abolished. A cheese board exists only for establishing the price. Less than 3 per cent of the cheese produced in Wisconsin is sold on the board. The balance is contracted for on a basis of the board price. Practically all cheese on the Plymouth board is offered by the packers, and the board is dominated by them. They often bid on it themselves, and the board price is fixed high or low, according to whether they are loading up or unloading.

In the past the game of the combination has usually been to keep the board prices very low during the summer, when the most and best chee e is produced, fill up the storages, and then in the winter, when the farmers produce little cheese, run the board price up and unload on the consumer. In the past winter prices have usually been 70 to 80 per cent higher than summer prices, a condition which can not be justified, as it costs not over one-half cent a pound to store cheese for the season.

HOW THE PACKERS MANIPULATED BOARD PRICES AT

PLYMOUTH.

To show how the packers manipulate board prices, it is only necessary to state what happened at the Plymouth board July 28 last. A certain packer's agent offered 200 twin on the Plymouth board, 50 twins were offered by some one else. This constituted all the twins which were offered on the Plymouth board that week. An independent dealer offered 314 cents for the 200 twins. The packer's agent refused to accept the bid. Some one suggested that he offer him less and he might take it. The independent dealer then offered him 31 cents. The packer's agent again refu ed the bid. Then the independent dealer offered 304 cents, which bid the packer's agent accepted, and which bid fixed the price on all twins which were manufactured in Wisconsin during that week. This packer's agent was, of course, willing to sell the 200 twins for less than they were worth if he could buy, perhaps, 10,000 twins on the outside at that price.

The packers are gradually putting the independent cheese dealers out of business by offering to pay the cheese maker who is selling to independent dealers a premium above the board price, and they also try to work this game with factories which are in the federation. This they do not do in sections where there are no independent cheese dealers or federation factories. Not only do they not pay premiums, but they dock the cheese maker on weight.

Farmers never wake up to the need of organization and cooperation in marketing their product until they have been fleeced good and proper and that is what led up to the organization of the Cheese Producers' Federation. For more than 64 years I lived on, and for more than 40 years I owned and operated, the farm at Plymouth, Sheboygan County, on which I was born. Like most other farmers in the country I derived my principal income from the milk which I hauled to the cheese factory to be made into cheese. For years we allowed the cheesemaker, to whom we paid a certain sum per pound for making our cheese, to sell our cheese for us. He got this amount whether he sold our cheese for a high or low price. He was not, therefore, particularly interested in whether he got us a high or low price for it. It is true he guaranteed us the board price for our cheese. But we allowed the makers and dealers to set the board price.

Down to the spring of 1911 there was some competition in buying on this board. About that time, however, the members of the Wisconsin Cheese Dealers' Association, composed of cheese dealers and packers' agents, apparently came to a perfect understanding in regard to fixing board prices. From that time on the cheese board became a ridiculous farce in so far as establishing legitimate prices on cheese was concerned and beginning at that time the board price was fixed arbitrarily low during the summer, when the most and best cheese is produced, and arbitrarily high during the winter, when little cheese is made and when they were unloading what they had in storage.

The cold-storage owners at Plymouth, where more cheese is stored than in any other place in the country, had a rule that no one but a cheese dealer could store cheese there. This was done to force us farmers to seel our cheese weekly and even though we were satisfied that we could get much more for this cheese later on we had no place to keep it and were obliged to sell.

CHEESE DEALERS' ASSOCIATION KEPT COMPETITORS OUT.

The cheese dealers were thus able to manipulate the board price as they wished because it was a closed board and absolutely under the domination of the cheese dealers. The president of the Wisconsin Cheese Dealers' Asso

ciation was chairman of a committee which passed upon applications for membership. This was done in order to limit the board membership and they went so far in July, 1911, as to adopt a rule on the Plymouth board which provided that no person could become a member of the Plymouth board unless his application was in in April, and that was done to keep members out until the following April.

I called attention to this rule in the Plymouth Review, a paper which stood by the farmers all through this fight, and I said if this rule was not made to keep buyers away and to thus stifle competition, why was it made? I asked the organs of the cheese combination to please answer that question in the next issue. One of the organs, the Plymouth Reporter, did not attempt to answer, but the other one, the Plymouth Correspondent, answered it and got its foot in. They answered it in this way: This rule was made to keep buyers away who want to buy cheese in the summer when it is cheap and who do not want to buy in the winter when it is high."

For five months throughout the summer of 1911 the board price was so low that our milk made up into cheese brought us less than $1 a hundred, which is less than 2 cents a quart. We got 11 to 13 cents a pound for our cheese. Much of this cheese was put into cold storage by the dealers, and in the winter was shipped out, some of it by the trainload, at a price as high as from 18 to 22 cents. This summer cheese, when it reached the consumer, cost him from 25 to 30 cents a pound.

