Page Four
THE OABOLINA UNION FAEMEB
[Thursday, April 17, 1913.
^ “^fic
CAROLINA
-^VnioM
Farmer
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY
BY THE UNION FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY.
C. A. EURV, - IVfanaging Editor.
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Raleigh, N. C.
April 17, 1913.
Building From the Ground Upward
S TARTING at the top to build has killed more
co-operative movements than all other mistakes
combined. We have preached it over and over
again that we must start at the bottom of the lad
der to climb and that co-operation must be a
growth. It can never be established in its larger
meaning until there are thousands of successful
local co-operative units in operation, for under the
larger system, the local units (local distributing
warehouses) must be depended upon as links in
the chain, as the only means accessible to co-op
erative members, for the Individual member must
come in personal contact with a part of the sys
tem in his own neighborhood. Right along this
line Editor Poe, of the Progressive Farmer, makes
the following timely comment under the quota
tion, “Despise Not the Day of Small Things”:
“Now what are the practical beginnings of
such a spirit of co-operation and brotherhood
as I have suggested? It seems to me that
they lie directly in the matter of getting bet
ter farming methods and better marketing
methods right in your own neighborhood and
right with the farmers whose land adjoins
yours. The sort of co-operation that means
simply taking stock in some big State-wide,
South-wide, or nation-wide so-called enter
prise is never going to save us, is never go
ing to make real co-operators of us.
“The plain truth is, that such enterprises
just now are more likely to keep us from ever
becoming co-operators. In co-operation,*as in
everything else, we must crawl before we can
walk, and we must puzzle out our A B C’s be
fore we ever try to spell ‘baker’ or ‘incompre
hensibility.’ So these big schemes, if tried
too early, are likely to prove failures—in
some very striking instances, have already
proved failures and have sorely set back the
cause of co-operation in all such communi
ties. We should not attempt these big enter
prises before we have first learned the prin
ciples of co-operation in smaller ones, before
we have first discovered by experience what
men are capable of managing co-operative en
terprises, and before we have the big chain of
local enterprises to back up the greater ones.
In co-operative business, as in other business,
the only sure way to succeed is to take the
man who has been faithful over a few things
and make him ruler over many! take the man
who has succeeded notably with a township
enterprise and put him in charge of a county
enterprise, and take the man who has
wrought well for a county and let him serve
a State.”
Like Its predecessors, the Farmers’ Union has
wasted many efforts in trying to build from the
top downward. Reference to minutes of various
State and national conventions will disclose the
fact that we have had an abundant variety of at
tempts not only at State-wide, but nation-wide co
operation and without exception all such efforts
were huge failures. After much wasted means
and wasted effort in fruitless attempts of that kind |
the organization is beginning to find itself and Is
getting down to the “day of small things.” Hard
ly a week passes now without the incorporation of
some new local Farmers’ Union enterprise.
How the A. & M. College May Help
TT^E NOTED with pleasure, a few weeks ago,
* ’ that a member of the A. & M. Coliege force
at Raleigh proposed to assist farmers in buying
better horses direct from the Middle West. This
is a step in the right direction. If the College
will enter that field it will establish a closer rela
tionship with the farmers and greatly increase its
efficiency and usefulness. It has done splendid
work as far as its activities have been extended,
but here is an opportunity for this splendid in
stitution to bring producer and consumer closer to
gether, In last week’s issue of Rural New Yorker,
Mr. M. Floyd, of Texas, refers to the wonderful
achievements of the Kansas State Agricultural Col
lege since it established the “college exchange.”
Mr. Floyd says:
“For many years farmers have looked
somewhat askance at the State agricultural
colleges, contending, with some show of rea
son, that the ‘book farmers’ were not in full
sympathy with the pressing needs of the real
soil tillers. One of the most just criticisms of
these institutions has been that they devote
all their energies to the increasing of produc
tion without paying any attention whatever
to the problem of profitably disposing of farm
crops. Every year thousands of tons of ag
ricultural products are allowed to rot in the
fields for want of a remunerative market, and
in the face of this condition farmers have very
reasonably contended that their most pressing
need was not to know ‘how to produce more’
important as that is—so much as it was
‘how to sell more.’ While farm products are
rotting in the fields and orchards many peo
ple are actually suffering for want of these
very same products; thus we see that this
marketing problem is simply a question of
bringing producer and consumer together. To
do this in the most economical way possible
and at the same time demonstrate clearly to
the taxpayers that at least one agricultural
college was alive to the most vital problems
of country life the Kqnsas State Agricultural
College a few years ago organized an ex
change through which buyers and sellers
might easily get in touch with each other. At
first only corn and hay were handled, but the
idea proved so popular that during the first
season apples were added to the list and more
than 350 carloads have been sold through the
college exchange.”
