Dairymen's Holiday

Many a New York City housewife returned from her Fourth of July weekend to find that her grocer was rationing milk. There was no lack of milk for thirsty children; homes, hospitals, relief agencies got their milk deliveries as usual. But panicky mothers, fearing the milk supply would be shut off, tried to stock up. The 40% of New York's milk that goes into ice cream, butter, cheese and evaporated milk was cut to a trickle. The Dairy Farmers' Union had called a strike, choked off some 3,000,000 of New York City's normal 7,000,000 quarts a day.

In Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, three of the six States which make up New York City's giant milkshed, striking farmers picketed dairy plants and highways, dumped milk in the roads, poured kerosene on trucks, fired at State troopers. At Pulaski, N.Y., a woman picket was injured. At Rutland, Vt., a deputy sheriff was killed.

Dairymen wanted more money for their milk. This month, through the Federal-State Milk Marketing Agency which controls producer prices in the milkshed, Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard upped the price of fluid milk* to $2.65 per cwt. (47 quarts). From August on, the price was to be $2.88. But farmers demanded an average price of $3 per cwt. for all milk, instead of the $2.15 they now get. And that, said Marketing Administrator Nikitas John Cladakis, would drive the price of fluid milk to $4.81 per cwt.

Instead of the 5.6-c- a quart which he now gets for fluid milk from big milk distributors like Sheffield Farms and Borden's, the farmer would get over 10-c-. Much of this rise would be passed on to the public, even if the distributors absorbed part of it. The price the housewife pays for milk (delivered) might jump from 15 1/2-c- a quart to 17 3/4-c-.

No wild-eyed band of labor agitators is the Dairy Farmers' Union, but a group of hard-pressed dairymen who saw no other way to deal with mounting costs. One of the strike's backers had a name that sounded strange in the company of strikers. He was Owen D. Young, retired lawyer and capitalist, former chairman of the board of General Electric Co., author of the Young Plan to reduce Germany's war reparations, onetime near-nominee for President of the U.S. Descendant of a long line of Mohawk Valley farmers, Owen D. (for nothing) Young is one of the biggest dairymen in New York State. His 2,000-acre farm at Van Hornesville, near Utica, produces some 33 cwt. of milk a day--which would be worth about $71 at the present average price.

Day the strike was called, Squire Young announced that he would withhold his milk from the market, churn it to butter. Then he issued a statement explaining the issues behind the strike. Said he:

"Any withholding of goods . . . needed for defense of the nation . . . is to be deplored. . . . Scant attention, however, has been paid to the dairy farmers' repeated pleas for emergency relief. The drought has cut the hay crop in half, and the recent rains . . . have spoiled much [of what remains]. Labor has been drained from the farm to the manufacturing industries. ... Dairy feeds ... are constantly rising. . . ."In short, like many a manufacturer of consumers' goods, dairymen had found their costs rising until they felt they had to raise prices or go out of business.

At Squire Young's invitation, the Dairymen's League Co-operative Association, Inc. (whose 30,000 members produce more than half of New York City's milk) met in Van Hornesville to draw up a "plan for unified action" with the 23,000 members of the Dairy Farmers' Union.

But they did not vote to join the strike. Instead, they adjourned to Albany to talk things over with Governor Herbert H. Lehman, said they would first petition Federal and State authorities to grant a hearing on a higher price. If that failed, and the Dairymen's League joined the strike, 7,454,995 New Yorkers would find themselves seriously short of milk.

* Farmers are paid seven different prices for milk, depending on the use to which the milk is put. Fluid milk is milk in bottles or packages for drinking, fetches the highest price.

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