'In the main, canned dog foods retail at 6c, 8c or 10c per can. The 6c can is purchased because it is cheap. Actually, the food in the 6c can costs nearly twelve times as much per unit of nutritive value as does the food in the 10c can, and six times as much as in the 8c can.

The fixed costs that any can of dog food must carry, regardless of its retail price, are shown in Table No. 1. The variable costs that must, of necessity, account for the difference in the retail price are shown in table No. 2...

...

Verily cheap dog food is both a delusion and a snare; a delusion for the owner of the dog and a snare for the dog, and both suffer from is as does also the retailer, whose margin of profit for handling it is inadequate. The manufacturer, alone, profits and he in no greater degree than in putting up a can of good food.

Of course it does not follow that every can of dog food that retails for 8c, has 2c of food value in it, nor that every can that retails for 10c has approximately 4c of food value in it; but it is possible for it to contain these amounts if manufactured by an honest manufacturer whose cost of selling is not too high, and who puts inside of the can, the maximum food value permitted by the limitations of costs and retail price; but no manufacturer, however good his intentions, can put anything of food value worth considering into the 6c can unless he be a philanthropist supported by an endowment.

To expect something of food value in the 6c can of dog food is to expect something for nothing, and to place oneself in that class, of which it is said: "There is one born every minute."' (13)