Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1910 — THE FOOD PROBLEM. [ARTICLE]

THE FOOD PROBLEM.

New York has to suffer an increase of a cent on the quart for milk. This means an added annual cost to living in Greater Xew York of 56.000.000. This increase follows an. increase of 2 cents a pound for butter, 3 cents a dozen for eggs and other small increases in the price of bacon and lard. It presents a very real problem, in discussing which the Xew York W orld gives some figures that may have light in them. Food now costs the average family more than rent or clothes. A man may wear old clothes, but he must ‘have fresh food. VVhv in this land of plenty does food cost so much i The assertion here i$ that it comes from tflte added cost between the producer and consumer,- Jt is held as undisputed that the producer gets about 30 cents out of the dollar that food costs the .consumer. Potatoes last winter were selling in Xew York state for 23 cents a bushel: in Xew York city for 40 cents a peck. Apples last fall rotted oil the ground. This spring street peddlers asked 5 cents apiece for them. The Florida orange grower gets less than a cent apiece for his fruit. The result pf this situation is double in its effects. It not merely keeps the price of food up to the consumer, but it act- on tihe producer so a~ :to cause a scarcity of supply and this again drives prices up. The ordinary farmer nets less than a cent a quart on milk. To raise an acre of potatoes costs from S4O to S? 0. To come out even the farmer must get 40 cents a bushel. The farmer gets <ay 8 cents a pound for his hogs. Hut bacon costs anywhere from 20 to 30 cents. Steak at 25 cents a pound conies from cattle that the farmer sold for 7 cents. The World adds:

Everybody gror.- rich from handling food except the man who raises it. The meat packers ■ pay big dividends on an enormous capitalization, One of the milk companies which has just increased prices paid dividends of 22 per cent. last year. The Fifth avenue and Broadway hotels make more profit off the sale of food than do all the farmers of all the counties between New York and Albany. Commission merchants grow rich. The grocery business is now capitalized and its securities floated in Wall street. How many farmers get rich? Of the many rich farmers’ sons, how many of them made their money by raising food?

But when there is a drop in the prices of raw food the consumer does not get the benefit. Fanners are getting one-fiftfn to one-sixth less for cattle and hogs than they got last winter, but the consumer has had no reduction. Milk goes up in price at fihie time of year when it should be cheapest. Eggs present the same condition. The conclusion is that there is so much money in handling food and so kittle in raising it that a skilled, •rich and powerful class of food middlemen has developed. From the big milk and meat companies to the commission men, wholesalers, jobbers and retailers more of the consumers’ money is absorbed than goes to the producers of tihe food. The latter suffer from the depression of prices which the middleman works as to him while the con-

summer suffer from the increase of prices. , which the same influence. The great problem is to devise some way to bring the consumer and the producer into closer relationship.—lndianapolis News.