The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 25, 1918, Page 8

buy from the farmer to sell to the packers are “useless middlemen” and ought to be put out of business. He said all small operators are only “pifflers” any way and that the real men of the beef business are the “big fellows”. The testimony showed how Swift & Co.’s stock- yards at South St. Paul tried to get all other small independent packers into the yards, where all the stock they slaughtered would have to pay toll to the beef trust railroad going in and all ‘the bacon, hams and dressed beef, etc., shipped out would do the same. Swift & Co. men told how they had tried to get the independent McMillan Packing com- pany in St. Paul to abandon its plant and go into the yards. They offered McMillan $50,000 for his old plant, which was worth $450,000, and promise to let him have just enough of the : hogs received to keep up his present capacity. ; No “citizens’ committee” offered to help McMillan enlarge his plant, and no one offered him a bonus, although they gladly paid a bonus of $1,000,000 to Armour to help him tighten the beef trust collar on the Northwest. In addition to this, they had the nerve to ask McMillan to subscribe to this bonus to help his competitors crush him out. 'RETAIL MEAT DEALERS TELL CONSUMERS' SIDE Some retail meat dealers added to the story of avarice by which the beef trust hungrily tried to lap up for it- self the last drop of profits in the meat business. The distributing houses refuse to sell hams and bacon unless wrapped in heavy paper, and they charge for the paper at the price of these costly products. One retailer said he could sell smoked meats for 214 cents a pound less if he could buy them without the useless paper. A sheet of this paper was put in the ex- hibits. When spread out by Heney and held up it looked like a. country school map of the world. Sold -at bacon rates it added 105-8 cents to the wholesale cost of a 6-pound strip of bacon. This paper, which costs, witnesses said, not over six cents per pound is sold at the rate of 42 cents. Dealers said there is no good reason for wrapping shoulders, butts, and hams packed in barrels, but that they could not buy them any other way, and after paying these fancy prices had to pay to have the rubbish hauled away and burned as garbage. Other dealers' told of being forced to buy fish adorned with a coating of ice, and with chunks of ice stuffed in- side them, and how when they pro- tested, they were solemnly told by the fish company’s representative that the fish was greatly improved in quality if a half pound coating of ice went along with it. One -dealer summed up the profiteering in fish this way: . “People are trying to be patriotic and save meat as the food administration has asked, but as soon as this was discovered the price of fish was raised 25 per cent. Pike that was selling for two or three years back at eight cents a pound is now selling at 16 to 17.” . Dealers said that their profits have steadily de- creased, so that while they are now being forced by the meat trust and the big fisheries companies that have no competition, to pay much higher prices, they have been unable to raise retail prices a Iike percentage. ) A number of retail dealers told how the different distributing houses : study- their market and. send just enough meat so that all of them together -never overstock it. consulting and deciding upon the amount each would send, but all the dealers were a upit in testi- fying that they had never known an overstocked market. . Prices of these different “competing” firms are also strangely similar, and no one will cut prices.. Several dealers declared for municipal They couldn’t do this without. S S Gl S R N S O AN . A This is another article in the Leader’s series concerning the exposures of packing trust methods, brought out during the Federal Trade commission investigation. The Federal Trade commission, threatened as it was by the machinations of big business and its politicians in and out of office, deserves much credit for conducting this investigation in a fearless manner. Facts were obtained which will open the eyes of the public. Nothing that has happened recently has shown in : a more striking way how big business oppresses alike both producers and consumers. or government owned slaughter houses where farm- ers could bring their livestock and have' them slaughtered and sell direct to dealers, or where the dealers who had bought their livestock on the hoof could have this done at a nominal charge. ONLY “COMPETITION” IS BETWEEN SUBORDINATES An attempt on behalf of the beef trust to make it appenr that slight variations of a fraction of a cent per pound in some line occasionally is due to “competition,” was exposed by the testimony of dealers. Occasionally, they said, one of the big packers’ distributing houses will offer pork loins at one-half cent less than another. This is because the particular local