Whatcom County dairy farmers and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company in 1924

In 1925 the Utah Idaho Sugar Company built a factory in Bellingham, Washington that produced sugar from beets. Previous attempts to build a factory in 1923 and 1924 failed because not enough farmers grew beets. That changed in 1925, and this is the first of a series of articles explaining why.

The Utah Idaho Sugar Company had been building beet sugar factories since the early 1890s. They built the first factory in Lehi, Utah, and built additional factories throughout the intermountain west in the decades that followed. The first factory in the state of Washington opened in Yakima in 1917. The company wanted to build a factory in western Washington as early as 1922.

Ever since Andreas Marggraf discovered, in 1747, that beets contain sugar, farmers had been trying to extract it. Marggraf’s beets contained only 1.3–1.6% sugar, but his methods were improved upon by subsequent generations, who bred beets with ever-higher sugar concentrations. Until the late 1800s, beets couldn’t compete with sugar cane, which was cheaper to grow and easier to extract sugar from. This changed when the United States raised tariffs on imported sugar. This had the indirect effect of pushing up the price of imported sugar high enough that it became profitable to extract sugar from domestically-grown beets.

Meanwhile, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had recently migrated to Utah, sought economic independence from imported sugar. They encouraged their members to plant beets, which were well-suited to the arid growing environment of the intermountain West, and they incorporated the Utah Sugar Company, which opened its first factory in Lehi, Utah in 1890, to turn these beets into sugar. 

Other factories soon followed in neighboring towns, some operated by the company, others followed by competitors who saw opportunity. In fact, several sugar companies sprung up throughout Utah and Idaho, many of which shared board members, creating an interlocking network of factory owners, operators, and farmers centered around the LDS Church. On July 3, 1907, in an attempt to reduce competition, cut costs, and raise prices, several of these companies merged into a single entity, the Utah Idaho Sugar Company.

The newly formed Utah Idaho Sugar Company was plagued by problems from the start. Capital outlays were enormous. Factories were expensive to build and required hundreds of seasonal laborers in addition to skilled chemists and other technical specialists. Worse, since beets must be processed as soon as they’re dug up, factories sat idle for most of the year, and most employees were seasonal. The company also faced constant labor shortages and always-fluctuating global sugar prices. Farmers, too, faced uncertainty, dealing with unpredictable weather and the constant threat of blight that could wipe out crops – and their income – midway through a season. Fortunately, high tariffs on imported cane sugar kept prices high enough to turn a small profit.

The Utah Idaho Sugar Company, like all beet sugar companies of its time, did not actually grow beets. For that, they paid farmers, offering contracts each year for the following season. Thus, every fall, company officials initiated weeks-long campaigns in the areas surrounding their factories, soliciting the help of business leaders, clergy, and respected farmers to convince enough farmers to grow beets to make the following year’s factory operations feasible. To do this, the company estimated the price of the next year’s beets, and both company and farmers signed contracts to grow the predetermined quantity that would be profitable for both parties. If the price of sugar fell in the intervening months, then the company risked paying the farmers more than it would earn from the sugar. But the farmers took on risk, too: labor costs could rise, weather could ruin a crop, and the prices of other, more profitable crops, could rise, too. Beet farmers had to compare the company’s yearly offer against what they might make from other crops whose prices were more volatile. 

In western Washington in 1924, farmers were unwilling to take the risk. Though beets had been grown there as early as 1896, they were poorly suited to the damp, cool climate found to the west of the Cascade Mountains. After a few early attempts in the 1890s,¹ farmers gave up, preferring dairy and poultry instead.

The first contact Western Washington farmers had with the Utah Idaho Sugar Company happened in 1922, when company representatives tried to convince dairy farmers in Whatcom and Skagit County to grow beets the following year, but without success. They returned in 1923 and were rebuffed against.  But in 1924, everything changed. That fall, the company offered contracts to farmers to grow beets, and enough farmers signed that on Christmas Day, 1924, the Utah Idaho Sugar Company announced they would build a beet sugar factory in Bellingham, Washington the following year.

