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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1954-07-15, Page 2, A1 Nm•f..r.,• ELM FRONT Jolvka taii„ Editor's Note — The follinging eetiele by Claude W. Gifford appeared recently in a leading United States farm magazine, The Farm Journat, 'Whether or not you agree with all tee wititer's statements or elabus, many of. which are Applicable to. a (*dein extent on this side of - The border as well, you will at least find them thought-provok- tee. • -. • It's about time that Wieners looked at the "take" the middle- men are drawing out of the milk Inisiness.• With milk produverst it -uttering a big drop ie income, These"milk taiddiemen" are doing better than • ever, This inductee dairy plant wage earners, home and store deliverynien, and dealers. This wouldn't be so bad it these anddlemen—whose job it is to sett milk—were doing a bang-up job. The truth is that milk realms are partially paralyzed from abuses. dealer shenanigans, selfish tabor encroachments, horse -and -beget; laws and regu. Wiens, and plain "dead wood" in the distributing busiest's. It's time that somebody be-. sides farmers listened to advice about cutting costs, culling, and selling and promoting harder. If we had competitive markets everywhere pushing milk sales from the small towns, up through the biggest cities—we'd have no surplus. The excess is only about 6% of our milk --1 7 ounces s day per person. - Frumess can du something about this. You can do some. thing. The trouble may be no farther away than your nearest town—and if so that's the place to start. Farm Journal has become con- vinced of this after talking with some of the country's top milk in a r k e t men, government specialists. and farmer bargain. Ing groups. The milk middlemen's gross "take" since 1950 has climbed nearly a fifth, in 25 of the country's larger milk markets. Milk prices have dropped 3%, US,D.A. figures show this startling fact: the biggest in- crease'sin "middleman" incenses iisnle' in 1953 — right when tanners' milk prices were hitting the skids. Milk companies were CY1joying one of their better years. Dairy plant wages were never higher. Wholesale milk delivery - /nee for a company in a well- known eastern city averaged $11,500 a year for a 40 -hour week. More than $5 an hour! 1.7,S.D.A, figures show that typi- eat New York dairy farm *unities worked for less than 50 cents an hour labor return last year. The dairy distributors—whose job it Ls to sell our milk—are actually selling 14% less total milk per person than they did in the depression Thirties. And this while consumer incomes are at peak levels, and farmers are producing higher -quality milk. Middlemen are an essential part of the dairy team, and in some markets they are doing a bang-up job, but in others it's another story. A. L. McWilliam, general manager of Chicago's Pure Milk Association, gets to the core of this problem quickly. "Too much talk and too little action." As a busy director of a farmer bar- gaining group representing more Than hall of the farmers selling .milk in the Chicago • area, he lueberry Cheesecake Is a Real Summer Delight BY POROTHY MAIWOR IniERIPS deltdolls cheesecake all your Bonny will enloy. It la elorilled with s elated toping of euttivatad bluets, ries, and in as beautiful to look at as it Is delightful to eat. Blueberry-(flased Cheeseeake Intakes 840 servings) Crust; One and one half cups graham cracker cruniet, At cup Nutter, tis cup melted'butter. Combine crumbs and sugar Blend in butter. Prow mixture evenly on sides and bottom of'8-inch wearied spring -form pan. Cheesecake Mixture Two 8 -ounce packages creamed Cottage cheese, 1 ents sutler, 2 tablespoons dour, 4 eggs, separated; $ tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 cup thick, sour cream; 2 tablespoons grated lemon rind, Force cottage cheese Through a coarse sieve. Add sugar gradu- aEy, then dour When well blended, add egg yollornene at a three beatieg until very light Md butter and vanilla. