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Show THE PARMER AND THE SPUDS. ' A few years ago an : Alabama farmer had 1,2 00 bushels of sweet potatoes to sell, and a southern commission house offered him half a cent a pound for them. This was the equivalent of the price offered per bushel. At the time this offer was made sweet potatoes of an inferior in-ferior grade were selling in the stores in northern states at five and six cents a pound. Investigation, showed that there was not one person or one firm that was making an unconscionable profit out of the difference between the consumer's and the producer's prices. But there were altogether too many people getting some profit out of each potato. There were too many middlemen. mid-dlemen. The cost of transportation was, naturally, part of the leakage. Railroads were privately owned then and freight rates were lower than they are now, but this was not enough to bring ithe cost f the consumer down to the proper figure. Some kind of organization was needed need-ed to eliminate a noimber of the leakages, leak-ages, amd to get the product moved to the consumer by a more direct route in short, to remove some of the middlemen. It is still more necessary now. The' Pyramid is not ready with the solution. If it was, the editor would set up today as the greatest economic genius of all time. He would write the name of our beloved town on the map of tile world in letters big e-nough e-nough to read from the planet Mars. Getting down to the root of things, it seems logical that if a mam, grows a vegetable in Alabama, and a man in Michigan eats it, that at least four people should be paid something the man who grew it, the man who transported it, the commission man who distributed it, and the retailer re-tailer who sold it to the cons imer. There is no excuse for other middlemen, middle-men, and this limited number of handlers is mot sufficient to explain the great depravity between the orice recclived by the grower and that paid by the consumer It is evident that too many; people who don't grow, or transport, or even retail foodstuffs have a voice in arguing what the price is to be and get paid part of that price i'rr arguing about it. This sort of thing is 'unwarranted and needs changing, folks. ' But how are we ijoing to do it? Will some local citizen ?omo to the front with the :og:cal solution, and make himself famous and the benefactor of mankind. |