What changed? Why did the same farmers who refused to grow beets in 1922 and 1923 change their minds in 1924? To answer this, we need to take a closer look at the sugar company’s main competitor: the dairy industry.

The emergence of Whatcom County’s dairy industry

Whatcom County’s dairy industry began in 1892. Though the first settlers who arrived in the 1850s brought cows with them, they didn’t market dairy products beyond their own families. Milk, cheese, butter, and cream were produced for individual consumption. There was dairy farming, but not yet a dairy industry.

This changed in the 1890s, when immigrants arrived en masse from the Midwest and points beyond. Settlements were platted and transformed into communities. Blaine was incorporated in 1890, and Lynden and Sumas followed in 1891. Four settlements on the shores of Bellingham Bay grew throughout the decade and merged into a single city in 1903. Nooksack was incorporated in 1912, and Everson in 1929. Other cities boomed and just as quickly shrank, like Goshen, Noon, and Clearbrook.

To connect these growing cities to one another, plank roads and railroads were constructed outward from Bellingham, replacing water transportation via the Nooksack River for moving people and goods from the interior to points beyond. A road was built north on a surveying meridian to Lynden (now known as the Guide Meridian or “The Guide”), and the Northwest Diagonal Road—now the Northwest Road—was built to Ferndale, Custer, and Blaine. The Bellingham Bay and British Columbia Railroad Company laid tracks from Bellingham to Everson, Lynden, Sumas, Maple Falls, and Glacier, with stops every few miles. Within a few years, it was possible to get people and goods from any point in the county to any other point in the county in a single day. A trip from Lynden to Bellingham that once took an entire day over plank roads and muddy trails was cut to a single hour: passengers boarded from the station on Depot Road and were in downtown Bellingham in less than an hour.

Thanks to the development of roads, rails, and shipping lines, the cost of transporting goods both within and outside the region plummeted. Railroads and improved river navigation made hauling lumber from the newly-cleared forests cheaper and faster. Dense old growth forests that blanketed the lowlands were cleared to meet the growing demand for lumber in regions to the south, especially in San Francisco as it was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake.

Farms expanded, and goods could be marketed more cheaply both within and outside the region. Dairy farming, in particular, became profitable. The first creamery in Whatcom County opened in 1892 in Custer, followed by others in Lynden and Bellingham. In 1895, the newly established Agricultural College in Pullman—now Washington State University—hosted its first statewide dairy institute in Lynden. The Whatcom County Dairymen’s Association was founded in 1919 and within a few years boasted more than 1,000 members. By 1924, Whatcom County had a greater proportion of agriculture devoted to dairy than any other county in the state and also had more cows than any other county in the state: 22,412 cows on 3,764 farms, or an average of 5.95 cows per farm, compared to an average of 3.76 cows per farm for the rest of the state. Farmers produced 15,979,756 gallons of milk in 1924 alone.² Despite the size of the dairy industry, farms remained small—just 47.8 acres on average³—and most farms were family-run with an added laborer or two during the busiest times of the year.

The rapid growth began to slow in the early 1920s – the same years the Utah Idaho Sugar Company faced its own challenges, and began its attempts to convince these farmers to switch from dairy farming to beets. Though the postwar recession that began in 1920 has been eclipsed in modern memory by the Great Depression a decade later, farmers began facing higher costs and slumping prices. The effects were delayed for dairy farmers compared to other industries: it took until 1923 for Whatcom County farmers to feel the effects. That year, the wholesale price of milk in Seattle fell from 11.5 cents per quart to 10 cents per quart, before reaching a low of 7 cents per quart in October of 1924.⁴ By 1924, consumer prices had fallen, too: milk was 20.90 cents per quart that year, down from 22.19 cents the year before,⁵ and cheese fell from .25 cents per pound in 1923 to .20 cents per pound in 1924.⁶

In response to falling milk prices, Whatcom County farmers shifted production to butter. In 1920, they produced 295,399 pounds of butter. Production rose sharply to 440,900 pounds in 1921, 926,593 pounds in 1922, and 1,672,345 pounds in 1923—up fivefold in just four years. By 1924, nearly 70% of Whatcom County’s entire dairy industry was devoted to butter: of the $2,163,307.00 dairy farmers earned in 1924, $1,454,306.00 was earned by butter production alone. 