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites Stir in sour cream and grated lemon tend. When smooth and not bubbly turn into crumbslined pan. Itoke An slow oven 275 degrees F. 1% hours or until firm to the touch Remove from oven and set aside to cool Blueberry Glaze Two teaspoons unliavored gelatin, V4 CUP cold water, 2 eutts Basle cultivated blueberries; 2 tablespoons water, dash mace, dash cinnamon, 3 tablespoons sugar. Sprinkle gelatin over the le cup water In small dish Wash and drain blueberries. In saucepan, combine 1 cup 01' the blueberries end 2 tablespoons water. Bring to a boll brain berries, saving juice. Press berries through a food mill or sieve In small saucepan combine strained pulp, juice, mace and sugar. Stir to blend. Heat. Add gelatin and stir until thoroughly dissolved, Let mixture chill 10,111 consistence, of unbeaten egg whites. Then spread over chilled eberry cheesecake, served with a beverage, makes ewonder- ful summertime ceding entrertence, cheesecake and top this taste -treat with renialeing cupel wide vated blueberries. Chill until glaze is firm. Note: If frozen berries are used, thaw oteit proem% as with fresh blueberries. If canned blueberries are used, draM and proceed as with fresh berries, speaks with the conviction and experience that comes from in- fighting on a turbulent milk mar- ket. "There's only one way to get the job done --that's for farmers to pitch in and do it themselves." Do what? Dr. Roland W. Bart- lett, the University of Illinois crusading milk marketing specialist, answers: "Recognize a 'dead' dairy market, wherever it may be, and do whatever is necessary to liven it up—make it sell farmers' milk." Just ask yourself these seven questions about your own mar- ket. They'll tell you whether the place to start is right in your own back yard. 1, Are your dairies, the ones in your milk market, promoting milk with vigorous advertising in newspapers, over radio, and with signs in stores? If not, that may be the tell-tale sign of stagnated competition between milk dealers. Or perhaps a "dead -wood" company has the town "sewed up." Or dealers may be co. operating backstage to soft- pedal competitive selling, or to set prices that will keep them all in elevate Pricing or health regulations may have frozen prices—or may be protecting dead -wood dis- tributors by keeping aggressive companies off your market. Local farmers often applaud this, figuring that it protects them from competition, too. 2. Can customers save money enough to amount to anything by carrying milk home from stores in your milk market? To make "carry -home attrac- tive, the difference between home delivery and store prices needs to be two cents or more a quart, except in little stores in small towns. If there isn't this difference in your town, "middlemen" costs are too high. What's worse, people aren't drinking as much of your milk as they would if they could make this much sav- ing by going after their own milk. A little over a year ago com- petition dropped store prices in Cleveland from one cent below home delivery (in quart con- tainers) down to five cents below (in gallon jugs). Milk consumption shot up 8% for the year—the biggest increase for any large city in the country. iCittlf-DOWN SIGNAL—This is something new which farmers arottod Columbia hope will promote highway safety, The slow- movinc; farm tractor flies a red flag that warns approaching ears :'c.1 slow down. Without the banner, the former'e vehicle le often hidden from view until a speeding motorist is on top of le the Misteu•e Farmers' Association is furnishing the flag to all farmers requesting them. Yet farmers were getting more per hundred for Class I fluid milk! They collected a half - million dollars more for the year. in Chicago stores milk can be bought from four to seven cents a quart under single -quart home -delivery prices, In 1930 Chicago stores handled only 6% of the milk sold 10 the city; now it's near 70%. The simple facts are that milk can be sold through stores (in all but smaller towns) at sub- stantially lower costs than when delivered from door to door. If your store prices don't reflect that: e The stores may be charging too much; maybe because they're forced to. et The milk distributors may be dictating store prices in your town. • The milk -wagon delivery union may be pressuring com- panies to keep store prices high. • Outmoded state price-fixing laws and regulations may have frozen store prices. In about three-fourths of the nation's cities and towns, a quart of milk still costs the same, or only a penny less, than for home delivery — regardless of how much you buy at one time. e Why? Why not find out? 3. Can you buy milk at lower prices in half-gallonse or gallons? Or ean you get discounts for tak- ing more than one single quart container per delivery? "The important thing is that milk should cost less per quart for quantity sales — no matter what size package is - used," states Dr. Leland Spencer, Cote nell University's well - known marketing specialist. That's what happens in Fort Wayne, Ind., where you pay 18 cents for a single quart. If you take two quarts per delivery, the price is 16 cents; for four to six quarts, 15 cents a quart. In Minneapolis you can get a 2 -cent -per -quart discount on de- liveries of two or more quarts. Why