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THE NEWBERRV SUti r-AOt, FOUR lit ..r.iaoifjrr n Friday, h ebruary 18, 1944 1218 College Street NEWBERRY, SOUTH CAROLINA O. F. ARMFIELD, Editor & Publieher Published Every Friday In The Year Entered as second-class matter December 6, 1937, at the postoffice at NerwberCy t S. ^ u^p-.y der the Act ^>f ^r^gijess of March 3, ^1 879^. The Byrd Committee finds that the Federal Bureaucrats are increasing. For the month of November the War department released 14,260 persons. Thirty-one agencies reduced tl}e number of employees by 27,617, while thirty one in creased, thei^ wprkers. (payrollers, rather) by 28,- .886. There was a net increase of 5,069. The President of the United States is Chief of the Administration. His method is usually to ask for more money and appoint more bureau-' crats. Is that efficient administration? 1 Recerttly the President' appointed a commiss ion to find out how much the cost of living had advanced. A member of the commission, repre senting Labor, declares that the rise in the cost of living is greater than the other members think. I can understand this gentleman and sympathize with him. He may be right, so far as his exper ience and observation are considered. Undoubt edly, .including skyrocketing rents in some places, the cost of living may be much higher in X-town than in Y-ville. General averages may indicate one thing and a thousand or a million individual cases may be different. , As to the deceptiveness of statistics, 1 fall back on my illustrations of the condition of the farm ers. , The President thinks the farmers are pros perous and he advocates doing away with parity payipppta. Hp does, not aflypcate a reduction in tariff duties, however; which would put our. Northern industries on a parity with farmers. How well off are the farmers? Here ih South Car6lina the dairy farmers are in a sad condition, selling, their milk at a loss. Would you say that thiy are prosperous? And there are cotton pro ducers who received less for the 1943 crop than they received for the 1942 crop: Are they pros perous? Regardless for the price per pound, the farmer must have sufficient pounds in order to make a good showing. Those tobaccp, apd cot ton-producers with short poundage, or light crops, ai;e less prosperous than the pripe per pound might suggest. I do not have to rely on statistics when I, see and know farmers whose condition today is far less'favorable 1 'than it was' last year. But jf the ( prjicp tells most, what do you say when cotton is today worth less per pound than it was last year? And in spite of that, every item of cost, ex cept'property taxes, is higher. I did 'not know William Allen White, the illus trious son of Kansas; who recendy died; but because of him I once enjoyed an opportunity which occasioned lots of work and served me well; •! ’ , 1 was in Pair is waiting for an assignment. A Pennsylvanian-named Haskell, in'charge. of. an| entertainment service, asked, me to talk (cl the ‘‘detail” at a veterinary station near the Marne River. Several days later 1 was assigned to Paffis because William Allen White couldn’t leave his duties at thp Peace Conference to keep his engagement to talk about the conference. As ,1 planned to diacusp the proposed League of Nations, with an exposition of the Covenant, Mr. White's indisposition cost me some days of hard work. Fortunately 1 “boned up f \ for aftir the ‘talk 1 was questioned for an hour and five minutes. Knowing the national respect for William Allen White I felt highly honored to be assigned to speak during the time allotted him. 1 did pot substitute for Mr. White; and certainly 1 did not pinch-hit, for a pinch-hitter is a player thrust into the game only because the regular player cannot "deliver”; I spoke in his time—that’s all. Williapr Allen White was a national figure because he was a great patriot, a sound mem, a courageous editor, an engaging publicist. Amer ica has lost one of her most useful sons, but the public'owes him a debt'for his fine service. Be- , cause I rushed in where angels might have feared to tread, I was put in charge of the citizenship field service—a very happy work, growing out of Mr. White’s inability to make his talk. " The ohly Way for dairymen to get a fair price for milk is to adopt the methods which have won all the'victories for labdr.' On the very face of it, that condition of. affairs is ridiculous-- To tell the dairymen that the OPA does not fix THEIR price, while fixing th^girice ^^vhich can be paid TO THE FARMERS » an ^>surbity bordering on being a mockery, * bet usbe practical and-look at this question, tj\e whole question, intelligently. The Roose velt administration pilays for votes all the time. There are'more milk £ consumers than ^thafi b are milk producers; there are more consumers of most farm