Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / Dec. 12, 1912, edition 1 / Page 4
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Page Four THE CAROLINA UNION PARMER [Thursday, December 12, 1912. CAROLINA -^VnioM Farmer PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY THE UNION FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY. Subscription Price: One Dollar a Year. 49“ All subscriptions are payable in advance, and the paper will be discontinued when the time expires, unless renewed. The date on the tag which bears the name of the subscriber indicates the time to which the subscription has been paid. J. Z. GREEN, Marshvllle, MRS. E. D. NALL. Sanford. C, A. EURY. . > Editor Home Department General Manager ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES JOHN D. ROSS, 812 Hartford Building, Chicago. L. E. WHITE. Tribune Building, New York. Entered as second-class matter March 21, 1912, at the Post- office at Raleigh, North Carolina, under the Act of March 3,1897. Raleigh, N. C. - - December 12, 1912. EDITORIAL COMMENT. STATE ORGANIZER-I/ECTTURER’S ADDRESS. Since our last annual meeting we have charter ed 2 44 new Local Unions. Since the beginning of the organization in this State we have issued charters to 2,346 Local Unions. Seven County Unions have been organized this year. These are Brunswick, Chowan, Perquim ans, Transylvania, Tyrrell, Edgecombe, and Mitchell. County Unions have been established in all the counties of the State except Camden, Carteret, Currituck, Dare, Jackson, New Hanover, and Polk. In all the counties of the State this year a lit tle more than ten thousand new members have been added to the organization. This growth in membership is almost equal to that of 1911. There is yet a great deal of unoccupied terri tory that can be organized. In answer to a recent communication which I sent out to local secreta ries, I have on file the names of more than a hun dred localities in which, it is thought, that Local Unions may he organized as soon as appointments can be arranged. INDIVIDUALISM OF THE FARMER. It has been no easy job to organize farmers. It will be a still greater task to keep them organiz ed. The natural environment of farm life is the kind that produces individuality. It is not easy for a farmer to transact business with his neigh bors. Independence in handling his affairs is a tradition that runs back through generations. He prefers to conduct his business man to man, as his ancestors have done, and nearly all co-operative efforts among farmers in the past have been born only of desperate necessity. The individuality of the farmer—the inclination that makes him per sist in transacting his business independent of his fellow workers—renders him an easy subject for exploitation by commercial interests. It is not a difficult job for even a novice in “the tricks of the trade’’ to play the business game with him and win. Stubborn and uncompromising individuality has been the weak point in the make-up of the na ture of farmers that has caused the rural districts to be ultimately reduced to a system of tenant slavery in most countries of the earth, and this has resulted, too, under many and various forms of government. DESPERATE NECESSITY EXISTS NOW. We are living now under the most extravagant system of distribution that the world has ever seen. When the multiplicity and duplication of distributing agencies cause the consumers to pay three times the original price received by pro ducers, co-operative distribution becomes not only a desperate necessity, but a continuous economic necessity that must engage the attention not only of the rural population, but consumers in towns and cities also. Co-operation isn’t patented or copyrighted and it embodies economic principles that should be applied everywhere, and if consum ers in cities will begin to establish co-operative distribution and eliminate the tremendous waste that comes through extravagant duplication of service (which we formerly proudly referred to as desirable "competition’’) they will find that co operation is far more economical than competition especially the kind of competition which costs six ty cents out the consumer’s dollar to maintain. MUTUAL SELF-HELP. Voluntary co-operation is the coming redemp tion. We must work out a feasible system of self- help, or our children will find the doors of oppor tunity closing, and their children will hatter in vain at doors already shut. The best social life can be found only in communities of home owners. It can not he found in communities where the rental system’, or the wage system of labor obtains. I become more firmly fixed in the conviction, as the years pass, that co-operation is the one solu tion of the problem facing us. To talk now of the dissolution of capitalistic combines is rank folly. You can about as easily break down the great bus iness organization as you can turn back the torrent of Niagara with a pitch fork. In some way busi ness will organize for the greatest efficiency—will produce at least possible cost, will ship at least cost, will market at least cost—and you can’t stop the working of that economic law by asking the courts to make the trusts be good! It is the height of folly to tal}?; about the return to that compe tition in industry that means economic waste, for while mergers and combines, otherwise known as trusts, are pernicious and socially oppressive, yet they have been evolved under stress of human necessity, and in some respects they are the most efficient means of producing and distributing com modities the world has ever known. However op pressive they may he, they can only be superseded by some form of organized industry equally as ef ficient, to say the least. The trouble with the trusts and corporations is not with their efficiency, but