We have written in a leading article about the milk
dispute. When we go to press the farmers and the distributors are not even on the threshold of coming to terms. The distributors simply deny that their profits are unreasonable. They point out that a con- siderable part of what the farmers would call middle- men's profits are really expended on a greatly improved public service, and they add that the farmers are really in a better position than themselves, because the recent hay crop was bountiful and all feeding stuffs are lower in price than they were. Our sympathy, however, like the sympathy of the public, goes, on the whole, to the farmer. He would not have reduced his dairy stock if he had been able to make dairy farming pay. Nevertheless, it is useless merely to abuse the " middleman." Nobody pays a middleman for fun. A middleman is paid because his services are, for the time being, indispensable. The real cure for the farmers' ills is such combination in the farming industry as would make most middlemen unnecessary.
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