aren't more markets pais- ing along this saving for quantity sales — which would encourage higher milk use? On e Milwauke dealer reports that 70% of 10s retail route busi- ness is in half -gallons. He passes along a one -cent per quart sav- ing; two cents if the customer takes 26 half-gallonsa month. Quarts are going out of the picture in Chicago, observes Fed. eral Milk Market Administrator A. W. Colebank, 67% of the milk there is already being sold in gallons or half -gallons --- at a good price saving. Yet May USDA figures show that less than half of the nation's 132 larger markets were selling milk in half -gallons or gallons at a saving under single -quart prices. Even then, the difference was often only a halt-eont 0 (wail, Why? 4. Can you find new products ois your market? Lots al variety?—surh as flavored milk. skim milk fortified with dry. milk edicts, egg nog' new eheeses, arel other new products in varying sizes and quantities? Slush variety is R healthy sign —indireiting spirited eompetitton , end tiegresSive promotion. Some distributors are altering a fast- selling milk eon taining only 2'i butterfat and IQ% extra. tioenfat sends. It's .goieg great guns under :melt • tntealth" names DS Zest, Zirre Champ. Cream is very poorly inereliam dised on many markets --- being both overpriced and of poor quality, 5. Are milk 'sales going up in year rnarket? Or are they etand- ing still, Maybe gipping? "Fluid milk sales are terrific in 'Chicago," seports Carl Dey. sermons of the Milk Foundation. In this city of wide- npen emu - TAKE, AMMO. 0 EA L Norm Scott, pressman with the Wilson Publishing Company, while on vacation at Moira Lake caught this 9 - 11 - 73 - 75 - pound trout after an exhausting struggle. Opinions as to the real poundage differ but—we'd have liked to have caught it. And so would youi petition — and high store sales due to much lower prices than home delivery — milk consump- tion per person went up 4% between 1945 and 1949, when it was dropping 10% for the nation! 6. Are there vending machines and milk dispensers on your market? If not, you're losing one of your best chances to sell more milk. Two hundred machines install. ed in Indianapolis and Chicago establishments (where milk was already being sold over the coun- ter) increased total sales 60%. Lester Will, manager of the American Dairy Association, es- timates that if we could dupli- cate the vending machine sales of coffee and soft drinks, we could sell more than 7 billion haLf-pints yearly of milk and chocolate milk. That's half of our present surplus. Sales in large schools have shot up phenomenally when 'vending machines were put in. Why? Simply because students could get uniformly cold milk easily and quickly If all students could, it's estimated from actual tests that they would drink an average of a half-pint a clay — more than tripling their present low intake. Aside from being good for the kids, this increase is equal to a third of the butter and half the dry milk now in stprage. Many schools don't even have milk, and w many schools — maybe most — it isn't as well re- frigerated, nor as high quality, nor as easy lo get, as it !Mien be How about your sehonl 7 Asei labor restrictions and wage scales out of line for yonr dairy plants or route delivery - meta ? If so, Ihey're tatting a bigger bite than they're entitled to, and adding costs that hold down sines. Part of the allaWer 10 larger • cities may be milk sub -deniers — those independent distributors who own their oven trurks, and buy -their tnilk wholesale from a dairy. Unlike milk wagon 'men on salary, these sub-dealer:3 Met- tle up their Mea CUMOMera, 1e.1 their own prices where they can, and take their 01111) profits. They - often handle 50% to 1.00% more milk in a day item 5 unimi mete or. Whet if Mess en 011ii1 /,1,11i show that ymir reerkst dectial m(13(1' up? " "Go to a source of the troub- le and see if it can be corrected. If not, give the matter wide pub- licity," advises Chicago -wise A. L. McWilliams, O Get your local farm organit =bon on it — or start it milk bar- gaining association. Either way, set up a committee with gump- tion enough to dig up the facts, , no matter how hard they may be to get. Then plan softie action. At Get active in your local ADA or Dairy Ceuncil, if you have one; t'ontribute to dairy promotion, locally and nationally. "Get your organization to take the lead in doing away with state laws that allow minimum price fixing to the consumer," urges Bartlett. He insists that these laws merely protect inef- ficient distributors. (You can still protect the price paid to The farmer.) At one time or another 21 states have fixed minimum