Meanwhile, the output of other dairy products fell. Production of American Cheese dropped from 544,335 pounds in 1922 to 447,969 pounds in 1923. In Skagit Valley, the drop was even more remarkable, from 431,849 pounds in 1922 to only 2,027 pounds in 1923. Likewise, ice cream production in Whatcom County fell from a high of 96,352 pounds in 1922 to 75,553 pounds in 1923. Though stable butter prices spared Whatcom County dairy farmers the worst of the recession, it also exposed them to extra risk by making them dependent on the price of a single product.

And in 1924, the same year the Utah Idaho Sugar Company accelerated its attempts to convince farmers to switch crops, the price of butter plummeted.

Why the price of butter fell in 1924

1. The Chicago Strike

In January, 1924, butter prices were 44.9 cents per pound. The high price was not caused by a decrease in supply or growth in demand from American consumers. Rather, the price of butter was artificially high thanks to a strike “at a number of local points” in Chicago in late 1923. Though Chicago was far away from Whatcom County—in fact, none of the county’s butter found its way into Chicago markets—Chicago was the center of the domestic transportation network. A disruption there choked the flow of butter supplies and disrupted shipments nationally. This led to supply issues in local markets, pushing prices up everywhere.

(For the same reasons, gas prices rise everywhere in response to a cut in OPEC production, or because of global disruptions from a war in Ukraine, even if the gas you put in your car was refined from oil that came from North Dakota, Texas, or the North Slope – none of which are anywhere near an OPEC country or Ukraine.)

2. Increase in domestic production

The market responded to the lack of supply—and rising prices—by producing even more butter. Butter production in the United States, which had already grown from 406,290,000 pounds in 1920 to 549,208,000 in 1923, jumped to 591,435,000 in 1924.⁷ During the first quarter of 1924, butter production was up 4.8%.⁸ Farmers expected the rise to continue, evidenced by the cow population. By June 1, 1924, the number of milk cows was up 6% from the previous year.⁹ Farmers were planning for the future, and it seemed this future would include a lot of butter.

From the perspective of individual farmers and local markets, the scarcity of butter caused prices to go up, which prompted farmers to produce even more butter. What farmers didn’t realize, however, was that the scarcity was not caused by lack of supply, but by inefficiencies in transportation networks—i.e. the supply chain. The solution, then, was not to produce more butter. The solution was to return the supply chain–the transportation network–to its normal efficiency. When it did, the excess butter flooded local markets and caused prices to drop.

3. Imports flooded the domestic market

Meanwhile, while farmers produced more butter in response to rising prices, Europe flooded the global market with butter. Before World War One, Europe was a net exporter of butter, which came from Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. But during the war, production fell. Europe not only stopped exporting butter to global markets, but struggled to meet its own demand.

The economic situation changed in 1924. That year, the Dawes plan removed Allied troops from the Rhineland and nullified “customs barriers between the Rhineland and unoccupied territory.”¹⁰ With production increasing and trade barriers gone, the butter the United States had sent to Europe for a decade was no longer needed. Exports fell 50% in less than a year. Between July 1922 and March 1923, 7.7 million pounds of dairy products were exported from the United States. But for the same period a year later, between July 1923 and March 1924, exports had fallen to just 3.8 million pounds. This meant more dairy products remained in the domestic market, creating excess supply and pushing down butter prices from 43 cents per pound in March 1924 to 38 cents per pound in May 1924.¹¹

