Word: milk
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Squeeze All Around. Some big milk distributors-notably in New York and Duluth-Superior-were squeezed too when OPA froze fluid milk and cream prices last May at abnormally low March levels. Under the price law, OPA could not then freeze butter prices, which jumped upward and tried to drag milk prices along. But for the distributors, the Government provided subsidies of $1 million a month -temporary hush money until OPA and the Agriculture Department could decide on the least evil of three: 1) raise milk a cent a quart; 2) lower the average price to farmers; 3) continue paying...
Nobody likes the subsidies, but more might come. Farmers feel the money is going to the wrong group, the distributors. The distributors want free prices. But OPA sweats at the thought of raising fluid milk prices and upsetting the cost-of-living index. The Department of Agriculture looks appalled when talk veers to reducing the wholesale prices of fluid milk. Finding a way out is Economizer Byrnes's task...
...Unhappy also are the two agencies over a realistic solution to the subsidy-price foolishness-a solution that many a housewife advocated months past: to cut falderals by which the few monopolistic dairy companies had maintained prices. Experts say savings of 50% could come from 1) eliminating duplications of milk collecting and distributing systems; 2) forbidding trucks to start on delivery routes without full loads; 3) zoning deliveries; 4) encouraging milk sales in grocery stores...
Experienced marketing specialists advocate permanent ceilings on manufactured milk products, carefully calculated so as to forestall any tendency of dairymen to cut production and shift to other kinds of farming. After that, the experts say, a rebuilding of milk prices can be undertaken...
Farmers want other solutions: 1) firm Government control so milk cows and heifers cannot be sold for beef; 2) control of farm labor; 3) a feed price ceiling, with a floor for at least a year after the war to allow readjustments on farms; 4) higher prices for dairymen themselves, maybe direct subsidies and bonuses (like Canada's) to encourage production; 5) assurance of getting essential machines and equipment...