Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1909 — NOW WILL YOU BE GOOD? [ARTICLE]

NOW WILL YOU BE GOOD?

The secretary of agriculture has completed an exhaustive investigation of the causes of the high prices the consumer has to pay for meats, and gives the meat trust a- clean bill. It’s the measley retailers, says Secretary Wilson, who are holding the people up, and they are making a profit of about 46 per cent on an average. As usual the poorer classes it in the neck the hardest, and the profit the retailers make from the , lower priced meats is about double that made on the higher priced cuts consumed by the well-to-do and milllanlare class. The report says: “The lower the grade of beef the greater the percentage of gross profit. In Boston for illustration, the rate of gross profit is nearly twice as great for beef costing 8 cents at wholesale as for beef costing 11 and 11% cents. Low-priced beef is marked up nearly twice as much relatively as high-priced beef. In other words, perhape it is a safe inference that the poor people pay nearly twice as much profit as the well-to-do people pay." The retailers say' that Wilson is “another,” and look upon the report as a joke.