Not only were exports from the United States going down, but imports to the United States were going up. By early 1924, “stocks held through fear of famine” were entering the European market.¹² In fact, during February of 1924, more than 5.3 million pounds of butter were imported into the United States—over 3 million from Denmark alone, up from 1.8 million pounds in February, 1923.¹³ And imports weren’t just coming from Europe. In the spring of 1924, William Grounds of the New Zealand Dairy Export Control Board caused a minor controversy on his stop in Seattle promoting cheap New Zealand butter.¹⁴ As global supply grew, prices fell everywhere—even if very little butter produced in Whatcom County was consumed beyond the western United States. The world had become too economically integrated to spare Whatcom County farmers from the depressed prices.

4. Excess butter in storage

In 1924, the amount of butter in cold storage reached record levels. Since butter could not be consumed at the same rate it was produced, the amount in storage followed a yearly cycle. During summer months, when farms were at peak production, suppliers put the butter they couldn’t sell into cold storage. Then, during the winter, as production slowed, the butter in cold storage was sold on the market. The next year the cycle repeated. Supply exceeded demand during the summer, and demand exceeded supply during the winter, but in a 12-month period, supplies and demand were roughly equal. Thus, in a typical year, prices stayed stable.

But 1924 wasn’t a typical year. During the winter, in response to high prices, production slowed less than normal. By June 1, 1924, there were 22.3 million pounds of butter in cold storage in the United States, compared to 10 million pounds the previous June.⁸ In other words, in 1924, the industry began its peak production season with a record amount of butter already available to market. The situation worsened as the year progressed. By November 1924, at the end of the peak production season, suppliers reported a record 135 million pounds of butter in cold storage, compared to 76.5 million pounds in storage the previous November.¹⁵ Though a large amount of butter was shipped from storage that winter—enough to drop surplus butter supplies from 135 million pounds to 100 million pounds¹⁷—record amounts of butter remained in cold storage. 

Other dairy products suffered similar surpluses. For example, on November 1, 1924, suppliers reported 73 million pounds of American cheese in storage—compared with 58 million pounds the year before, and approximately 15 million pounds higher than the 5-year average at the beginning of November.¹⁸ In short, there was more supply than demand, and prices began to drop.

Dairy farming dominated Whatcom County agriculture, and butter production dominated the dairy industry. Farmers were left vulnerable as butter prices fell.

The cost of farming rises in 1924

Dairy farming in northwest Washington during the postwar years was a costly enterprise. Margins were already small and profits infrequent: one good year often compensated farmers for several bad years, and loans and deferred payments kept farmers solvent during the in-between years.

Most of the costs of dairy farming in the early 1920s went to hay, feed, and labor. A 1920 survey of Whatcom County farmers found that the cost of feed and labor alone represented three-fourths of the cost of milk.¹⁹ Production of 100 pounds of milk required, on the average, 17.7 pounds of grain, 38.2 pounds of hay, 47.1 pounds of succulents, 3.1 days of pasture, and 2.3 hours of labor.²⁰ A different survey of farms in Western Washington taken between 1917 and 1920 found that 56.4% of the cost of milk was spent on feed and bedding and 23.5% was spent on labor.²¹

Though the specifics of each survey differ, they tell the same story: most of the cost of dairy farming consisted of hay, feed, and labor. In 1924, these three costs taken together increased dramatically: the price of hay and feed went up, and though the price of labor actually fell, it wasn’t enough to make up the difference. Taken together, it was much more expensive to be a farmer in 1924 compared to previous years.

