THE CASE FOR CHEAP MILK
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—First let me heartily agree with Mr. Beesly that it does seem rather " wicked " not to be able to sell milk to very poor people at less than the Milk Marketing Board price. I wish we could. I wish there could be exceptional cases allowed for, but they would be extremely difficult to arrange ; and, if the very poor people could only be supplied cheaply through the abandonment of the -Milk Marketing Board's fixed prices, there would very sobn be a. shottage of milk for everybody, paradoxical as it may seem, just because nobody can continue for long selling goods below the cost of production. But I am afraid that that is as far as I can go in agreement with Mr. Beesly, and I will now answer his other points categorically.
1. " It is useless for your correspondents to east doubts upon the possibility of producing milk at a cost of 6d. a gallon. . . . It is the figure of the Committee of Investigation."
In the first place, I did not say that no farmer could produce milk at a cost of 6d. I said " I doubt if there are any farmers who could produce milk profitably at 6d. a gallon," and, of course, I was referring to an all-the-year-round production, not to the cost of milk during the flush of grass in May and June ; for the costs of milk production vary enormously in the different seasons and only the average cost throughout the whole year has any bearing on the problem.
2. I have not the Report of the Committee of Investigation by rne, but if that Committee laid it down that 6d. was a figure at which any considerable proportion of dairy-farmers could produce profitably, throughout the year, will Mr. Beesly be good enough to quote me verbatim, in full relevant context with what preceded that statement and what qualified it, the actual words in which that Committee committed itself to that opinion ?
3. Mr. Beesly says, "Mr. Muntz tries to put into my mouth a statement that the selling price could be brought down to 6d.—I said nothing of the kind."
The last thing I want to do is to put words into my opponent's mouth that he did not say ; it is an old device and an unworthy one, but let us see what we did say.
Mr. Beesly said, " Plenty of farmers can produce profitably at about 6d. a gallon." I replied, " I doubt if there are any dairy farmers who can produce profitably at 6d. a gallon " and further on I said, " But let us suppose that they could bring the selling price of milk down to 6d." But this was not a " state- ment." It was an hypothesis employed for the purpose of developing an argument ; and, even at that, I did not attribute it to Mr. Beesly : 7d. or 8d. would suit the argument just as well.
I leave it to your readers, Sir, to form their own opinions as to which of us has gone nearest to putting statements into his opponent's mouth that he never made.
4. Mr. Beesly makes a more substantial point when he asks, " If it is really true, as Mr. Muntz (I really did say this) thinks, that there are too few farmers who can produce at 6d. to affect the price of milk . . . why does he object to those, who can sell milk cheaply, doing so ? " But this apparently reasonable question is not such a poser as it looks.
I apologise for the following explanation of the obvious, but I do not see how to avoid it. Perhaps I should have been wiser to insert the word " economic " before " price of milk " ; but, as the " economic " price of milk is the only price that has any relevance to the solution of the problem of cheap milk I took it for granted that it would be understood. As it has not been grasped—let me point out that there is an enormous difference, both in the difficulty of it, and in the result, between bringing down the price of milk to 6d. as an " economic " price, and bringing it down to 6d. as an un-economic price, through cut- throat competition. My statement was made in reference to a permanent economic price, and I stick to it. There are too few farmers who can produce at 6d. to affect the permanent economic price of milk ; but, if the Milk Marketing Board's minimum price were done away with, and farmers had to sell for what they could get, there are not too few to force the price of milk down to a point where half the dairies in the country would have to go out of business. The wholesale buyer has only to tell the wretched farmer that he can get all the milk he wants at 6d. (it needn't be true) for the farmer to be frightened into accepting even an unprofitable price as better than being left with unsale- able milk on his hands. This is what was happening, and why the Milk Marketing Board came into existence.
5. Mr. Beesly says, " Mr. Muntz seems to think that farmers are curious people. He says that with a prospect of famine prices for milk they would sell their cows to the butcher."
I do not think farmers curious people. I never said " that with a prospect of famine prices for milk they would sell their dairy cows to the butcher," for they would already have sold them. Their sale would have preceded the famine for the reason that it is usual for a cause to precede its effect. I said that [with a loss of 31d. per gallon on each gallon sold] the price level " would last just as long as it took the average farmer to avoid bankruptcy by selling his cows to the butcher. Milk would then be at famine prices "—not before while he still had cows to sell. The picture of a farmer with a dairy full of cows, selling them off in a period of famine prices for milk is really not mine, and again I must leave it to your readers, Sir, to form their own opinions about this little controversy.—Yours faithfully, A. IRVING MUNTE. Ecchinswell House, near Newbury.
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