The Union Daily Times

TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1922

WILL A CANNERY HELP THE FARMERS?

Before you turn down our appeal to help organize a cannery and a potato drying house here, suppose you do a little figuring on your own account! Let us suppose that 150 farmers should sign up to raise one acre of tomatoes. Let the cost remain as high as we estimated-$80. If the farmer got $15 a ton and raised 15 tons (which is only a fair yield) he would receive $225 less $80, which equals $145 profit-net profit. If each farmer of the 150 measured up to this standard, there would be a total net profit of $21,750. That's more than any 150 farmers in Union County ever made from 150 acres of cotton. Suppose the canning industry should take firm hold upon Union County. Suppose 3,000 farmers each planted one acre to tomatoes or some other product to be canned. At this estimate, the neat net sum of $435,000 results. You say our estimate of profit is too high. Mr. Browning says our estimate of cost of production is twice too high. Then, suppose we cut the estimated net profit half in two? That would give us $217,500. Three thousand acres netting a profit of $217,500. Ten years from today Union County will be giving not 3,000 acres, but 9,000 in this very way if we can ever make a successful start. And this would not interfere with growing cotton. Surely you can spare one, two, three acres from the cotton field. If you do, you are choosing the way to wealth, real wealth, and you still have the privilege of raising cotton to give away at prices below the cost of production. In fact, you are choosing the very best way to raise more cotton per acre, at lower cost, for higher prices. Looks that way to us, anyway, and we have the "nerve" to say what we think. That's a newspaper's right; it is also its duty.