Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]
[graphic]

ON THE TABLES OF HOTELS, STRAWBERRIES RETAILED AT TWENTY-FIVE CENTS A DISH, OR ONE DOLLAR A QUART

30c to 40c; a neat little advance of 400 per cent.

Milk, price paid the farmer 4c; cost to the city man 8c; advance 100 per cent.

Pork, price paid the farmer 4c to 6c; cost to the city man 20c to 30c; advance 500 per cent.

Wood, $3 a cord; city price $8; cost of cutting $2; advance 100 per cent.

Strawberries, 10c a quart or 2c for a quarter dish; cost in city hotels 25c a dish or $1 a quart-an advance of 1,000 per cent. No wonder there were milliondollar eating-places and twelve-milliondollar hotels.

Eggs, country price 20c to 48c a dozen, or 2c to 4c an egg; cost in hotels 30c for two or 15c an egg; advance 400 to 800 per cent.

Apples, price paid grower $2 for a 10-dozen box, best grade, or 20c a dozen; cost to city man $1 to $1.50 a dozen; advance 500 to 700 per cent.

Oats, price paid farmer le a pound; cost of oatmeal 7c to 10c; advance 700 to 1,000 per cent. Cabbage, price paid farmer $1 per 50 cabbages, or 2c each; cost to city man 10c each; advance 500 per cent.

Tomatoes, $2 for 24-pound crate, or 8c per pound; cost in town 25c per pound; advance 300 per cent.

Beef, per steer $50 to $60 to the farmer; cost to city man figured out on the basis of prices paid in the Senate Restaurant $2,000; advance 3,000 per

cent.

Wheat, $1 per 60 pounds; breakfast cereal 15c a pound, or $9 per 60 pounds. Bread, 8c to 10c per pound; advance 800 to 2,000 per cent.

[graphic]
[graphic]

WHAT'S THE REASON FOR THIS? THE FARMER GOT THIRTY-FIVE CENTS A BUSHEL FOR POTATOES

Now our farmer-man had not gone far in his investigations before he became convinced of several things. Railway charges did not account for the difference between the price on the field and the price on the city market. The farmer alone created the wealth; but he didn't create it for himself; and he didn't create it for the consumer. He created it for the man who came between the producer and the consumer; in a word, the middleman.

A sort of colossus, or giant, that middleman appeared, as you thought about him, with one hand picking the farmer's pocket and the other hand digging into the city man's coat tails; with one foot out on the farmer's back and the other foot solidly planted on the consumer's stomach. But as our farmerman was not a Sir Galahad to knock his head against stone walls or a Don Quixote to tilt wind-mill theories, he accepted the gospel of things-as-theyare, and came to a still more pertinent and personal conclusion. The town was the place to make big money. The town was the place to come to; and so the farmer comes and comes and comes in spite of the cry "back-to-the-land"; comes with Dick Whittington's hopes in his heart to make good, and save money, and get in on this game that skins both going and coming; or know the reason why.

Before many weeks passed, he knows the reason why making good as a city man is still harder than making good as a country man. It is that matter of saving before you can get in on the game. Your farmer-man does not begrudge the railway its freight-even for dividends on watered stock. He does not begrudge the wholesaler and retailer their 20 or 40 per cent.; or the milk people their $8,000,000 surplus; or the pork packers their 500 per cent.; or the mill men their 1,000 per cent. He would make all that for himself, if he could. It is, that having been skinned off the land and forced to come to town, the high cost of living now skins him out of that margin he was going to save. The town salary that looked so big when he was out on the

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

FOR WHEAT. THE FARMFR GOT ONE DOLLAR FOR SIXTY POUNDS

farm has a surprising way of melting to nothing at the end of the week when bills are paid. He is no longer a producer. He is a consumer. He is the man who is paying 75 per cent. too much for those grapes that ought not to have cost more than 10 cents.

If those potatoes could have been sold direct from the farmer to the city man for 75 cents, it would have netted the farmer 100 per cent. profit and saved the city man 100 per cent. cost.

If that asparagus could have gone straight from the producer to the consumer at 15 cents, it would have netted the farmer 100 per cent. profit and saved the city man 100 per cent. cost.

If that milk could go direct from farm to table, at the present cost of producing milk, the farmer could make 66 per cent. profit and the city man save 33 per cent.

Pork at 12 cents to the farmer would give him 200 per cent. profit and save the city man 100 per cent. cost.

And so on down the list as supply and demand determined natural values, with the undue depression of the middleman's foot removed from the farmer's back and from the consumer's stomach.

