390 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



only from manufacture, but from the fact that they bought a hog, we 

 will say, at one price, and before they sold it it had gone up; that is, 

 they took the speculative rise. Much of their profits in the last two 

 years have been made in that way. After studying that over, I limited 

 their profits. I made a different rule for the big ones than for the little 

 ones, because I thought it was a good thing to do, and, generally speaking, 

 because I thought the big- ones ran less risk than the small ones. I 

 don't expect or ask anybody to agree with me in that profit I gave them; 

 but I gave them what I thought they could live on and expand on enough 

 to do a job that has to be done. I don't mean to get into a scrap with 

 them, but I do mean that they shall work for the nation in this war — 

 and they are going to. Let's not fool ourselves on the amount of money 

 that goes to the packer, for whatever his profits and whatever he gets 

 in his best years do not mean a very big slice of the cost of meats when 

 the consumer gets them. 



Then, in order to save those savings for the consumer, there is a 

 second step in the work, and that is one of the things I am trying to do 

 now' — to see that the retailer does not do too much in the way of prof- 

 iteering. The retailer, speaking generally, like the rest of us, has been 

 getting all he could. As meats went up, he held his retail stuff at pretty 

 high prices, and he did not lower them when meats went down. But the 

 retailer as a class is not getting so very rich. There may be too many 

 of them, or they may be doing the business badly. The service I can 

 do in regard to the retailers I think is this: No man or set of men can 

 go out and watch every retailer in the United States; but we control the 

 packers pretty thoroly, and if any locality working with the local food 

 administration tells me that a retailer is making an unfair profit, we can 

 blacklist him and forbid the packers to sell him goods. 



Now about your end of the game — the production end of it. I am not 

 a live stock man. Maybe they ought to have picked out one for my place; 

 maybe they ought to have picked out a packer to regulate the packers. 

 I am not sure that would have been wise. Anyway, this is what we did. 

 I called in some advice on the producing end of if, and among those 

 advisers two have spoken here today: Mr. Evvard and Mr. Cochel. An- 

 other man whom I consulted from the beginning was Mr. Wallace, of 

 this city. I don't want to give a false impression on that, either. I 

 don't mean that those men are one bit responsible for what I have done; 

 they have not been; I am merely saying that I have asked advice from 

 them. On the whole, it has been good advice, and some of it I have fol- 

 lowed, but not altogether, and I don't want to try to get back of those 

 men. I took advice from the packers also. 



The first thing I took up was the hog situation, because there was 

 pretty clearly and definitely a hog shortage. On that I made a state- 

 ment that some of you have seen, fixing a minimum that I thought I 

 could make the packers continue to pay on hogs, and fixing a corn ratio 

 that I think is all right. I don't say that I think I am the boy that can 

 stop the law of supply and demand; I am not; but I have centered in my 

 hand — and it is my hand because it happened to be the only one around 

 — the buying of the meats for the army and navy, and particularly for 