Local dealers members of the Plymouth board, cleaned up on the 1911 make from $10,000 to $50,000 each. The packers probably cleaned up millions. Over $400,000 went into the pockets of dealers and packers which should have gone into the pockets of Sheboygan County farmers during that one year.

In the spring of 1912, after the dealers had disposed of what they had in storage. they gradually dropped the board price to 15 cents, which it was on May 21, 1912. There was at that time a demand at 15 cents a pound which could not be supplied. In spite of that fact, however, on May 28, the next board day, they dropped the board price to 12 cents. Everything apparently was all arranged to go through the same old performance. I hoped that some one else would take the initiative and expose the whole business. Self-preservation compelled me to act.

I saw to it that meetings of cheese-factory patrons were called at the different factories to protest against these methods. I also wrote an article, charging the dealers with arbitrarily fixing the board prices irrespective of supply and demand. I charged them with stifling competition by rejecting applications for membership on the board, etc. I sent this article to 150 newspapers in Wisconsin, with the request that it be published in order that all should know that cheese was worth more than 12 cents. Some papers, feeling no doubt, that my charges were libelous, did not publish them.

Instead of answering my charges, the local organ of the cheese combination resorted to personal abuse of myself. He intimated that I was getting crazy, said that I was a town-killing octopus. He tried to make out that if those $400,000 had gone into the pockets of the farmers of the country instead of going into the pockets of the packers and a few dealers it would injure the towns. It was intimated that 27 lawsuits would be started against me for libel. For a time I will admit that they had me scared. I knew that the charges I had made were true, but I did not have direct evidence for all of them, but I got busy and got affidavits to confirm the charges which I had made, and then I defied them to sue me.

I received encouragement from the farmers from the beginning. The demand for me to speak to the patrons of different factories became so great that I could not possibly comply with the requests. I therefore called a meeting for June 22, 1912, on the fair grounds at Plymouth and distributed handbills on which was printed the following announcement :

FARMERS, WAKE UP!

Come to the Plymouth fair grounds on June 22 and be convinced that there is a cheese trust, and that if there had been no such trust you would have gotten from $10 to $20 more for the milk from each cow during 1911. The more of you who come to this meeting, the sooner the trust will be "busted." Cheese dealers invited to be present to defend their position. They will have a respectful hearing.

Farmers were in the midst of haying. Yet over 1,000 farmers came to the meeting.

Only two days' notice was given..
Not a single dealer showed up.

As a result of these protests, and also perhaps because the dealers feared proceedings for violation of the antitrust laws, the board price inside of two weeks went up again to 15 cents. And this at a time of the year when they had always before dropped it.

Had the farmers not become thoroughly aroused no doubt we should have fared no better in 1912 than we did in 1911.

Then I called the attention of members of the State board of public affairs to the methods of the cheese dealers, cheese buyers, cold-storage owners, as well as farmers, to appear before it. I was asked to state our grievances. The dealers were allowed to make their statements. They were questioned by members of the board, with the result that practically every charge made was admitted to be true.

It was admitted that the dealers had a secret meeting before the Plymouth board met to agree on the price to be paid on the board, and that the cheese from the various factories was allotted among the various dealers.

It was also admitted by a prominent dealer that it was their practice to pay the cheesemaker, who acted as the farmers' agent in selling their cheese, a bonus above board price, sometimes in cash and sometimes in the shape of an extra check.

It was also admitted that the Plymouth cold storage (where more cheese is stored than in any other cold storage in the Northwest) had a rule that only dealers could store cheese there, and that if others wished to store any they had to do so through a dealer.

This agitation brought good results, but agitation can not be kept up forever. To insure permanent good there must be organized, constructive, and continuous effort. For the purpose of getting the farmers to organize, I called a mass meeting of farmers to be held in Plymouth February 7, 1913. Fifteen hundred farmers crowded into the opera house and side rooms; many were unable to gain admission.

Strong resolutions were adopted at this meeting, urging the farmers to organize a cooperative association to sell their own cheese. A committee was appointed to work out a plan of organization. This committee had a number of meetings, at which it had the assistance of experts from the economics department of the University of Wisconsin and others. The plan agreed on was simple. It provided that the patrons of each cheese factory form an association and incorporate under the State cooperative law, these various associations form a federation, the federation to employ a competent salesman and sell the cheese for the farmers.

Violent opposition to our plan came from those who in the past had taken advantage of us. Many cheese makers, who themselves had a county and State organization, bitterly opposed us. Some even threatened to close their factories if the farmers organized.

In spite of the opposition we perfected our organization. The patrons of 43 factories organized and joined the federation. We selected our selling agents and were ready for business August 1, 1913, but we were unable to procure a warehouse. Although there were cheese warehouses empty and owned by the cold-storage company, the cheese combination and its friends were powerful enough to prevent us from getting one. We were, therefore, obliged to build in order to do our business.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will now stand adjourned until 10 o'clock to-morrow morning.

(Thereupon, at 7 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned to meet to-morrow, Friday, March 24, 1920, at 10 o'clock a. m.)