Going further into details of the Ka.nsas plan
Mr. Floyd explains:
“To demonstrate clearly how the plan
works, let us take the case of a feeder with a
bunch of fattening steers in the pen near To
peka. It is of prime importance of course,
for him to secure his feed as cheaply as pos
sible, for right on this point hinges his pos
sible profit or loss. So instead of securing his
feed from a dealer in the city this feeder
communicates with the Agricultural College,
stating exactly the kind and, quality of feed
he wants. When this inquiry reaches the col
lege Mr. J. H. Miller, director of the Exten
sion Department, who has charge of this
work just at present, turns to his files and
quickly ascertains what farmers in the feed
er s territory have the kind of feed stuff call
ed for. and places the feeder in communica
tion with them. Thereafter the business Is
transacted directly between buyer and seller.
The college makes no charge for its service
and very naturally, as the middleman is en
tirely eliminated, the buyer gets his feed at a
very satisfactory figure, while the farmer re
ceives more than he could have secured on
his local market. This work so far has been
carried on by the college without any appro
priation to pay for same, consequently the
work has been done by a few of the willing
officials without extra pay; but in the near fu
ture a competent man will be placed in
charge of the work and allowed to give his
whole time and attention to it. It is then the
intention to handle produce of all kinds and
organize local co-operative exchanges
throughout the State and through these and
the central exchange at the college a vast vol
ume of business can be handled. Then it can
no longer be said that the Kansas State Agri
cultural College is not alive to the pressing
need of better marketing methods.
How anxious the buyers and sellers are to
get together has been demonstrated by the
success of this exchange; and of all the plans
for bringing producer and consumer together
this is probably the most promising because
it can be started with such little trouble and
expense. Every State agricultural college in
the Union might well follow Kansas’ excel
lent example.”
It occurs to us that there never was a better
field in which agricultural colleges might appro
priately carry its work to farmers and never a
more opportune time to adopt this practical eco
nomic idea than now.
“Who Gels the Fanners* Profits?”
'T'HIS is the question that engaged the attention
of the “National Conference on Marketing and
Farm Credits” at Chicago last week. Peter Rad
ford, President of Texas Farmers’ Union, said:
“We are getting only thirty cents a bushel for po
tatoes which sell for seventy-five cents and $1.00
here.” Warren Foster, of Massachusetts, gave it
to the conference this way:
“Potatoes we raise on truck farms in Cum-
mington, Mass., are rotting in the fields,” said
Poster. ‘In Worthington, a town practically
contiguous to Cummington, they sell for
$1.50 a bushel. There seems to be need for
co-operation between East and West.”
While that conference was being held farmers
in Florida were refusing to haul cabbage to the
station because they couldn’t get but three dollars
a ton for them, while at the same time Florida
cabbage was being sold by retail dealers in North
Carolina for $70 a ton! Here’s another extract
from the report of the Chicago conference which
makes interesting reading. It is a part of a paper
submitted by the President of the University of
Tennessee:
“While some progress has been made in
teaching farmers how to grow more crops,’
the paper reads, ‘little has yet been done to
aid him in getting fair prices for his produce.
To illustrate the gross injustice of our pres
ent marketing system, I may point out the
fact that at Laredo, Texas, in our onion grow
ing district, one day a short time ago, onions
were sold for two cents a pound; the next
morning Laredo onions were sold in the open
market at Austin, Texas, at fifteen cents a
pound. In this transaction, as you will see,
the commission man, the public carrier and
the retail dealer divided 650 per cent of the
price paid to the grower.
Again tomatoes were sold one day at two-
thirds cents each in Palestine. Texas, and the
next morning were sold at Austin at five cents
each.
“In each of the instances cited the produc
er received only thirteen per cent of the final
selling price, while eighty-seven per cent was
divided among the railroads and the sellers.
The glaring injustice of such a system is
made more apparent by a comparison with
the results of co-operation in marketing farm
products in Denmark. In that country, the
co-operation society handles, sorts, according
. to size and packs eggs for three and one-half
per cent; shipping and selling cost for 4 per
cent, leaving the farmer 92 1-2 per cent of
the final price paid by the consumer.
“The need of co-operation in securing
cheap money for the farmers in the South
west is as great as the need of obtaining lar
ger returns for his produce. In many places
in Texas and Oklahoma the farmer is yet
obliged to pay interest of from 10 to 25 per
cent and even these rates are better than buy
ing on time from the country merchant. In
some sections without banking facilities,
credit from the country merchant is the only
resource.”
This “National Conference on Marketing” was
the first one of the kind ever held in this country.
So far as any direct results are concerned the con-
terence will not be worth anything. Constructive
co-operation must begin among the rank and file
with small groups of men who live in the same
locality. But conferences of this kind are worth
something in an educational way. The greatest
trouble with big conferences is the tendency to
drift into a dreamy proposition to ask the “gov
ernment” to lift us out of trouble. And the poli
ticians and dreamers are always on hand to ma
nipulate the conference and conventions, if pos
sible. Co-operative self-help isn’t a governmental
proposition. It depends upon voluntary co-opera
tive efforts.