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Editorial Page of the American 
American Agriculturist, July 19, 1924 
Agriculturist 
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VOL. 114 July 19, 1924 No. 3 
The Milk Situation 
O UR news columns last week carried an ac¬ 
count of the meeting of the Committee of 
Fifteen at Utica on June 30th when League mem¬ 
bers withdrew because a majority of the com¬ 
mittee persisted on passing a resolution recom¬ 
mending an increase in milk prices. Unless the 
League can be induced to reconsider its action, 
this committee can accomplish little. 
Statements have been made that from the 
start there was no sincere purpose back of the 
organization of this committee and that its real 
purpose was to put somebody or some organiza¬ 
tion in a hole. We do not believe that such state¬ 
ments are true. In our opinion, all parties were to 
blame for the failure of the milk organizations and 
dairymen in this territory to get together and 
stop the foolish price war; and we believe further 
that there was a lamentable lack of leadership 
on nearly everybody’s part to make the committee 
at least a partial success. After the first meeting, 
it seemed to us, as an impartial observer, that 
there was a very evident tendency by nearly 
everybody to advance the interests of their par¬ 
ticular organization and groups rather than to 
think and work constructively for a plan that 
would relieve the man back on the farm who does 
the milking. 
Make no mistake in the attitude of American 
Agriculturist toward farm organization. We 
believe in it thoroughly. Cooperation is the only 
way by which farmers can help themselves, but 
organization must always be the means to an 
end, and never the end itself. The organization 
exists for the farmer, and not the farmer for the 
organization. 
No one who attended the meeting of fifty or 
sixty representative men at Utica when the Com¬ 
mittee of Fifteen was formed can truthfully say 
that there was not an enthusiastic and sincere 
desire very evident to really stop the quarreling 
and get together. At that meeting, we emphasized 
several times in different talks the need of going 
slowly. “Learn to creep before you walk,” we 
said. We did not think that the committee was 
ready to talk price, neither then nor at later 
meetings. Before price talk there must be a con¬ 
structive plan based upon surveys which will 
give the real facts about surplus and other prob¬ 
lems in the territory. The League and some others 
were absolutely right when they insisted upon this. 
but it was the determination on the part of most 
of the committee to rush through a recommended 
price. This proved to be a mistake just as we said 
it would be. If merely “resoluting” a price was 
all there was to it, we would all be rich. 
But on the other hand, we do not think that 
the host excellent gentlemen from the League on 
the Committee of Fifteen had proper backing from 
their organization, nor did the League act with 
enough forbearance and enough cooperation. 
What good can be gained to anybody by a speech 
such as that delivered by Mr. Miller at the annual 
meeting of the League at Utica when the Com¬ 
mittee of Fifteen was condemned and some of 
the other milk organizations -were singled out for 
attack? If we are ever to get anywhere in this 
business of cooperation, we must stop accusing 
the other fellow of bad faith. Maybe the other 
milk organizations are small; maybe some of them 
do not amount to much; maybe a lot of folks do 
not like the way some of them do business; but the 
fact remains that they are here on the job doing 
at least enough business to produce satisfactory 
returns to their members and to bring real com¬ 
petition into the markets, and as such they must 
be recognized and cooperated with. However 
much you may disagree with them and their 
principles of operation, they constitute an exist¬ 
ing condition and not a theory. They can not 
be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Of course 
the job is hard; but this is all the more reason why 
it must be done. 
And moreover, while the League is the largest 
milk organization, it is by far in the minority 
when the number of its members are compared 
with the whole number of milk producers in the 
territory. This is another grave reason why the 
League for its own good should reach out the 
hand of friendliness to the non-member so that 
while they may not be able to work together in the 
same organization, there can at least be some co¬ 
operation instead of constant fighting which re¬ 
sults in benefit to no one except the dealer. 
The constantly reiterated statement that the 
committee should not fix prices because it would 
be illegal is in our opinion a mighty poor excuse 
for withdrawal from the committee. As we have 
stated, the attempt to recommend prices was a 
mistake, not, however, because of illegality, but 
because there was no practical plan worked out 
first to obtain the prices after they were recom¬ 
mended. 
American Agriculturist is the first to recom¬ 
mend obedience to the law, but we confess w r e are 
a little tired of this illegal argument stuff advanced 
by some one every time farmers try to do anything. 
