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Show EGG STORAGE, AN OGDEN I INDUSTRY WDICD DAS AIDED I FARMERS OF THIS DISTRICT! Editor I Standard: According to your valuable paper, the egg storage agitation seems to have reached our state and city, with respects of other food products that are produced on the farm being included in the list, I am on the producers' end of the business and also have had much to do with the Ogden Egg 'company and especially with the manager. Hyrum Hokanson. In the first place, I would like to. know if we want to go back to twenty-five or fifty years ago when I, as a young man, began the dairy and poultry business by taking jn a few pounds of butter and a dozen or so eggs every Saturday and leaving them at a grocery store to be paid for in trade? My butter and eggs were all produced at the same time as my neighbors and the result was that when prices were high, we had none. And as all were produced in the early spring and summer months, the result re-sult was that nobody made any money out of cows or chickens, there being as many grades of butter as there were of the many different farmers who produced it. Many of our merchants can tell how they hated to see the farmer come in with his butter and eggs, for they wanted his trade, but to get it they had to take his produce. Many tons of his butter was thrown into a barrel to "be melted up and disposed of as best the merchant could and usually with great loss. The eggs went the same way. We then had none of those cold storage plants that are now painted so black by the general unthinking un-thinking public. I say by the "unthinking "un-thinking part" of the public, as I am pleased to say that the more up-to-date part of the public appreciate them. Just look at the change today, and what has brought it about! The creamery takes the cream and the egg storage plant the eggs. Pay is spot cash to the producer, no matter the amount or condition of the market. Shall we say the purchaser cannot hold them until the time comes when there is a shortage so he can put them on the market? Can we say that he must only charge a certain fixed price for them, while the time will come at times as it always does that he must sell below the price nc paid for them? When he loses will we make up his loss for being such a good fellow? Or will we allow him to bl only a commission man and take aj the risks ourselves? No! We will never produce creafl and eggs and take all the risk, whiH the sugar company "is offering us per ton for beets, setting the priH a year ahead for a sure crop thdH withstands all adverse conditions arH still makes good. Did the public cvH stop to think just how contrary cH old hen is, any way? She persisjH In laying those eggs or a big majoriH of them right in the nice warm weatjH er when they are so. cheap. Were not so, we would have no fight on ouH hands with the cold -storage peopllB I will give you exact figures copiel from our records as to just how manjM eggs to expect from 1000 hens per dajfi!! each month of the year: January, 172; February. 248: Marches: March-es: April, 616; May, 560; June 488' July, 400; August, 365; September, 286; October, 180; November, 80; December, De-cember, 80. You can see by the records that unless un-less we have come way to equalize the markets there will be times when we cannot use the eggs, and other times when the poor agitators "will not get even a taste of an egg. And, as the storage eggs are in competition with the few fresh eggs that come during the winter months, the price of fresh eggs is hold down. Another point of more importance still is the fact that the farmer, with his ready cash market, keeps cows by the score and the thousand, where before he kept but a few. In our own case, we keep from -ififty to seventy Jersey cows and have increased our poultry, with the advice and encouragement encour-agement of Hyrum Hokanson, to about 4000 laying hops. I wish positively to state that, without the Ogden Egg company, we would not have one-half that many hens today. Let us investigate the whole matter before killing off any one of our valu able plants that we have in Ogden, or to help a thoughtless public to boycott boy-cott one thing and kill it today and. maybe tomorrow kill off your business. busi-ness. If eggs are too high to eat, do not eat them, but let the other fellow do so if he wishes, for If you all eat some other thing, it, too, will become scarce and high. Signed) JOSEPH BARKER. |