consumer prices. Nearly a third of the U.S. population lives in the, 13 states that still do. Bartlett argues that Milk Control Boards relying on these laws have demonstrated that they resist change, force consumers to Pay higher prices, slow up sales, and cut down on healthy competition in milk dis- tribution. Here's what's actually happening: Milk is 92 cents a gallon in Pittsburgh (where the state sets consumer prices), and only 60 cents a gallon in near -by Youngs- town, Ohio, where competition sets consumer prices. A difference Of 32 cents a gallon! Yet farm- ers in the Pittsburgh milk shed get only five cents a gallon more for milk, • Bartlett cites 17 typical com- petitive markets where there is no price fixing. Store prices av- erage 3.1 cents a quart below home delivery prices. In 18 oth- er market, where state milk con. trol boards set consumer prices, milk in stores averages only a half -cent below home delivery. This boils down to the fact that there is much we can do about our milk markets, We can sell all of the milk that we're now producing. The obstacles are ar- tificial and can be overcome. Pro- gressive markets are showing the way. Why not have yours join the parade? Working is the best cure• for grousing. Remember the old saying: "A mule ean't kick when pulling." Mk SC 100i LESSON By Bee. B. Barciat Warren, KA.. MD, Growing Through Bible Study Acts 17,111-11; 1 Thncithe 4:13-16i 2 Timothy 1:5; 2:15; 3:14-17; llebrews 4:12 blenaory Selection: All scripture is given by inspiration of Clod, and prolitable for doctrine, for re- proof, for correction, for instruc- tion in righteousness; That the man of God may be perfect, thor- mighty furnished unto all good rimers. 2 Timothy 3:16,17. The study of the Bible COn. tributes greatly to the Christian's growth. The people of Berea were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they receiv- ed the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scrip- tures daily, whether those things were so. The study of the scrip- tures has an ennobling effect, It should begin in early childhood. Timothy was fortunate in thus receiving the Word early. Ile also saw it demonstrated in the lives Of his mother and grandmother. The Word of God is more power- ful than atomic weapons or hydro. gen bombs. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, piecing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and mar- row, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The Word applied by Ihe Holy Spirit will discover men to them- selves. Conscience is quickened and conviction for sin follows. The awakened sinner sees the precious promises inviting him to trust in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. He enters the kingdom of God by embracing, some such promise as, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," or "If we con- fess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all invighteeme- ness." Through the Word we entee in- to the way of salvation. We grow by continuing the study of the Word and using it to help others. As bread to the body so is God's Word to the spul. Let us tmeteb it daily. • How We Get Neat From The Sum Heat comes to us Isom the sen across millions of miles of empty space by means of radiation. Radiant heat may pass through objects without heating them. Energy, or radiant heat, trom the sun passes through the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere without heating them Glass permits some of the short waves of radiant energy from the sun to penetrate, but not longer waves like those of a flan'. If a pane of glass be held belotes a gas flame, it will transmit only a little of the heat and will become very hot because it has absorbed much of this heat The reason is that the flame emits tong waves. The sun's heat, however passes readily through a glass - enclosed greenhouse; yet the heat from the inside the greenhouse can not escape through the gtass. The short waves from the sun can penetrate the atmosphere but when they strike the earth they are absorbed and warm it up. The earth radiates longer waves which are mostly absorbed by- the surrounding atmosphere. If the atmosphere were not present we would burn to death during the day and freeze to death at night. BUT WHAT TIME IS IT?—ft could be almost any time at all. :1 you had this clock, and the knowledge necessary to interpret ifs indications, Displayed in Paris, France, by inventor P, J. Settee, the instrument is set to give, for 100 years, the follow- ing infermationt Day, date, month and year; occurence of Easier; phases of the moon, sidreal and mean solar time; predictions of approaching lunar and solar eclipses.