Another Dairy Strike

I suppose it took some nerve for local dairy farmers to go on strike in February 1918, in the face of a war Zeitgeist that might condemn them as slackers if not outright traitors. But they were desperate.

Since the last major strike, in the spring of 1916, Milk Producers' Association had been able to negotiate acceptable prices with the Chicago milk dealers. The dealers found a way to exert counter-pressure: they brought in part of their supply from dairies outside the Association's territory — dairies shipping from as far away, sometimes, as Omaha, Nebraska or St. Paul, Minnesota. Thus they maintained a balance of power for two years.

But the war threw off that balance. Over the summer of 1917, food shortages and gridlocked transportation made feed for dairy cattle increasingly expensive and scarce. Production costs rose to the point where dairy farming began to seem less like a livelihood than an expensive hobby. Naturally, when new price negotiations started in September, farmers demanded a substantial increase in price from the dealers. Under protest the dealers gave in to their demands, and in turn raised the price of milk to the consumer from 10 cents to 13 cents per quart. Chicago consumers reacted with indignation that reached as far as U.S. Food Administration in Washington, whence Herbert Hoover, late in October, asked Illinois Food Administrator Harry A. Wheeler to intervene.

Wheeler's intervention provoked a brief dairy strike that was ended by a quick renegotiation. Dairy farmers agreed to accept a reduced price only until a "Milk Commission" appointed by the Food Administration could hear testimony about costs of production and determine a "fair and just" price. The Commission promised a decision on January 1.

The testimony it heard proved so confusing that the Commission dithered for a few weeks beyond the deadline. In late January it finally handed down its decision — with several members protesting that it was unfair to dairy farmers. The commission set the price of milk at almost a dollar less per hundredweight than the farmers had demanded in September.

The first Hobart News of February 1918 reported that local dairy farmers had been on strike since the previous week.

As no settlement could be reached by the local members and food administrators, it is said additional forces have been called from Washington to endeavor to make a satisfactory settlement to both sides.

As a result the farmers are making butter and fattening the pigs with the buttermilk, the distributors are idle and the public in general in the cities is getting along as best they can with a very limited amount and rapidly using up the supply of condensed milk.

With feed ranging between $50 and $60 per ton and hard to get, the farmers appear to be in a frame of mind [such that] they don't care very much what happens.

What happened was that the dealers came back to the table after scarcely more than a week's strike, and reluctantly agreed to set a more acceptable price for the next five months, just a couple cents per hundredweight short of what the dairy farmers wanted, while keeping the cost to consumers at 12 cents a quart.

It wasn't an ideal solution. Consumers still objected to the increased price. Milk dealers still took a larger share of the price than the producers (6.15 cents per quart versus 5.85 cents per quart), which dairy farmers saw as unfair since they had the larger share of work and cost in producing the milk, while dealers "merely handled it between the depot and customer." But local farmers resumed shipping milk, for the time being, anyway.


Sources:
♦ "Editorial Comment." The Creamery and Milk Plant Monthly VII:3 (March 1918).
♦ "Farmers Win Out in Their Fight With the Milk Distributors." Hobart News 14 Feb. 1918.
♦ "Milk Producers Are Still On Strike — No Milk Being Shipped." Hobart News 7 Feb. 1918.
♦ "Report of the Chicago Milk Commission." The Creamery and Milk Plant Monthly VII:3 (March 1918).
♦ U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Report of the Federal Trade Commission on Milk and Milk Products 1914-1918. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921.