manager finds his stock did not TAKE THE BLINDS OFF! —Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris Will congress bow to the farmers’ demand and pass the Baer bill providing for a loan direct to farmers by the federal government, to keep farmers out of the hands of the ravenous money lenders and to help produce big crops to win the war? It remains to be seen. The farmers are waiting! go as quickly as he had hoped, and he cuts the price a little so as to clean up before his next -ship- ment arrives. There is a kind of job-holder’s en- thusiasm to hold onto his job that will cause a local manager to do this, rather than to risk a reprimand from headquarters for having ordered wrong, but the dealers said they had never seen any evidence of “competition” between the head- quarters, 4 Another demonstration of “big five” | ‘ontrol was testified to by letters that Heney reaa into the record, dealing with the Hormel Packing c¢.‘mpany’s / plant at Austin, Minn.,, and also by Mr. Hormel himself. Hormel is an “independent,” but he is not so independent but that he tried to shield Wil- son & Co.. (one of the big five), whp have a plant ..at .Albert. Lea.”: Hormel has been a buyer .of hogs for years and has many friends among the farmers. When Wilson & Co. first began business, he tried to keep his hog trade by paying the freight him- self from Wilson- territory, then later by paying a little higher price than he had been paying. He was getting the cream of the livestock and Wil- .son decided to show him the value of “harmony.” They put a buyer in Hormel’s “best hog territory,” 5 PAGE EIGHT T A R T I e ‘ sible. 4vho bought hogs and shipped them to C.;Acago in large quantities (much greater than Wilson & Co. could use at their Albert Lea plant) and a tell-tale letter in connection with this exposed the whole deal. The letter was from Wilson & Co.’s Chicago of- fice to its Albert Lea manager, and says in part: “We understand this is one of the very best hog territories, and undoubtedly Austin are holding their prices there so as to protect the average they are paying in nearby territory. I believe by a strong action of this kind that they would realize the necessity of harmony.” 3 ’ Hormel said two weeks of this convinced him that “harmony” was better than trying to buck the beef trust, and now they have divided the territory. The reason Hormel tried to avoid testimony dam- aging to the beef trust was brought out forcibly. One of the “big five” is now dickering with him to buy out his plant. Hormel asked to be relieved from telling publicly which one this is, but came down off the stand and whispered the name to Mr. Heney. SEES VICTORY SURE : Belgrade, Mont. Editor Nonpartisan Leader: I have been a reader of your—or our—good paper for several months. I see the Anaconda Standard and Butte Miner, as well as our little Daily Chronicle, copying articles {bout the League. All these things are not sur- prising at all. If the League was trif- ling they wouldn’t say anything, but would let the League die a mnatural death. But as it is the most powerful and far-reaching organization the farm- " ers have ever entered into they see that something must be done quick. I am a farmer and stock raiser and have tried other organizations to help the farmers’ condition, but in almost - all of them that object has never been attained. Townley has surely heard the cry of the farmers and has sounded the keynote of relief, and won't you farmers who have not yet come in, join the good cause and stick? Vie- tory will be ours as sure as the grave, A. T. HAMILTON. | SAYS EDITOR LOST OUT - . Roswell, 8. D, Editor Nonpartisan Leader: q I am sure it will take more than all _the hot air that the editor of the Demo- crat can turn loose to kill a bunch of Nonpartisan league members. He claims that he lost eight subscribers by knocking the League, and that he gained 21 new ones, but fi is well known that he lost 150 last fall and you see that hurts. I think he will find it a pretty big job to kill the League. ’ JOSEPH WAGNER. OKLAHOMA IN LINE : - ! Oklahoma City, Okia. Fellow Farmers of Kiowa county, Okla.: After careful and sufficient investigation of the National Nonpartisan league, its purposes and ae- complishments in North Dakota lead us to think that the farmers of the state of Oklahoma should vigor- ously set about organizing the state along the same lines, and for the same purposes. And we urge that every farmer assist in.this move in every way pos- J. B. TOSH. WM. M. WEBSTER. - L. D. WINNE. . THEY ALL JOIN : - .. Bison—State Organizer Lewis of the Nonparti- san league was in town recently and gave a very interesting address at the hall in behalf of the League. Following Mr. Lewis’ address practically - every man present who was not already a member joined the organization. Fifty new members were taken in at this meeting. The membership in this community has already passed the 400 mark.— ABERDEEN. (8. D.) AMERICAN, 7 e