Cow Slaughter

Current bugaboo of the age is Overproduction. Confronted with this monsterword, hundreds of earnest committees throughout the land have been called upon for a solution. Some, driven to despair, if not insanity, have recommended the destruction of whatever there happened to be a surplus of. Such a remedy was the Federal Farm Board's recommendation -- never followed -- that cotton farmers plough under every third row (TIME, Aug. 24).

Last week appeared another proposal which seemed to follow the maniacal destruction formula. "WOULD DECIMATE COWS," headlined the New York Sun. "Dairymen Urged to Destroy One in Every Ten." Alarmed city folk read on to learn the worst, found that the recommendations had been made to, not by, the Federal Farm Board, which nevertheless passed them on to the public.

Author of the proposal was the Dairy Advisory Committee, an agency of dairy cooperatives. The committee found that the number of milk cows on farms has been increasing for four years, is likely to continue to increase if left unchecked, eventually bringing low prices. Chairman of the committee is Harry Hartke, a soft-spoken Kentucky farmer who is president of French Bros. Dairy Products, Cincinnati. Big, good-natured Mr. Hartke did not seem the sort of man to propose a vast cow slaughter without reason. Lumberman as well as dairyman, he had never countenanced waste. And, indeed, upon closer examination, it was seen that what Mr. Hartke's committee intended was not that the cows should be slain and buried, but that they should be slain and eaten.

This simple solution of potential milk troubles--with whatever consequences it might have for the meat business--took form in the following resolution: "Be it therefore resolved, that all low producing and unprofitable cows be culled from herds and sold for slaughter, that additional heifer calves be vealed, and that each farmer reduce the size of his herd by eliminating at least one cow out of each ten."

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