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Show How Bakery Dollar is Divided 70 MANUFACTURING LABOR INGREDIENTS 12.3 u administration costs 36.9$ Ali, T4rt j rioif TAXES I - " ilJJ ii profits V WSTR1BUTICM 15.3 jL gF PACKAGING, UTILITIES, 10.0 OVERHEAD AND OTHER COSTS I Includes talesmen's pay, truck operations, advertising;, etc. Rising costs of labor involved in the manufacture and distribution of bakery products, and not higher farm prices or greater profits, are largely responsible for increases In prices of bakery products in recent years, the Senate Committee on Forestry and Agriculture reported recently. Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana is chairman of the committee. A study of operating costs and profits in the baking industry conducted con-ducted by the committee revealed that baker profits after taxes in the first quarter of 1951 averaged 3.4. On a pound loaf of bread, this would be approximately one half cent The profit was the smallest reported in the past five years. "Today a pound of bakery products prod-ucts reflects 1.9 cents higher costs for ingredients and 2.5 cents higher costs for manufacturing labor and distribution than in 1945," the report re-port said. "The baking industry has maintained approximately the same profit ratio to total sales since 1946 three to five per cent. "Farm products now make up a smaller proportion of the retail cost of bakery products than at any time since the end of World War II. Distribution costs have increased in-creased sharply in recent years. Packaging materials costs increased in-creased more than one-third." Bakers are taking a steadily increasing in-creasing total supply of American farm products, according to the American Bakers Association. Latest Lat-est figures show that bakers are purchasing annually nearly 13 billion bil-lion pounds of flour which requires 300 million bushels of wheat; three hundred million pounds of eggs, nearly 300 million pounds of milk, more than a billion pounds of shortenings, two and a half billion pounds of sugar, and millions of pounds of fruit, berries and other farm products. |