There are upwards of three hundred different milk 
dealers in New York City alone. Yet the retail 
bottle price of milk in New York City is always the 
same no matter what dealer you buy it from. They 
do not fix prices, oh no! Yet we have not heard 
of any of them going to jail. Dozens of similar 
examples of price fixing can be pointed out in 
almost every industry, except farming. Thb 
League farmers themselves got together in 1910 
and fixed prices. Then they stood together, 
fought the dealers to a finish and won. To-day 
milk prices are as bad, or nearly as bad, as they 
w T ere in 1916. In reality, they are much worse 
because the buying power of the dollar is much 
less. Yet the only effort to get together to work 
out better conditions went up in smoke through 
the failure of farm-leaders—not the farmers them¬ 
selves, mind you—to cooperate. 
As a constructive suggestion, we believe this 
committee or a similar one should be continued. 
Perhaps the basis of representation can be changed 
to make it more satisfactory to representative 
conference board. We believe that the League 
representatives should come back on to the 
committee. On the other hand, all talk and 
resolutions on price fixing should be discontinued 
at least until such time as a proper economic 
basis or plan for pricing can be determined. 
Then the committee should make its first w ork 
determination of the actual situation in this terri¬ 
tory and secure and publish information regard¬ 
ing the conditions under which milk is being 
produced, manufactured and marketed and the 
value of milk and its products throughout the 
country so that the producer can negotiate on 
even terms with the organized buyers of his prod- 
ucts. Just this information alone will do mucli 
toward equalizing price. An actual study should 
be made of the surplus problem and if possible 
an equitable plan found for handling it, not fro® 
the standpoint of one organization, but from that 
of all the dairymen in the territory. After this is 
done, the committee will perhaps be ready to 
determine some proper basis for pricing milk and 
secure its uniform adoption. 
The Nation Sympathizes 
A FEW days ago an old New England farmer 
went sadly down the road to the little coun¬ 
try cemetery on the hillside at Plymouth, Ver¬ 
mont, and made the arrangements for the burial 
of his sixteen-year-old grandson, Calvin Coolidge, 
Jr., the son of the President of the United States. 
As the father of a sixteen-year-old boy, we can 
realize, as every other father and mother in the 
land can imagine, what the old man and what 
President and Mrs. Coolidge were suffering as they 
went through the ordeal of burying their boy. 
We can perhaps imagine something, too, of the 
President’s thoughts as he stood by his son’s 
grave and looked through tear-dimmed eyes off 
across the familiar Vermont hills of his ow r n boy¬ 
hood. From those hills he had gone forth to hold 
in the course of time the most powerful position 
in the world,. But his thoughts, we believe, w'ere 
not of the power of that exalted place. His 
thoughts were instead on what every good man 
in public position comes sooner or later to know T , 
that is, how insignificant, how futile, are the affairs 
of men, even their mightiest affairs, beside the 
grim inevitableness of time, of Nature’s inexor¬ 
able law r s, and of Death* that supreme arbiter of 
human destinies. 
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave. 
Awaits alike the inevitable hour: 
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” 
How well Lincoln knew that. His favorite poem 
was: 
“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? 
Like a swift-fleeing meteor, a fast flying cloud, 
A flash of lightning, a break of the wave. 
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.” 
It must be a comfort to President and Mrs. 
Coolidge in their grievous affliction to know' that 
they have the heartfelt sympathy of a hundred 
million people, irrespective of politics, of race, or 
of creed. And it should be comforting to them 
also to know that waiting somewdiere in the Un¬ 
known Land to welcome their boy is Lincoln, that 
greatest of Americans, w ho also buried a son from 
the White House, and w'ho understood so well how 
hard it is to be happy in places of great responsi¬ 
bility. 
For Barn Yard Golfers 
R EAD the rules, printed on the next page, for 
the County and State horseshoe pitching 
contest and then practice up and let your farm 
bureau man know that you are getting ready to 
throw a ringer every shot. 
Eastman’s Chestnuts 
U P in the Northwest a very keen rivalry exists 
between the twin cities of Minneapolis and 
St. Paul. Here is one that we heard somewhere 
which expresses this competition in terms of the 
farm. 
A fellow from St. Paul came over to Minneapolis 
one day just to look around and find fault. He 
approached a fruit stand, picked up a large water¬ 
melon and asked with a sneer: 
“ Is this the largest apple you have in St. Paul ? ”( 
“Hey!” belknved the owner of the fruit 
“PUT THAT GRAPE DOWN!” 
