Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-01-26
WANT CONSUMERS TO HELP
FARMERS MARKET PRODUCTS
ECONOMICALLY
Home Makers Club Asks City to CO.
Operate with Growers for Better
Distribution OF Food

Their dissatisfaction with the man
ner in which New Jersey farm pro-
ducts are marketed in their commune
ties has resulted in members of the
Home Makers Club of the Oranges, a
prominent organization of women in
Essex County, planning to inaugurate
the first municipal department in New
Jersey to represent consumers as a
whole in dealing with marketing
problems. The women claim that liv-
ing in a land of plenty, with boun-
teous crops, for which the grower gets
only a small price, the average city
family continues to pay war time
prices for many farm products that
through much handling have lost
much of their freshness and quality.
Lack of practical cooperation among
dealers and consumers, the organi-
cation finds, is far more responsible
than so-called "proiteering' for these
conditions.
While there is a great spread be-
tween the price paid the farmer and
the cost to the for New
Jersey farm products, there is little
evidence of profiteering, except in rare
instances and sudden changes in mar
ket prices, if one is to judge from con-
ditions reported to the Home Makers.
On the other hand, there is a woeful
lack of system, for which the women
contend that the public is partly re-
%sponsible, as it seems impractical for
| fha farpaar6 fA - fhof, ;,J;-s1,,aJ
or cooperative marketing program
beyond the wholesale and into the re-
tail field.
The women believe such situations
can be remedied in any city and will
seek the adoption in their own COM
munity of a plan that already has won
the approval of the State Bureau of
Markets. This plan will represent an
organized effort on the part of the
consumers to match and cooperate
with the organized movements of
farmers to better marketing methods.
AS such a nov would benefit the
health and p~ocketbook of every family
in the city, the club will seek to have
a market department Incorporate into
the city government. A somewhat
similar system is said to have proven
highly beneficial to during
the last five years in Detroit and has
been adopted by other progressive
mid-western cities.
The proposed department, elimi-
mated from politics and headed by an
official with technical knowledge of
marketing would seek to effect a city
distribution system for products where
no system To- exists and would keep
daily information as to the food needs
of the community before the farmers
and daily information before consum-
ers as to the kind, quality and price of
farm products then offered. The sys-
TEN can be extended, they believe, to
cover all food products from all parts
of the world.
Value of the proposed market official
could be increased and the cost to the
city lessened, the women believe, by
seeking to have the local market di-
rector make a link in the nationwide
chain of market reporting service,
and a joint employee of the city, state
and Federal governments in this line
of work.
The Orange plan is stirring up much
interest among other women's clubs
of the state, which have beer studying
problems of domestic economy. Some
of these clubs are said to be ready
to 10Y along similar lines for a So
luton of the marketing problems of
their communities.