132 MARKETING AND THE MIDDLEMAN 



trying its own ideas. Only a few of the typical State systems can 

 be given in any detail here. Among the first States to enter this 

 new field is Idaho. 



Idaho. The Idaho law creates the office of markets for the 

 State of Idaho, in charge of a director appointed by the Governor. 

 The law contemplates three chief activities: (1) a free State 

 employment bureau; (2) supervision of land promotion schemes, 

 particularly of misleading advertisements intended for home- 

 seekers; (3) a State market department. The Director in charge 

 of this work, W. C. Scholtz, confined his marketing activities at 

 first largely to community and state-wide problems, working along 

 broad and fundamental lines, leaving the individual work for later 

 consideration. This work may be illustrated by the following 

 two examples. 



Dairy Products. The Director found unsatisfactory conditions 

 prevailing in the dairy industry, despite the State's natural ad- 

 vantages in this field. He founded a butter and cheese scoring 

 organization, thereby leading to a standardized and higher quality 

 of produce. Uniform accounting systems were introduced and 

 likewise cooperative buying of supplies. Along with these activ- 

 ities went a vigorous campaign against the unscrupulous creamery 

 promoter. 



Potato Marketing . The 1915 potato crop was large, in most 

 sections of the country, and prices low. The Director found that 

 Idaho buyers were getting the Idaho crop at from 45 to 50 cents 

 per hundred. He circularized the growers and advised them to 

 hold for higher prices, for 80 cents at least, assuring them that 

 prices would soon rule higher. Within about two weeks the price 

 actually rose to about 80 cents a hundred. It should be stated at 

 this point that the actual forecasting of market prices is rarely 

 undertaken by State marketing officials as part of their official 

 duties. 



California's law, passed June 10, 1915, is the one which, without 

 doubt, has been enforced most vigorously of all of the State 

 marketing laws. And California, like New York, has had its 

 market bureau subjected to a torrent of very able and very con- 

 tinuous criticism. Nothing shows more clearly the strength, the 

 weakness, and the limitations of California's market work than 

 this battle of the critics. California's first law created a State 

 Commission Market, so called, under the "management and con- 

 trol of a governing body of one person," known as the State Market 

 Director, appointed by the Governor. The Governor appointed, 



