Show A LESSON IN BUTTER the latest attempt of the government to peg the price of a great C commodity has gone the way of the efforts to maintain the price of wheat and cotton and has ended in failure according to many economists who study the dairying industry of the country uncle sam now has the biggest surplus us of butter on an record prices ilive have dropped and it is s said aid that athey jl ey may go even lower in the next few months unless something is done about it abat win will or can be done remains to be seen four million pigs were slaughtered by the government without in creasing ipg the price of hogs bogs to the farmer the price is lower now than when the pig program was put ut into effect perhaps the brain trust will have something new to offer in I 1 the way of getting rid of the surplus butter on december 1 it there were a hundred million oz pounds more in the country than on the same date in 1932 A great MY many M Y dairy farmers now lay fily the blame for the present condition on to the fact that tile the 1 government went into the butter business through a dairy marketing commission cOmmIs elOh at ata washington toe the government supplied funds to buy oo pounds of butter this was to be used later forturn for furnishing butter during the winter to the unemployed and to take tarese ta reee aay Y hoew in ta the trana action a butter processing tax was to be put into effect early in 1934 this was back in the early fall the effect was tremendous from the t h e psychological standpoint farmers encouraged in the belief that the government would f furnish urn them a high price for their butterfat commenced milking every available cow and sending every available pound of the product to market the manufacturers of cheese and evaporated milk suffering from a canned milk and cheese surplus got into the butter game it looked like an easy thing with uncle sam holding the bag prices did remain firm for awhile under the famous pegging system and then the bubble burst so much butter came on to the market from so many different so sources that the price shrivelled shrivel led down it went until by the middle of december it had reached the lowest figure in thirty years so far as the chicago market was concerned A number of so called smart speculators who bought butter early in the fall expecting to make a killing 1 now suffered a loss along with the farmers andl butter makers so much butter was manufactured under the stimulus of government price pegging that on december 1 1 according to official figures stocks of butter on hand were more than pounds comparing with a stock of less than pounds on december 1 1932 a gain of more than pounds and the price had gone down more than 50 per cent truly it is hard for anybody to beat the law of supply and demand butter manufacturers maintain that the employed uen cannot possibly consume the governments stock of butter pounds by the first of may the time when production will be on in full blast again but the government experts say that the unemployed can and will do it no doubt every effort will be made to see that they do eat it one kofl of the first big tasks of professor tugwell and his band warriors of would therefore seem to be to make the unemployed of the country butter conscious |