Mr. Morgenthau & Milk

Farmer Henry Morgenthau Jr. and his tenant-partner Arthur D. Hoose are quitting the milk business. Last week, while co-owner Morgenthau was touring the battlefronts, Hoose announced that their herd of 100 purebred Jersey and Holstein cows would be put up for sale on Dec. 11. The Dutchess (N.Y.) County Fishkill Farms will be planted to fruit trees.

In Washington, Secretary Morgenthau's Congressman, lank Hamilton Fish, lamented the sale, presumed that his constituent was selling because of the serious corn shortage in the East. In the Senate North Dakota's William Langer cried "If all dairy farmers follow Morgenthau's example there will not be any more milk." But in their barns, tired, aging U.S. dairymen dourly agreed that the Morgenthau sale was shrewdly timed.* They, too, are selling milk cows. Their reasons:

> So many farm workers have gone to war or to war plants that farmers now have more cows than they can milk.

> Feed, outside the corn belt, is scarce and high-priced. With cheap corn being held back by corn-belt farmers to use in the more profitable fattening of hogs, dairymen must scramble for the diminishing stocks of oats and rye. Therefore feed prices have soared to $57 a ton (v. $48 a year ago), and eastern feed bins are almost empty.

> Production costs have shot up 21% over a year ago and are 55% higher than January 1941, while milk prices have been held down. Dairy profits are nil.

> Dairy cows sold to local butchers now bring high cash prices at a time when husky bank accounts look good to farmers.

But to U.S. citizens who are consuming more milk than last year, the selling of milk cows is a tragedy. With consumption 10% over a year ago, and production already down from 5 to 7%, every cow sold for meat means a wider spread between milk supply & demand. Milk may be the toughest rationing job OPA ever tackled, but it cannot be put off much longer.

* Average age of the U.S. farmer: 55--highest on record

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.