A 
Vol. LXXVIII. 
Published Weekly by Tho Rural Publishing Co., 
333 W. 30th St., New York. Price One Dollar a Year. 
NEW YORK, JURY 26, 1919. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, June 26, 1879, at the Post 
Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3. 1879. 
No. 4544. 
Facing, the American Meat Situation 
Can Farmers Handle the Business? 
TTIGH PRICES.—At the present moment a soine- 
X X what unusual and very interesting situation 
exists in the food 'business of the United States. 
City people are paying very high prices for their 
foods. The city press and retailers industriously 
circulate the glad news that it is all the farmer’s 
fault, that the farmer is getting wealthy so fast and 
they have to pay him such very high prices, and the 
Government even aiding and abetting by fixing an 
exorbitant price on the wheat. All this, they claim, 
is what brings about the very high food prices. 
Now. there are several things to consider in this en¬ 
tire matter. In the first place, the great statisticians 
tell us that inflation now equals about 100 per cent. 
In other words, a dollar now equals about 50 cents 
can users of meats, :md considerable hit of feeling 
against the farmers. 
THE RETAILER'S SHARE.— The R. N.-Y. has 
lor years persistently tried to get fairer prices for 
our products. Personally I think if all the farm 
papers would devote one-third of their energy and 
space to giving advice how to grow maximum crops, 
and two-thirds of their energy and space to showing 
us how to get fairer prices, the whole country would 
he better off. At the present time beef is retailing, 
even in villages, at 45 cents a pound for round steak. 
The producer is receiving for such meat probably not 
over 12 cents, and the retail price should not be more 
than 35 cents at the outside, and if the retail price 
were reduced anything like in proportion to what 
man can handle such a matter. It must he done by 
an organization. An organization of the beef pro¬ 
ducers of the nation, if it included only one-half of 
them, and if the organization collected say 25 cents 
apiece, would give it working capital sufficient to 
do all the necessary advertising and a great many 
things besides. 
RE AC IIIXG THE CONSUMER.—The second rem¬ 
edy is for the farmers themselves to buck up suffi¬ 
ciently to see at least a large proportion of their 
products carried through *to the consumer. I have 
thought a good deal along this line, and I have 
thought that milk and its products and meat lend 
themselves more easily to this procedure than most 
of our other farm crops or produce. In order to 
The Slicep on the Farm of W. IF. Remolds, Utica. Ohio. Fig. 331 
as compared with say the year 1912. Consequently, 
if we were getting $1 a bushel in 1912 for our wheat, 
we should certainly have $2 now. 
VALUES IN CATTLE.—What > am particularly 
interested in myself, however, is meat, and a decid¬ 
edly interesting situation exists in the meat trade. 
One year ago best fat cattle were worth, if 1 re¬ 
member right, about $1S in Chicago. Last week, 
that is the first week in June, the top in Chicago 
was practically 10 cents. At one time, a few months 
ago, best cattle were a little over 20 dents' in Chi¬ 
cago. When this price was reached, the retailers 
marked their selling prices up in proportion. This' 
was all right, hut since the decline they have not 
reduced their selling price at all, and the result is a 
somewhat curtailed purchase on the part of Arneri- 
the farmer’s production has been, there would cer¬ 
tainly he an increased consumption which would 
again benefit the farmer. Now, there is no use of 
complaining and quarreling about things which are 
not right unless we apply a remedy. There are two 
or three very good remedies for this situation, and 
they are so simple and easily applied that it should 
not require any effort whatever. . It does require an 
effort simply because farmers are too conservative. 
AN ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN.—One of these 
remedies would he to raise sufficient funds from the 
farmers themselves to advertise just what is going 
on. Swift & Co. are advertising every day what a 
Swift dollar, looks like. Similar advertising on the 
.part of the farmers would do us as much good 
Swift’s advertising does him. Obviously, no 
bring about these changes, you would have to go 
about matters iu a businesslike way. My own State 
is establishing a Farm Bureau, and it does not seem 
to me that they are starting out on the right footing,, 
because they have no capital to speak of. Your 
New York Grange Exchange, which starts out as a 
corporation with considerable cash, seems to me to 
be the right principle. You cannot do things with- 1 
out money, but there are so rnauy of us farmers that 
if we would ever start on a proposition and join 
these leagues as we should, it would take a very 
small amount from each one of us to give the league 
sufficient working capital to do almost anything. 
A CANDID POLICY.—Finally. I think that such 
a movement should come .out squarely in the begiu- 
oue ning and disarm the enmity of city people by saying 
as 