If this farmer-man were a story-book hero, he would rise from his figures fired with a great purpose to bring producer and consumer together; but he isn't a story-book hero. He is just a plain ordinary person, one of the million and million who have gone from country to

town to find the same insidious and unseen hand picking the same old stupid pocket.

If you want to know whether his figures are based on fact or fiction, just consider a few well-known cases that are on record.

A farmer in New Jersey sold two hogs on the local meat market at the current prices for live squealers. Before going home, he asked the butcher to keep a couple of hams for him. A week later, he came around for the hams and asked for the balance of the money coming to him. The meat man presented him with a bill for $2.85 over and above the credit due for the live hogs. A like case is on record of a similar dicker in lamb. Why did the farmer sell at the low price of 4 to 6 cents, and buy at the high price of 25 cents? Because your middlemen are so leagued together, the prices are one cannot say "fixed"-but uniform; and the dealer breaking those uniform prices will have to look out for independent means to supply himself with meat.

There was a great scarcity of turkeys one Thanksgiving. Vermont farmers supplying the Boston market could not understand why in a scarce year prices ruled uniformly 12 cents a pound lower than beef or bacon. A written agreement in restraint of prices would, of course, have been unlawful; but the fact remained, not a commission agent offered prices above 12 cents. The Vermont farmers picked and dressed their turkeys.

[graphic]

AND BREAD SOLD AT EIGHT TO TEN CENTS A POUND.

i

[graphic]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic]

turkeys, amidships, telling the unknown

city buyer what price was paid in Vermont and asking him to write back from Boston and report what

BETWEEN THE FIELD AND THE TABLE, TOMATOES MANAGED TO ADVANCE THREE HUNDRED PER CENT.

price was charged there. The letters came back. Boston had paid 36 cents a pound for its turkey-an advance of 300 per cent.

Or go West! A rancher in Washington found it hard to make ends meet. He could not sell wood at any price. His beef brought only 4 cents, his pork 8 cents. He went in one winter to Spokane. Wood was selling at $8 a cord, beef at 30 cents, ham at 35 cents.

A Michigan fruit man sent a specially fine lot of grapes by water-freight to Detroit. He realized only 10 cents a basket. He traced up that fruit. It had sold for 20 cents to the city people. One of the big potato growers of Maine sent a car load to a Massachusetts city. The commission agent credited him at 35 cents a bushel. Deductions of freight and commission left only 19 cents a bushel. Those potatoes sold in Springfield at $1. Another Maine man sold his at 36 cents. They sold in Boston at $1.15. A North Carolina trucker sent a half barrel of beans to New York. Deducting express and commission, they netted him only 78 cents. They sold in New York at $4.

Secretary Wilson says the farmer gets but 55 per cent. of the consumer's price. Mr. Yoakum says the middleman gets 60 per cent. of the city man's price; and whichever is right, the fact remains that the farmer is not getting market value for what he sells, and the city man is not getting farm value for what he buys. The same unseen hand is guilty of the underpay on one side and the overcharge on the other. And the hand that picks

man has

not

added

one cent's value to the

farm produce.

He

has been the drone of the commercial

beehive.

We scorn mediaeval

legends of vampire monsters devastating whole country sides. No such old wives' tales for us, thank you! tales for us, thank you! Yet the high cost of living had reached such a point that in one city alone last winter-Brooklyn-more than three thousand children had to be taken out of school because parents could not afford to supply them. with breakfast; and these youngsters were put to work on the industrial tread mills; whether the mills of the gods, that grind so slow and so exceedingly sure, I don't know. They may have been.

We have nothing but the most scornful pity for the people of middle-age Europe, who permitted monopolists to grind them down to destitution. Italy, France, Spain-all passed through that era when country districts were literally depopulated by the advent of the tax collector. So extortionate were the demands on the tiller of the land, that the tiller literally deserted his land; and vast tracts of it fell into the hands of the very monopolists who had fattened on the farmer's poverty. Why did the people supinely permit their own ruin? They were in the majority against their oppressors a thousand to one; but the monopolists were organized, a unit, in a word, an army. In Rome, free citizens actually sold themselves into slavery to pay their debts. Does history repeat itself under protean form? Herbert Spencer declares industrial pressure may develop greater hardship and destitution than the slavery of feudalism. Calamity howlers are at a discount in optimistic America; but isn't it worth while looking at a few facts, showing a little nerve in the

« PreviousContinue »