Norwich bulletin., 1922-06-23

tailers who buy it in ten-barrel-lots from the wholesalers, and so on.
 This develops the highly informative fact that almost exactly one-hah of your bread dollar is paid for something which is not bread. Only one-haf of it is paid for the wheat for the Touring of that wheat and for the baking of that flour.
 Also 1t shows that the wheat grower who does more real work, takes more risk and produces more real value than all the other wheat SanS fi9sB handlers combined, gets 296 cents for his blowing and narrowing and seeding and harvesting and thrashing and bag ging and hauling to the elevators while. the gang gets 50 cents for passing the buck from one to another.
 Some years ago a leading farm paper,
 think it was The Rural New Yorker, made the bald assertion that, on an average, the farmer got only 35 cents
 of the consumers dollar. Whereupon all the dogs of big business were let loose on the trail of that editor He
 was told that his facts were false and his deductions misleading; he was ac-
 cused of trying to stir up class hatred,
 he was charged with ignorance and
 prejudice He didn't take it back, how ever, but kept on adding one proof aft CT another to his list, as they came within his observation. Now it seems, l not on his authority, but on that of an official commission having high inquisi-
 torial powers and no prejudice either ] way, that in the matter of bread, the ! one most important food of the world and the farmers chief product, the 1 farmer doesn't get over 35 cents of the
 consumers dollar. He gets only 296 cents. 2 1 Of course, when the farmer delivers his wheat to the Dakota elevator, il ] isn't of any present use to the city
 bread-eater. It has to be ground into 1 flour and that flour has to be baked in
 to bread before it becomes food. More
 over, the wheat hast be hauled to the | mills at Minneapolis, and the flour has
 to be hauled from the fodr-nflls to the 1 eastern cities. These operations are just
 as essential as the growing of the wheat itself
 Kindly note sn that respect that the l grinding and the baking and all the ] incidental expenses attendant on these
 two operations cost only 2O.4 cents oi the ultimate dollar. As has been al ready said, these three essential func- 1 tions wheat-growing, four-grinding
 ad-making-accolint for just 50. cents
 of the consumers hundred cents There
 remains only one more integrally i'm.
 portant work, that of the railroads ir I hauling the wheat and flour.
 This necessarily varies greatly in ac. 1 cordance with the distance of the haul It makes a difference in freight charges { whether the flour is drawn from Minne- apolis to Chicago or from Minneapolis 1 to Boston; whether from Minneapolis tc Omaha or from Minneapolis to New Or [ leans. It is, therefore, impracticable tc I set any definite figure as to the amount
 which freight charges take out of any
 particular dollar paid for bread. That 1 amount will be more in some cases than 1 in others. At its largest however, il l will be very small fraction of that 50 cents which we have seen remaining after the farmer and the miller and the
 baker have been paid.
 By far the greater portion of thai ! 50 cents--certainly nine-tenths of it
 perhaps more-goes to pay for some. thing besides the bread, and into the