Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1910 — BERLIN BUTTER BOYCOTT. [ARTICLE]

BERLIN BUTTER BOYCOTT.

Oftouini, meal Sonia, ObJecV to Pavla* 3*l Cento a I’ooad. Berlin has a butter boycott. It is also spoken of in the dispatches as a bitter boycott, thus, in addition to other attractive features, giving it the neat and alliterative interest that must attend such a movement as the Berlin bitter butter boycott. The people, frugal souls, object to paying 36 cents a pound for butter, insisting that 26 is quite enough. When we hear such hews as this most of us are astounded at the moderation of our own toleration, the Indianapolis News says. For months we have been paying all sorts of prices for butter —some people insist that they have even paid more than that; prices, indeed, that made 36 cents look like the easy times of the days before prosperity hit us so hard. Our prices are not so high now, to be sure, but the product is still quoted at a rate that leaves 36 cents far short of appearing appalling. Our own butter prices have been Bubtly progressive. Not manj; years ago the ordinary householder-bought his butter by contract from an itinerant huckster at “25 cents a pound the -year round.” Then, as prosperity proceeded, there came an autumn when the butter man announced that he would have to charge 30 cents during the winter. This was paid grudgingly, but when the spring came and the grass grew and pasturage became rich there was no return to the 25-cent rate. Under the new dispensation butter had come to 30 cents the year round. Then came another chilling autumn when the huckster concluded that it would be necessary for him to charge 35 cents a pound In the winter. Again it was paid, grudgingly; again the spring came, the grass grew and the pasturage became rich, and again there was no return to the summer price. The year-round contract price is now holding steady at 35 cents, generally speaking, with scant prospect of lower rates for the summer. And the householder has disconcerting visions of 40 cents the year-round price, beginning with next fall. Something may intervene to save him, but he has his doubts. For the last twelve or thirteen years there have been extremely few saving interventions. A butter boycott, even a bitter butter boycott, would be possible, of course, but experience is not encouraging. The only result of the meat boycott appears to have been higher prices, which we are still paying, although it is admitted that the meat boycott has passed into history. It was a well-intentioned effort, but it evidently did not take fully into consideration humanity’s gastric cravings or the strength of the packers’ standpattishness. We shall watch the effort of the Berliners to force down butter prices with interest, if not exactly with confidence. If they win It will indicate one of two things—either they have more determination than we have or the people over there who control food prices have less.