Hay

At the beginning of 1924, hay represented 13.83% of the cost of milk production for Western Washington dairy farmers.²² Dairy farmers in Western Washington purchased an average of 2,872 pounds of hay per cow each year.²³ Roughly three-quarters of this hay came from local sources, but most of the rest was imported from points south and east, primarily the Yakima Valley.²⁴

It wasn’t just that Whatcom County farmers were buying a lot of hay. They were also buying more hay per cow than farmers in any other county in the state. This is because, among counties in Washington, Whatcom County has the shortest growing season: cows that spend more time inside need to eat more hay. According to a 1922 statewide survey, Whatcom County dairy farmers could put their cows out to pasture only 6.5 months per year of pasture, compared with 6.8 months in Snohomish County to the south, and over 8 months in southwestern Washington.²⁵  

The need to purchase extra hay during these fractions of months may seem insignificant, but in an industry of narrow margins they make a difference. And in 1924, these margins became even smaller. That year, supply issues caused the price of hay to rise. Hay production in Washington state fell to 1,864,000 tons, down sharply from 2,365,000 tons the year before.²⁶ The price of hay rose from $11.78 per ton in January of 1923 to $13.05 per ton in January 1924.²⁷ It kept climbing: by September 1924, the price of hay in Washington state climbed to $15.00 per ton.²⁶ The decline in hay production was caused by a decrease in yield per acre: from 1.58 tons per acre to 1 ton per acre for wild hay; 2.35 tons per acre to 1.73 tons for tame hay; 2.55 tons per acre to 2 tons for clover hay; and 2.1 tons per acre to 1.5 tons for timothy hay.²⁸ Whatcom County farmers felt the effects first.

Feed

The price of feed rose, too. At the beginning of 1924, the Northwest Dairyman and Farmer estimated that per cow, grain amounted to 14.91% of the cost of producing milk.²² Though no record indicates exactly what Whatcom County farmers paid, it’s easy to infer: Wheat prices rose from 84 cents per bushel to 130 cents per bushel. Oats were up from 49 cents per bushel to 56 cents per bushel. Barley prices rose from 60 cents per bushel to 97 cents per bushel. Although grain prices on the whole remained depressed from the highs in 1920 (mostly caused by the inflated price of wheat), the sharp year-over-year increase in the price of grain nevertheless added to the costs of dairy farming in 1924.²⁹

Labor

Labor represented 24.1% of the total cost of producing milk.²² Most dairy farmers hired one laborer for every 25 to 30 cows they owned³⁰ and approximately 121 hours of labor was required per cow per year.³¹ Though no  data from the period exists for Whatcom County, a survey of Skagit County farmers between 1917 and 1920 found that 1.9 hours of labor was needed to produce 100 pounds of milk during the winter, and 1.3 hours was needed during the summer.³² In total, 64.2% of work on dairy farms was done by hired labor in the winter, and 59.2% in the summer.³³

The price of labor fell during 1924. Between October of 1923 and October of 1924, the price of a day’s labor on northwest Washington dairy farms dropped from $4.38 per day to $3.17 per day, roughly the same as the $3.17 per day farmers spent on labor during 1922.³⁴ 

Unfortunately, the falling cost of labor was not enough to offset the rising costs of hay and grain. Together, the sum of the costs of labor, hay, and grain—which accounted for roughly three-quarters of all costs—rose dramatically in 1924.

Rising Debt and Declining Farm Value

In addition to rising costs, northwest Washington farmers also faced other financial difficulties. Of the 3,287 farms in Whatcom County in 1924 that were operated by their owner, 1,500 of these owed mortgage debt.³⁵ Even at the peak of the postwar agricultural boom when dairy prices were the highest, four out of every twenty farmers in Whatcom County operated at a loss.³⁶ In other words, even in the best economic times, many farmers were losing money, and many more were only one bad season away from defaulting on their debts.

