Farmer’s Protest: The High Cost of Living
A local columnist breaks down the economic struggle of the Kennewick valley farmer, blaming speculators and Wall Street for the price gap between producers and consumers.
The story, cleaned up
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The poor farmer is getting so much condemnation over the high cost of living that the editor of the Live Wire Sparks lays off his grubbing long enough to say a word in behalf of the farmers of the lower valley. With wheat at five cents a pound, and other grain almost as high, the chicken raiser finds his grain ration costing him over four cents per pound. Agricultural colleges say it takes 90 pounds of grain to feed a chicken a year, costing $3.60. At ten dozen eggs per year, the eggs cost the farmer 36 cents per dozen to produce, but he only nets 30 cents. A similar condition prevails in the dairy business. The farmer is censured for selling off his hens and cows, but he has to do it for they are losing him money. It is not the farmer who is to blame; with wheat at 5 cents per pound, the grower gets but two cents, and the speculator gets the balance. If the government had adopted the National Marketing program which the grange has been urging for years, manipulation would be impossible, and consumer costs would be reduced nearly half. Wall Street gamblers, meat barons, and Chicago grain speculators have maintained lobbies in Washington to fight the Grange Farm Reform Program. The State Grange meets at Wenatchee in June, and every patriotic citizen should write their representative in congress—W. L. LaFollette, Miles Poindexter, and Wesley L. Jones—demanding a National Marketing Measure.
“With wheat at 5 cents per pound, we find the grower got on an average of but two cents per pound, and the speculator got the balance.”
The tension between agricultural producers and the 'middlemen' or speculators described here echoes modern debates about food supply chains, corporate consolidation in agriculture, and the volatility of retail food prices. The call to bypass market manipulation through public policy remains a perennial theme in rural Washington politics.
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