The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, October 14, 1918, Page 12

If there is anything you don’t understand about the food, fuel, wheat, labor, draft or other or- B. Gilbert, ders, write to A. Postoffice Box 575, St. Paul, Minn, THE HOG PRICES St. Paul, Neb. N REGARD to the $15.50 hog price set on the Omaha market, do you think that is enough money? Do you think the League can do the farmers of Nebraska any good in. regard to getting a better price this season? Bacon sells for 60 cents a pound. If it . takes 46 cents a pound to prepare” the meat, what is it worth to produce it? I think it is a more costly job to raise the pork than to put it on the market. How much, for instance, would the packers make in raising hogs at $15.507 If the price of hogs is not set higher in a few days, I shall have to send mine in Omaha, as I do not think I can afford to feed them $2 corn. - JAMES GRANT. Mr. Grant here asks questions that every hog raiser practically is asking. In other lines of production than farming we have adopted the princi- ple that producers should receive cost plus a reasonable profit, but with farmers the principle seems to be “get it from them for less than cost if possible.” Most of the hogs sold in the packer-made market last year were sold at a loss. commission is now trying to remedy the packer evil, but at best it will take a long time for its work to be re- flected in prices. -We should have taken over the packing business, of course, when we entered the war and the evil results of not doing so are becoming increasingly apparent. The experts appear to' agree that the price of hogs per hundredweight should be roughly 13 times the price of corn to give the farmer a profit. If corn is $2 a bushel, the price then of hogs ought to be $26 and not $15.50. This year we have a short corn crop, which makes the situation harder for the farmer, and yet the speculators in corn will' have a free hand. Between packers and corn market speculators the hog raisers will have a harder time than ever unless the government makes very strenuous moves in the near future. The $15.50 is, of course, a minimum price and there is nothing in the regulations to prevent the pack- ers from paying a much higher price. Every real farmers’ organization is making a strenuous fight against the packers and against speculation, but they can not turn out of congress the special interest representatives which farmer voters in the past have helped" to send there. The fight should have been begun 10 years ago and unless - the farmers rally to the fight now they will haye the same conditions 10 years hence. The. federal trade ' Supporting farmer representatives ¢ “Amenca must hterally feed the world dunng the war -and at the same time prepare to rebuild the world’s food sup- : plies. when victory bnngs peace. —U S. Food Adlmm trat on. i " YN T T for state and national office on, Novem- ber 5 and supporting orgamzatlons protesting to government authorities is the only way out of our vicious livestock market. conditions. If any relief comes in the near future it will be because of the fight organized farmers have made. BLACKLEG SERUM Stanford, Mont, UR local veterinary, a “Big Biz" product, claims to charge nothing for blackleg serum, but he charges what I consider an outrageous price for administering the same. We wish to know if we can procure this serum “ready mixed” and where and at what price. E. NELSON. The blackleg serum is distributed by the government through the agri- cultural experiment stations in the different states. In Minnesota the experiment station sends it out direct to farmers, and the same practice is probably followed in other states. Mr. Nelson, therefore, should write to the’ Agncultural Experiment Station at Bozeman, since he farms in Montana, for the serum and directions for use. The veterinary Mr. Nelson speaks of probably got the serum for nothing from the experiment station. COAL PRICES AND PACKING TRUST Morrill, Neb. AN you tell me why flour is selling 10 to 20 cents higher per sack than it was before harvest? at is the government price for coal? We pay $12 to $16 per ton here and some of it is over half slack. Some of it is Wyoming coal that I bought a few years ago at the mine for $1.50 to $3 a to What can us farmers do to get the packing ms?es under regulation or government con- ‘J. W. WINCHELL. The higher local price for flour may be due in part to local profiteering. Again the local dealers may have taken a smaller margin last year than they are allowed this year. Freight rates are higher, too, by 25 ‘per cent. The best way, perhaps, to check up the local coal price is to write to the state fuel administrator at the state capitol. Every state has one. In writing be sure to mention the kind of coal you want the price on.’ The “slack” evil which Mr. Winchell - mentions assumed national propor- tions last year and National Fuel Ad- ministratpr Garfield took steps to pre- vent the mines from sending out the stuff. The retailers, however, prob- ably have some of it on hand which they need to work off on the public. Then, too, the mines may be fooling the fuel administration. Inferior coal is one of the ways of beating the fixed prices. The government now has regulated the packers’ profits somewhat and the federal trade commission has recom- mended that stockyards, stock and refrigerator cars and enough branch houses for storing meats to give com- petitive selling be taken over by the government. The plants as well, how- ever, should be taken over to prowde 2 real open market. The drawing of two or three teeth, as the commission proposes, will not kill the packers’ monopoly. The farmer can get this remedy only by going into politics, where the rules of the game are made. If the farmers send their own men to congress and state office, they will not have to beg in vain for simple justice. SPECIAL FARM LOANS Blackfoot, Idaho. WISH you would advise how we can ob- tain loans through the government in drouth-stricken regions. ' There are several in this section who could put in much larger crops if finances were available on reasonable rates of interest. What we farmers are badly in need of is long-time loans on as reasonable terms as possible. There are a good many farmers here paying 10, per cent to carry their Liberty bonds, be- cause they do not think it patriotic to sell and let some one else carry them. It looks to the writer as if these bonds -could be used as se- curity for the purchase of seed grain and they would thus serve a double purpose. < WALTER HAGEN. To get the special government aid, the farmer should apply to the county agent, or if there is no county agent to the county auditor. No farmer that has security a bank will accept can get the aid. The government demands a pledge against the next crop. The way to get long-tlme loans of fair rates is to orgamze a farm loan bank association. It is simple and there is no bargain like it. You could write the Farm Loan Board in Wash- ington, D. C., for instructions as to how to proceed. For this real estate security is needed double the face of the loan. The Liberty bonds make a first class security and there is no reason why bankers would not lend money on them. In fact, the banker ought to be willing to lend at a considerably lower rate on the bonds, because the security is so good #nd can be sold so readily in case the borrower fails to pay. Providing the note is paid when due or renewed, the farmer who pledges Liberty bonds as security would be holding them just as much as he holds his farm, although he negotiates a mortgage on it. U. S. TO BUY WHEAT EPORTS reach the food adminis- tration that some farmers are selling their wheat at less than the guaranteed price because of the rail- way embargoes placed in parts of the country against =~ wheat shipment. While the elevators are temporarily .. overstocked because seaboard move-: ment has not kept pace with internal movement, this condmon should be “straw. improved during the next 80 or 60 days. No farmer who will have pa- tience until the situation improves : need sell below the guaranteed price, for the government will buy all wheat as fast ds-it can be ‘moved.”—U. 8. FOOD ADMINISTRATION. The announcement appears to settle the doubts that many have had as to whether the government is really go- ing to buy wheat this year. Last year the Government Grain corpora- tion handled over 90,000,000 bushels of wheat. It is the method by which it is able to maintain the minimum price. The grain interests, of course, howled about this government buying, and there was evidently a disposition to listen to them for a time at least. ‘We ought to have more publicity from the grain corporation to reach the farmers as to just how they can deal direct. It can use a part, at least, of that $500,000 it made on grain last year and which it doesn’t know what to do with, to tell the farmers about the business. Suppose the grain in- terests will object. It is the pro- ducer and not the middleman that ; counts these days. . SOIL NEEDS DIFFER ERTILITY of soil,” the depart- - ment 1‘edgm:l;l g “should be assu richment in each. section of the coun- try.” Being interpreted this should mean don’t depend on the fellows with different lines of fertilizers to - sell to learn the best practice nor on the sidewalk farmers of the townms:. o —— Z $1 FOR FARMER; $10 FOR._ PACKERS ERE is an interesting example of the middlemanism about which the farmers complain, which the anti- farmer editors should know about: A farmer near Kellogg, Minn.,, says he raised, baled and shipped to the St. Paul market a carload of wheat In the carload were 388 bales, with a total weight of 19,600 pounds, and he got for it $5 a ton, or in total $49. His freight, switching and inspection charges amounted to $21.53, leaving him a mnet return, f. o. b. Kellogg, of $27.47. Now let us see what happend to this farmer’s straw. The stockyards com- pany was the purchaser-and this com- pany resold it to farmers who needed . straw for their stock at the yards at 75 cents a bale. And for the whole 888 bales the stockyards-company re- ceived $291. Having paid only $49 for the whole car, the company’s gross profit, therefore, was $242, or nearly 10 times what the Kellogg farmer got for it at his shipping point.