Worse, beginning in 1924, it became more difficult to sell a farm. That year, the decade-long growth in farm values slowed. Although the value of Whatcom County’s farms had nearly doubled from $12,859,250 in 1910 to $24,947,470 in 1920, it dropped slightly to $24,825,127 in 1925.³⁵ Skagit County was worse: there, farms were valued at $15,939,740 in 1910 and at $25,273,537 in 1920, but fell to $22,381,589 in 1925.³⁷ 

Why Whatcom County farmers decided to grow beets in 1924

Let’s pause and briefly summarize the plight of Whatcom County’s dairy farmers in 1924. In the previous years they had devoted more of their production to butter, as the price of butter rose while the price of other products fell. This put them in a vulnerable position when the market became oversupplied relative to demand, pushing butter prices down. The oversupply was caused by transportation issues caused by labor strikes, prompting local markets to mistake lack of local supply for lack of total supply; an increase in domestic production; an fall in exports to and a rise of imports from Europe; and an increase in the amount of butter in cold storage. Meanwhile, as prices fell, the cost of hay and grain rose–costs Whatcom County farmers felt before their neighbors to the south. Worst of all, Whatcom County farmers could not afford a bad year: many who were already losing money in the best of years faced grim prospects for their farms, and many more risked defaulting on debts. For many, selling the farm was not an option, because declining farm values meant many farmers wouldn’t be able to pay their debts even after a sale: they owed more than the farms were worth. 

As the year 1924 progressed, not all farmers faced dire situations, but many did—and certainly more did than their neighbors in counties to the south. For these farmers, the prospect of growing beets as an alternative to dairy farming looked appealing for two reasons. First, the Utah Idaho Sugar Company guaranteed payment in advance. After watching prices fall and costs rise, many farmers craved the certainty that came with a payment twelve months in the future. Second, supplementing dairy farming with a new crop could hedge against uncertainty in the coming year. Would dairy prices keep falling? Would costs keep rising? Nobody could predict the answer—but a farmer could predict the money beets would make twelve months in the future. Many farmers who had no experience growing beets were willing to accept this risk in exchange for the certainty of payment at a predictable price.

Even though for three years—1922, 1923, and 1924—representatives from the Utah Idaho Sugar Company tried to convince Whatcom County farmers to grow beets, it wasn’t until the fall of 1924 that farmers were willing to try a new crop. It should now be clear why the same farmers who rejected the sugar company in 1922 and 1923 were now willing to reconsider at the end of 1924.

The Utah Idaho Sugar Company didn’t need to convince all dairy farmers to grow beets. Of the roughly 3,200 farmers in Whatcom County, the sugar company needed to convince a few hundred of them to grow a couple dozen acres each. During 1922 and 1923, the period of high prices and low costs, few farmers were willing to take the risk of growing a new crop. Some turned to poultry, fruit, and other crops. But in 1924, just enough dairy farmers—235, to be exact, or roughly 7.3%—were struggling to the extent that planting a new crop felt less risky than attempting to soldier through another year of depending solely on dairy farming. (That same year, more farmers—roughly 10%—were operating at a loss!)

The Utah Idaho Sugar Company had an easier time convincing Whatcom County dairy farmers to grow beets than farmers further south—specifically, in Auburn, Vancouver, and the Willamette Valley. The shorter growing season in Whatcom County—and its accompanying higher costs—meant that dairy farmers of Whatcom County faced these challenges earlier than their neighbors to the south. Margins were small everywhere, but they were smallest of all up north. Farmers in Whatcom County were quicker to take a risky bet on beets because they had more to lose if they didn’t.

On Christmas Day, 1924, the Utah Idaho Sugar Company announced its intention to build a factory in northwest Washington. A few weeks later, they announced it would be in Bellingham. Local bankers and the Bellingham Chamber of Commerce predicted that sugar beets would one day be as important to the local economy as dairy. But in the years to follow, the company’s success was always dependent on the dairy industry. Between 1925 and 1938, when the factory closed, the beet sugar company succeeded only when the dairy industry suffered. When dairy farming became difficult, farmers grew beets instead, only to switch back to dairy farming when dairy farming became profitable again. It was not high beet prices that convinced farmers to grow beets; it was low dairy prices that convinced farmers to grow beets to hedge against a risky economic future. Thus, dairy farming would always determine the success or failure of the Utah Idaho Sugar Company in northwest Washington, but beets, on the other hand, would never determine the success or failure of the dairy industry.

