THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION


and show individuality and initiative and to do your own selling
and then you will get your prices. You never will until you do.
MEMBER: . It looks to me that most of the argument shifts on the
Swiss cheese but if you just look over in the American cheese side we
have got what we call the Wisconsin Cheese Producers Federation
that has got a bunch of farmers in back of it trying very hard to
sell their cheese. It seems to me that they don't pay a bit more
than the average cheese buyer or ordinary cheese buyer for fancy or
No. 1 or No. 2. Now if our own organized selling plan like the Fed-
eration is going to do any good or help any it ought to be showing up
some what.
MR. CARswELL: Why shouldn't the cheese manufactured in the
State of Wisconsin when they have 70% of all the cheese in fact 90%
of all that goes on the market? Why shouldn't they control the
price? They should control and they could do it if they take hold
of it and work together and pull together they can do it. The trouble
is they are not pulling together. You have got to get together and
pull together but you don't do it. You let the jobber do it.
MEMBER: It is the greatest mistake to close up our board. What
prices are we going to sell cheese by? Before we close that board
we have got to find something better. We have about 100 factories
on the Plymouth board. There are only four cheese factories oper-
ating in the winter. What is the reason no more cheese factories
are going there? You get more on the board and they boost the
price.
MR. MARTY: I want to tell you that down in our section the
farmers in the southwestern part of the state could not have been
so successful in the manufacture of Swiss cheese if their prices had
been manufactured back of a mahogany desk in Chicago and we
would have been subject to a board down there. You have got
dealers scattered all over your cheese section. There isn't a cheese
wholesale dealer that could not make it in a couple hours drive there.
Down in our section cheese is sold as a rule by the month. We
haven't got a board. They start in with cheese buyer No. 1. Who
carries the prices to the farmers- the cheese dealers. Mr. Olsen
is a salesman of his company and he has been approached as high
as twelve times in one day. What is the result? The first man
comes along with a price and trys him out. That salesman does
not sell until the last man that buys cheese down there has called
on him. Am I right Mr. Olsen?
MR. OLSEN: Yes.
MR. MARTY: What is the result? One man goes out and es-
tablishes the price and the next man follows it up, and he will make
it a quarter better. The next fellow comes along and he says "I
will make it a quarter better." Do you suppose they could raise
the
price of the commodity there? There never was a dealer down there
with a price that wasn't raised.
PRESIDENT: The question was to get the grades perfect and back
it up with quality. Our American cheese is taken and shipped twenty
to thirty miles and put on the market for 15 to 25 cents or more than
100%-more than we get and there must be an outlet somewhere.
I know when the Plymouth board was 16% to 17 cents, the same
cheese was sold for just again as much right to the retailer so there
appears to be something wrong.
MEMBzR: Listening to this argument again reminds me, a good
deal of the fellow we had home when He had the good old days of
beer. He used to drink about thirty small glasses and he would say,
"I am chuck full of little ones-now give me a big one."
In dis-


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