OILS WE EAT 



backing that might be 'mustered, there can be added a 

 million and a half cotton growers and now another 

 million soybean and peanut farmers, the producers of 

 margarine's raw materials. Margarine now has the most 

 formidable array of friends that it has ever presented. 



A potential market for over two billion pounds of 

 edible fatty oils is at stake. There is every prospect of 

 a surplus crop of soybeans and peanuts, and the Gov- 

 ernment is committed by law to support the price of 

 both oils at ninety per cent of parity for two years 

 after the war: the intra-agricultural battle of the cen- 

 turyfatty oils vs. butterfat is staged to start. 



If the Government follows the instructions of the 

 Stengall amendment and does support the prices of soy- 

 beans and peanuts at anything like wartime levels dur- 

 ing the next two years, then the Southern cotton grower 

 may find himself sitting pretty under a price umbrella 

 held by Uncle Samuel over the cottonseed's competitors. 

 This will be a novel position. He will be enjoying the 

 identical back-handed benefits under which his own 

 foreign competitors have won away world markets 

 from our artificially high-priced American cotton. The 

 farce of legally controlled prices thus often cracks some 

 pretty grisly jokes. In the case of the fatty oils it is ex- 

 ceedingly apt to turn into a thundering tragedy. 



During the war American farmers almost doubled 

 the output of that vital munition, the edible oils. In 

 these days economic prophecy is a notably dangerous 



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