ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV. 14JJ 



margin between what the producer receives and what the consumer 

 pays. 



I have sonic grain down here in Iowa county, where I have my 

 farms rented. I sold my oats down there at 29 cents; last week I 

 was offered only 27 cents. I pay 45 cents a bushel in Des Moines 

 xor oats for my chickens, and mine are better than the oats I get 

 here. 



How can we avoid that great margin between the producer and 

 the consumer? I agree with Mr. Ryan in regard to this meat pro- 

 duction, that the bacon and hams that Armour and Swift and 

 Cudahy make are no comparison to the kind we used to have on 

 the farms when we made them ourselves. We salted the meat and 

 smoked it in a little house. It was not dipped; it wasn't hard and 

 dry like the meat we get now. You can't get a pound of bacon 

 on the market today, no matter what you pay for it, that equals 

 what we made in Iowa forty years ago. You can't get a piece of 

 ham equal to what we smoked in the little old smokehouse with 

 corncobs and hickory. But can each man now put up a little 

 smokehouse and slaughter his hogs and go around peddling his 

 own pork? You know we couldn't do it. If we should go into 

 town and offer our own home-killed and home-cured products, the 

 people who make such a howl about high prices would want to buy 

 them for nothing. I remember when I was a boy selling eggs and 

 butter around at the houses. I have sold lots of butter at six cents 

 and eggs at three cents. The people would say, "Oh, I can buy 

 that at the store for less money." The question is to get the con- 

 sumers to believe that we are furnishing a better article than they 

 could buy from the large packing houses. We must find a market 

 for our own product after we have it ready. 



The convention thereupon adjourned. 



