496 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



the Co-operative Live Stock Shippers. We are certainly glad to 

 welcome them with us, and at this time I am going to ask their presi- 

 dent to stand up and be introduced to you. You men who do not 

 know the president of the Federated Co-operative Shippers, I take 

 pleasure in introducing to you, Martin E. Sar. (Applause.) 

 Gentlemen, I will now read my annual report. 



ANNUAL ADDRESS OF A. SYKES, PRESIDENT. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: 



We wish to welcome you all to this annual gathering and hope that you 

 will feel perfectly at home and endeavor to get the most possible out of 

 the addresses and discussions as they are presented by the different 

 speakers. 



I feel that it is needless for me to state to this body of men that we, as 

 farmers and stockmen, are passing through the most crucial period of our 

 history. When we assembled here just one year ago in our annual meet- 

 ing, we were suffering very severely from the financial blow that had 

 struck us during the early fall of 1920. But all were hopeful at that time 

 that something would be done speedily that would stop the ruinous down- 

 ward trend of prices on grain and live stock, and that we would soon re- 

 cover. But this was not the case, and in our sad disappointment we have 

 witnessed the prices paid for our wares as agricultural producers cut in 

 two in almost every instance during the past year, and as a result of this 

 condition, five billion dollars have been taken from the purchasing power 

 of the farmers and stockmen of this country, and today our government 

 seems absolutely helpless to devise ways or means to increase the price 

 of the products of the soil or to relieve the terrible burdens which are 

 bearing down upon the producers of this country, and which, if allowed 

 to continue, will in the near future create a rural peasantry in this coun- 

 try similar to that existing in most of the European nations. 



In my judgment, there is but one logical way to relieve this distressed 

 condition and revive business and start the wheels of commerce again 

 moving, and that is to increase the purchasing power of the farmer by in- 

 creasing the price of what he has to sell and reducing the price of what 

 he must buy. It is a monstrosity and a horrible outrage upon the farmers 

 of .this nation for them to be forced to pay the outrageous prices for cloth- 

 ing, shoes, farm implements, harness and almost every article which they, 

 of necessity, must have in order to continue their operations. At the 

 prices which still prevail all over this country, something is radically 

 wrong with our economic structure when it takes three times as many 

 bushels of grain or twice as many pounds of live stock to purchase the 

 same kind of article or the same kind of implement that it took prior to 

 the war. Manufacturers, jobbers and retailers should blush with shame 

 if they would stop to consider the distressed condition of agriculture and 

 then remember the outrageous prices they are filching from the farmers 

 for the very necessities which they must tiave in the conduct of their 

 business. 



I believe it noteworthy at this time to call attention to the fact that 



