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Show ; . V- 0? & G50aG) Gl&QGMsQ The deeply religious Portuguese Portu-guese on certain festival days carry statues of their various patron saints in processions. This custom may have given rise to the undoubtedly unfounded un-founded rumor they will canonize can-onize U.S. Labor Secretary WIHard Wlrtz and carry through their tomato fields a statue of St. Willie, Patron of Portuguese Paste. But be- S cause Wirtz rl lfi denied labor m $mwm to Calif orni- ff ;ifOf a's huge to-mato to-mato indus- mA try, Portugal W Mm now sells to- yi " mato paste In the U.S. In Wm huge volume. I O C. W. Harder Tomato paste, a concentrated concentrat-ed puree, is a most important product. Not only used by many housewives, it Is in huge demand from food processors. . But last season, due to Wirtz's interference, the California Cali-fornia tomato acreage went down from 143,000 to 116,000, Production dropped from almost al-most 3-110 million tons to about 2V& million tons, according accord-ing to the Canners League of California; would have dropped drop-ped further except for most favorable weather. American food processors were forced 'to look for other supplies of paste. Portugal is sharing in this bonanza. In all 12 months of 1964 paste imports from Portugal were less than 2 million pounds. In the first six months of the 1965 crop season, sea-son, the imports exceeded 2!4 million pounds, with six months left to go. Thus, Portugal, alone, may fg) Xutlonal Filtration i.t InJrnt-mlfnt ftmlnms I triple sales of tomatoes for dollars dol-lars further aggravating precarious pre-carious U.S. balance of trade situation. The above dwarfs fact California Cal-ifornia farmers also lost over a million dollars from the implanted im-planted acreage. But it is doubtful the American Amer-ican housewife will applaud the sanctity of Wirtz, for the price of tomato paste, which has advanced from $8 per case in 1964 to $9.75 currently will increase the price of many processed pro-cessed foods. Thus Wirtz has perhaps done more to increase the cost of living than the aluminum producers would have done. Next year's prospects also seem good for the Portuguese, and less than good or the housewife. Building is being rushed on tomato picking machines ma-chines with 600 expected In operation next season, or about twice the number used In the 1965 season. The machines apparently ap-parently can handle 80 to 100 acres per season, so prospects are that plantings will be held down to the capacity of the available machines. The small er planter, unable to afford a machine, will be forced out. So, what was gained. Cost of living goes up, more dollars go overseas, American farm ers take a loss, cannery workers work-ers lose income, more small farmers are forced out. All this for what purpose. Merely to hold jobs open for people, who when the need for them was critical, refused to take the jobs. And now, through automation, auto-mation, opportunities for these jobs themselves disappear. Could this possibly be the way to build a great society? |