selling price
almost at will.
The potato crop in 1919 was 358, 600.
OCO bushels, although the acreage plant
ed was sufficient to have produced $780,
600. 600 bushels under an average nor
NAL yield. The 1919 crop was 81, ,000,-
600 bushels short of the 1918 crop and
80, 600, 900 bushels short of the 1917
crop. Obviously, when man gets be-
low an average yield Of crop he loses
money. The law Of supply and demand
says that he should receive higher
ratio per bushel or pound for short
crop. But the Law of Supply and De-
mand and Company says that he should
not receive anything extra to make up
for the fact that weather conditions
cheated him out of the fruits of his
time and labor. The Law of Supply
and Demand and Company says that
short crops must result in higher prices,
but that the higher prices belong to the
speculator.
It requires 41 bushels of wheat to
make barrel of flour. The producer
of wheat receives about $8. 81 for the
wheat, the miller gets $12.70 for the
barrel of flour; the baker, $88. 10, and
the New York and Washington hotel
gets $587 for the product of barrel of
flour, in the thin slices in which it is
doled out. In my home State, Kansas,
the farmers>lost an average of 43 cents
an acre on every acre of wheat they
raised in 1919. The Secretary of the
Kansas State Board of Agriculture,
recognized authority on farm produc-
ton costs, gave that figure after he had
made q thorough investigation Of the
cost of producing wheat in 1919 on
2,O4O Kansas farms with total area of
49l, ,O62 acres. The average production
cost of the 1919 crop on these farms
was $3.50 an acre, and the average re-
turn was $2477 an acre. In 1919 Kan
sas produced 20 per cent. of the winter
wheat and 16 per cent. of all the wheat
of the United States, 80 these figures
may be taken as generally representa-
tive of all our wheat-growing areas.
The wheat growers and the farmers
in all other branches of farming are
perfectly aware that the Government
during the war nursed every other
industry at the expense of agriculture,
and now that the war is over and the
reign of the profiteer dominates they
do not propose that this condition shall
continue. Farmers were receiving
$2.45 to $3.50 a bushel for wheat at the
time the Government decided to en-
courage wheat production by adopting
its guarantee Of $2.20 bushel for
wheat. The $3.50 was the seaboard
price under the guarantee and the
farmer received $3.50 to $2.O4 a bushel
under this $2.20 guarantee, not far
from dollar less than when the Gov.
eminent cut the price to encourage
production. And last year this great
Government, through its grain corpora
ton, made a profit of twenty-three
million dollars out of the farmers
wheat.-U S. Senator, Capper, in NJ
american ReUiew.