The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1944-04-07
washington JIG
Price Premium Battle
Grows in importance
War Food Administration Faces increasingly
Difficult Problem of Getting 'Bashfup
Beef Cattle to Market.
BY BAUKHAGE
NeUs Analyst and Commentator.

cent, when the figure the govern
ment had set was is per cent?. More
about that later.
And so the War Food administra-
ton is afraid the same thing might
happen to the cattle market. And
the banker is afraid. 1t would be
bad enough if we ran into glut like
the hog-jam but, as one VIA live
stock expert put it, 1--WE shudder to
think what might happen if an early
drouth developed. There would be
| a great stampede to move cattle to
market. Transportation and process
ing facilities might not be able to
handle the movement. The result
might be the loss of thousands and
thousands of head of CATTLE"
r. M. Evans, member of the Fed
eral Reserve board for agriculture,
who is former agricultural adjust
ment administrator, is urging the
bankers in the cattle industry to do
their share in coaxing Ferdinand off
the range.
About Elastic Prices
Of course, the cattlemen have
been among the most violent critics
of the price control administration
and their representatives have main
tanned steady battle here in Wash
| ington in an effort to remove the cell
ing prices from beef Cor, as they
| say, make the prices elastic) so that
prices would rise and fall in accord
ance with the seasonal demand.
The cattlemen's viewpoint as pre-
scented by Joe G. Montague of the
Texas and Southwestern Cattle Rails
ers association, boils down his plant
to simple statement.
Seattle just provide the frames to
hang beef on. The Lord knows
we've produced the frames but
somebody fell down on the job of
hanging the beef on EN-"
Mr.. Montague told me the other
day that the weights have gone down
faster than even he expected al
though he predicted the glut and
the promised famine ever since the
fxed price was made last October.
They have gone off q to % pounds
a head and he expects this will con-
tinue until July when grass feeding
begins again.
"I'm trying to get the cattle off
the ranches but can't do it. The
feed lots are not taking them be-
cause there isn't any feed. I could
sell thousands of pounds of feed to-
day if I could get my hands on it.
The government reports show that
there's lot of feed somewhere but
we can't find it,"
HOdrded Corn
There is plenty of feed in the shape
of corn in the country but the farm
ers with their government-assured
prices on hogs are boarding it-they
are Transforming it into pork. The
government "asked for this" when
it put premium on hog-raising, as
we have explained. But many farm
ers, poultry and dairy farmers and
others outside the corn belt need
feed.
Not only farmers but industrialists
who need corn for their chemicals,
are complaining. The army and
navy who need their products have
echoed their pleas.
So the government is smack up
against the problem of prying this
feed (corn) loose from the farmers
who are keeping it to feed to their
hogs. The only way they can shake
the kernels loose is to increase the
price of corn. The only way they
can do that without breaking through
price ceilings is to subsidize corn-in
other words, buy it at price which
will make it more profitable to the
farmer to sell it than to feed it to
his hogs.
Montague's argument is that be-
cause the cattle business is seasonal
you have to have fiexibility in price.
If the price is nailed down, the cat
tleman will sell his CRASHED cat
tie in September, instead of holding
out for higher prices in the spring,
and save going through the anguish
of zero weather. Of course, under
price control, the theory is that the
fiexibility is provided by the SUBJ
sidy-excuse me again-by the gov
eminent offering price premium
which gives the cattleman enough
for a fair profit but doesn't increase
the price to the consumer and start
imitation. But the cattlemen don't
want sub-price premiums. They
want prices to rise and fall in the
good old-fashioned way.
And that is where the issues in the