with the spirit of autocracy which dominates them in the interest of the few and to the detri ment of the many. How to bring about an equal ly efficient organization, without the power for evil possessed by trusts, can only be found in co operation. It should be the great mission and purpose of the Farmers’ Union and kindred organ izations to lay the foundation that will support and accelerate the building of that great super structure, the co-operative commonwealth, which must come to supersede the corporate tyranny un der which we are struggling today, if mankind is to continue its onward march of progress. WHY AMERICA IS BEHIND. There are, perhaps, several reasons why we are fifty years behind many of the progressive Euro pean countries in co-operative self-help, hut I be lieve one of the greatest hindrances has been our incurable belief that we are going to accomplish important and fundamental changes through leg islation. This is one elementary illusion which we ought to get out of minds. It relaxes efforts to es tablish voluntary co-operation. It has impaired the usefulness of many farmers’ organizations and has cost the life of some of them. It is much eas ier to propose a legislative remedy, so-called, than to go down among the rank and file with patience and perseverance enough to teach, in practical op eration, the fundamental principles of co-operative self-help. You will find a hundred men who are perfectly willing to impose upon themselves the arduous and patriotic task of doing the “uplift ing’ act through some process of legislative work where you will find one soul that wants to help democratize our economic system through voliin- tary co-operation. "What we need above every thing else now is a democratized form of business to accompany a democratized system of govern ment. ( OERCIVE AND VOLUNTARY CO-OPERATION. In my plea for voluntary co-operation I do not mean to ignore the fact that there are two kinds of co-operation and that each kind has its import ant place. That other kind of co-operation, which I refer to briefly is that sphere of co-operation which comes through governmental agency, state, local or national, in the field of natural monopolies, which embraces those pursuits which are not at all times subject to the constant pressure of com petition. When such monopolies are privately ow'ned they are odious and oppressive, but as pub lic monopolies, honestly administered Tn the inter est of the people, they become a blessing when confined to their proper sphere. Among all the vast enterprises of the world the postoffice system is an example of public monopoly that ranks in efficiency and economy as the best managed busi ness, compared with which no great private cor poration can take favorable rank. Among other public and natural monopolies are the steam rail ways, street cars, gas and water works, electric lighting establishments, canals, roads, bridges, harbors, docks, water powers, etc. The problem involved in these cases is not, shall we have a mo nopoly, but shall the monopoly be public or pri vate. Government enterprises as applied in own ing and controlling natural monopolies is fre quently referred to as paternalism to discredit it, but it is coercive co-operation applied where vol- untai^y co-operation can not be applied. After we leave the domain of natural monopolies almost the entire remainder of the industrial field is the proper sphere for voluntary co-operative efforts, and this includes the business of agriculture, man ufactures and distributing agencies. DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF CORPORATIONS. All of the destructive power of jbint stock cor porations lies hidden in two ideas—dollar voting in stockholders’ meetings and dividends upon capital stock only. Here is where the difference between corporation and co-operative methods comes in, and we should, through the Farmers’ Union, clear ly define what “co-operation’’ is, and having defin ed it, then proceed to work out our definition into practice and into law. We need a statutory defini tion of the term in order that the legal distinction between the corporate and the co-operative insti tutions may be as definite and clear cut as are their business practices. As yet Wisconsin seems to be the only State in the Union which has a law that legally defines “co-operation” and provides for the organization of shareholding co-operative corporations on a basis of one vote only for each member, regardless of the number of shares own ed, (no proxy voting) and dividends to be declared in such manner as to distribute profits in propor tion to patronage, or service rendered, after hav ing allowed capital the legal rate of interest or hire for its use in the business. The joint stock corporations that we have in this country give money the power to vote in stock holders’ meetings instead of men, and in distribut ing the benefits they take the results of patronage and labor and give it all to money—to capital in vested—and the men whose business and labor create the profits get nothing. In the truly co-op erative corporations human beings reap the bene fits and money becomes a servant employed and is allowed its hire, at the legal rate of interest, and that Is the legal wages money commands in the market. It can be hired even outside the co operative corporation on that basis, and in the in terest of equity and justice and economy that is all it should be entitled to. The principle of li®' ited hire for capital is good because it is eternally right! MU.ST BEGIN WITH SMALL GROUPS. If, through our enthusiasm we attempt to start co-operation on a Igrge scale we will learn by such
The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Dec. 12, 1912, edition 1
4
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