products than there are producers. A lower price for milk imay offend a' few dktrymen, but it will please thousands of consumers. On f\thte cJofdtd/yf a higher b^ici fdr Wiilk mkj^ gfatify a few dairyman, biit/will offend thousands of consumers. What has Mr. Roosevelt usually done? Played fdr’the Votes. Mr. Rooievelt sur rendered to Labor on all occasions because he was more concerned about the politics—the votes—than the issue. If all the disgusted pub lic had been organized as a mass voting unit, Mr. Roosevelt would have turned Labor down. While the dairymen are trying to get a meas ure of justice, I find a dispatch reusing the wages of 175,000 workers because they are entitled to a floor, a minimum wage, by law. But a farmer is not even entitled to a price above his cost. No body guarantees to the INDIVIDUAL farmer a profit for his year’s work. Nobody guarantees him a bare living. But Labor, individually, is guaranteed a minimum by law, with an army of Labor Union members as inspectors, miming over the land like locusts. > Why not guarantee td every farmer, every in dividual farmer, a net profit of $25 per acre? Why not? Is it foolish because some farmers may not produce enough to justify that? Well, isn’t Labor pafd a uniform minimum wage in a mill, regardless of the individual effiency or the individual production? Isn’t that a grave defect in the law—that it levels off everybody, good and bad, efficient and inefficient, productive and un productive? Wouldn’t it be just as appropriate to level off the farmers? And the retail mer- that the VOTES are at stake. 1 say Mr. Roosevelt, because this is no Dem ocratic Administration; furthermore, Mr., Roose velt is the man who has stepped in to make con cessions to Labor. Why doesn’t he stand up for the dairymen? Why? Does cotton need advertising? 1 went to a restaurant in Memphis, greatest cotton center in the wdrld, and saw a sign telling the public this; "We serve the best butter when it is available; when we can't get butter we use uncolored oleo margarine. That sounds like an apology. Oleo margarine is made from cotton seed oil. It is a product which should, ^ppe^l to us as coltqn, peo ple. But it need not depend on that; it is the poor man's spread and the rich man is now glqd to get it. .. Chemists, food expefts, tell us that margarine is highly nutritious. There is a prejudice against it. Why? Well, the Western dairy interests con stantly wage a war to keep out any product which can be used instead of butter. Even though we are epgulfed i> n war, and buttet.is, scarce, the Western dairymen show their narrow spirit in prejudice by defeating Senator. May- ^bank s .bill to take off the tax from Margarine ' during thb war. That tax is ten cents a pound. So active and persistent and intolerant are the Western dairymen that they have tied on to National Appropriation bills prohibitions against using Margarine in Government hospitals and in some Government fighting services. . I believe there is a law in South Carolina that requires tha,t a restaurant serving Margarine must post a sign telling that to the public. There is a bill pending in our Legislature to ftfrbid the sale of filled milk. Again we have the Western dairy interests at work. Filled milk is milk from which the cream has been removed, but a wholesome, nutritious pro duct of cotton seed oil has been added. It does not deceive the public, because it is labelled ex actly what it is. Strangely enough I have not found anybody that has seen "Filled Milk”, though I’ve made diligent inquiry of food men, druggists,and others. I should like to see “Filled Milk” and I should like to buy a can of it. Doesn’t it impress you as odd, that South Car olina should be asked to prohibit the properly labelled product product of cotton? Tbe ans wer is that the Western dairymen are so aggres sive 1 that they are trying to turn the world against a derivative of our cotton, even coming here in the heart of the cotton belt. They might just as well propose that no clothing or doth'should be sold if containing cotton. We must make up and gird our loins to sell cotton, cotton goods, cotton oil. meal, and their. derivatives frorp Dpn to Beersheba, giving ■ die 'intolerant competing interests a stiff dose of their own medicine. ^ - n \ "v V / M r>*|4r.|f J*: f! ''4-'' ft -Anac* • l .w ' O ~t- M The following Grocery Stores have agreed to close their bus- ' u - ' - • : i. * ir inesses Wednesday afternoons, beginning Wednesday, March 1 . and CONTINUING THRU The MONTH Of AUGUST. *<! f’jjj # «l .) IT I ! I . I G. V. CLAMP Y U< vi A / r »* f'*I * U ■" f »M i J. W. YOUNG (Fruit Store) DIXIE HOME STORE . A & P FOOD STORE EDENS’ SUPER MARKET SQUARE GROCERY LAYTON BROS. JAS. F. LONG F. P. DEVORE J. L. LONG G. E. HUTCHINSON J. L. SNELGROVE GARRYTERIA (W. O. Wilson) LITTLE STAR FOOD STORE Tnn ^ h h ■ 1