FIFTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION 27 



Let us go back into the history of the past few months. 

 In October butter reached a price of fifty-two cents a pound 

 on the New York market, wholesale. Immediately the re- 

 tail price went up to sixty and sixty-five cents. It was a 

 good price for butter, it placed the dairyman on an equal 

 basis with other industries; his dollar had the same pur- 

 chasing power, but what took place? A great many con- 

 sumers said, "1 cannot afford to eat butter at sixty and 

 sixty-five cents a pound." They turned to a so-called sub- 

 stitute and ate that. By the price of butter going to fifty- 

 two cents a pound it stimulated production, so we produced 

 in the fall of 1925 a little more butter than we did in the 

 fall of 1924, not much but some. That little stimulation 

 brought more butter on the market; the consumer, saying 

 that sixty-five cents a pound was too much, quit eating it, 

 and the substitute came on the tables of the consumer. It 

 ran twenty-two million pounds more than it did in 1924. 

 Butter fell to around forty-two to forty-four cents a pound 

 in New York. 



Now the question comes before the dairy farmer, how 

 can we get the consumer to put that butter down his throat 

 at sixty-five cents a pound? We have no surplus of but- 

 ter today. I use butter because it is the stabilizing force 

 of all dairy products at fifty-five, but we do get a surplus 

 at sixty-five. Now if somebody will tell me how to get 

 that consumer to buy the butter at sixty-five in he same 

 quantities that he buys it at fifty-five, the dairyman's prob- 

 lem is solved, even though he keeps a lot of cows, only 

 producing three thousands pounds of milk a year. But we 

 find the dairy farmer going out and buying oleomargarine. 

 Shame on them ! There was never a cow so stupid as to 

 feed her calf oleomargarine. What right has the farmer 

 to ''cuss" about the price of dairy products when he him- 

 self says in substance not to use them, ''They have gone 

 too high in price for me to buy them." He hasn't any rea- 

 son for complaining, and yet you find them everywhere, 

 in all communities, buying a so-called substitute for butter. 



We have got to eat our own product. We must set 

 the good example before the consumer of the city. We 