***

The next article in this series will explain how the Utah Idaho Sugar Company partnered with local businesses, bankers, churches, and community groups to convince farmers to grow beets. These groups served as important intermediaries between an unknown outside company and local—and often (rightly) skeptical—farmers.

The article after that will take a closer look at the Utah Idaho Sugar Company itself. The farmers were taking on a risk in growing beets, but the company was taking its own risk by investing in a new region. After all, beets had not been successfully grown in northwest Washington in almost three decades. What prompted the company to leave areas in the Intermountain West where it had succeeded, and why was it looking to western Washington?

1. Outside Seattle and Tacoma, western Washington was not settled until the 1890s. It’s worth noting that the first farmers in a region were experimenters: there was no body of knowledge about what crops grew well. For a decade, farmers did nothing but figure out what grew and what didn’t.
2. Census of Agriculture, 1925, 384–385.,
3. Census of Agriculture, 1925, 373.
4. USDA 1924 Yearbook, 880.
5. USDA 1924 Yearbook, 870.
6. Crops and Markets 1:2, February, 1924, 65.
7. USDA 1924 Yearbook, 882.
8. Crops and Markets 1:7, July, 1924, 233.
9. Crops and Markets 1:9, September, 1924, 308.
10. Crops and Markets 1:10, October 1924, 358.
11. USDA 1924 Yearbook, 886.
12. Crops and Markets 1:2, February, 1924, 78.
13. Crops and Markets 1:4, April, 1924, 133.
14. Northwest Dairyman and Farmer 38:10 October 1924, 191.
15. Crops and Markets 1:11, November 1924, 382; Crops and Markets 1:12, December, 1924, 447.
17. USDA 1924 Yearbook, 884.¹⁶Crops and Markets 1:12, December 1924, 447.
18. Crops and Markets 1:11, November 1924, 382.
19. The Cost of Producing Milk and Dairy Farm Organization in Western Washington, 1922, 20.
20. The Cost of Producing Milk and Dairy Farm Organization in Western Washington, 1922, 25.
21. “Unit Requirements for Producing Milk in Western Washington,” USDA Bulletin No. 919, December 10, 1920, 19. Though popular histories of family farming assume only families were working on the farms—fathers and sons, usually—in reality both men and women shared most of the work, along with one or two hired laborers.
22. Hunt, L.A., “What It Costs to Produce Milk,” Northwest Dairyman and Farmer 38:2, February, 1924, 35.
23. “Unit Requirements for Producing Milk in Western Washington,” USDA Bulletin No. 919, December 10, 1920, 6. We’ve already seen that Whatcom County farmers needed 38.2 pounds of hay to produce 100 pounds of milk.
24. The Cost of Producing Milk and Dairy Farm Organization in Western Washington, 1922, 23.
25. The Cost of Producing Milk and Dairy Farm Organization in Western Washington, 1922, 13.
26. Crops and Markets 1:12 December 1924, 405
27. Crops and Markets 1:1, January, 1924, 11.
28. Crops and Markets 1:24 December 1924, 404-411.
29. Crops and Markets 1:12, December 1924, 427.
30. “Unit Requirements for Producing Milk in Western Washington,” USDA Bulletin No. 919, December 10, 1920, 2.
31. “Unit Requirements for Producing Milk in Western Washington,” USDA Bulletin No. 919, December 10, 1920, 6.
32. “Unit Requirements for Producing Milk in Western Washington,” USDA Bulletin No. 919, December 10, 1920, 5.
33. “Unit Requirements for Producing Milk in Western Washington,” USDA Bulletin No. 919, December 10, 1920, 12.
34. Crops and Markets 1:10, October 1924, 331.
35. Census of Agriculture, 1925, 379.
36. The Cost of Producing Milk and Dairy Farm Organization in Western Washington, 1922, 31.
37. Census of Agriculture, 1925, 378.