610 lO^rS: DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



going up; how long will it hold there; when will it start down; how fast 

 will it descend, and with 'what velocity will it strike the bottom? 



Prices Not Reduced to Consumer. 



Some of the head men at Washington have said that this thing had 

 to come, it was inevitable, and there wasn't any help for it; that there is 

 no use giving the farmers assistance in tiding this period over because 

 it will increase the cost of food to the consumer, and they don't want to 

 do anything to bring that about. My reply is that if the prices of food- 

 stuffs have been materially decreased to the consumer, we haven't yet 

 been able to find it out. 



When I was home a few weeks ago — and I do get home occasionally — 

 I went to the local butcher to get a pound of bacon, and he said: "What 

 kind do you want?" and I said, "I want some bacon I can eat; I don't 

 want any sow-belly painted with smoke," and he showed me a pound of 

 bacon, best grade, of course, and charged me 65 cents for it. I said: 

 "Say, isn't that pretty steep?" He said: "I can't make a profit on less." 

 I said: "What do the packers charge you for this stamp?" He said: "I 

 pay the packers 60 cents a pound for that bacon, and if I can't get 5 cents 

 a pound for handling it, I will have to go out of business." I replied: "If 

 that is your story, that's all right; I'll take that for granted." I don't 

 believe he was lying to me, but somebody has lied somewhere along the 

 line of this propaganda. The packer says he hasn't made any money on 

 this proposition; the butcher says he is not making any; but I want to 

 tell you that the feeders in the state of Iowa well know they have lost 

 money and somebody has got it. (Laughter.) Now, the question is, who 

 got it? 



I know of men during the war who sold their corn and got a fairly 

 good price for it, and yet it was produced by high-priced labor, and when 

 you figure it all out they didn't get a whole lot of money. Men have 

 said to me: "The farmers of Iowa had a good thing for the past three 

 j^ears, and it was up to them to lay by something for this reconstruction 

 period, and if they didn't do it, it is up to them." Let's see about that. 

 If you sold your corn for $1.75 a bushel, which was the price if you were 

 lucky and got in on the top shelf, who did you sell it to? The chances 

 are you sold it to your neighbor, who was feeding cattle and hogs, and he 

 fed that out, and he was lucky if he got 75 cents a bushel out of it. 



Farmer Has Not Had Fair Show. 



I'll tell you what the farmers did when they got into this war — they 

 naturally got enthusiastic and overdid the thing; but the farmers of Iowa 

 today have come down to earth, they have hunted up the old milk stool, 

 gone out to the old brindle cow, and are today milking that old cow and 

 separating the milk and watching for that cream check; they have turned 

 their attention to Biddy, and they are watching the old hens, and they 

 are culling out the non-layers and getting their flocks down to a scientific 

 basis so that their hens will pay their way, and they are depending on 

 the cream check and the egg basket to bring them in a living, and they 

 are going back to the 16-hour schedule they used to follow to bring them 

 back again. And we will have to do this until we get these problems 



