402 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 



None of these, however, have ever gotten beyond the local field. They 

 have been fostered under a number of heads or agencies with no coordina- 

 tion or cooperation between them. We have not had a unified cooperative 

 movement in America but the hit and miss cooperation. 



The American Farm Bureau Federation is not and never will be a mar- 

 keting organization. Its business, or mission is largely promotional and 

 educational. We have always taken and still hold that our mission toward 

 cooperative associations under whatever name or organization they may 

 be functioning is that of helpfulness and not domination. Actuated by 

 this spirit we have established committees whose members comprise rep- 

 resentation from various successful organizations, for the study of grain, 

 live stock, dairy, fruit and wool marketing. The reports of the grain and 

 live stock committees have already been made, to joint meetings of various 

 farm organizations, accepted and national marketing associations are now 

 being perfected. 



Opposition is being strenuously made from two sources — one from the 

 already firmly entrenched and established distributive agencies with 

 whose profits cooperation will interfere. More money has been raised to 

 defeat this work than the American Farm Bureau Federation has yet spent 

 in all its activities. The second line of objection is internal. It comes in 

 the main not from the farmers, but from the leaders of farmers' move- 

 ments who too often are more interested in their jobs than in the welfare 

 of the farmers themselves. 



That my own skirts may be clear and that the American Farm Bureau 

 Federation may never be accused of building up a self-perpetuating, or a 

 political machine, I am resolved to return at the earliest moment to the 

 ranks and carry out the aspirations of my life up in Marshall County. 



In spite of opposition from without and dissension from within, the 

 United States Grain Growers are making continual progress. A leader in 

 Minnesota said to me the other day that the movement was ordained of 

 God for the welfare of mankind, else it could not continue to grow in 

 membership and favor in the face of this opposition. 



The reports of last Saturday night shows that the United States Grain 

 Growers have under five-year contract 36,500 members, and an annual 

 marketing of nearly 80,000,000 bushels of grain. These contracts in the 

 hands of any old line grain company would be easily worth $2,000,000, 

 but they are not transferable. 



The work of the Central Cooperative Live Stock Commission Company 

 at St. Paul, fostered by the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, as well 

 as the Farmers' Union Coopertive Live Stock Company at Omaha, indi- 

 cates the immense savings of the livestock shipper which are to be had 

 through cooperative selling. The work of the Livestock Committee of 

 Fifteen will be pushed forward at all terminal markets by the National 

 Livestock Producers' Association, the directorate of which has been se- 

 lected by the Executive Committee of the American Farm Bureau Federa- 

 tion. The stirring of dry bones of the terminal exchanges already indi- 

 cates the fight is on. Material saving in producers' selling costs will 

 result. 



It is my conviction that cooperation offers the way of escape from the 

 threat of socialism. Even some farmers who would quickest resent the 



