PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 529 



he was selling sheep, he and his brother, for sixteen other firms; I said, 

 all right, we will handle them on the same basis. On the Saturday before 

 we started up on Monday, I saw a notice in the local paper that he had 

 never negotiated with me because the other firms said, "If you sell for the 

 Central, you can not sell for us." I had to get another sheep salesman. 

 Two of our alley boys came to me and said, "We can not work for you, 

 because the other fellows say if we go to work for you — and you won't last 

 long — we can never get a job with them again, and we can't go to work 

 for you." On Monday morning, when we were ready to operate, every 

 single scalper, trader, commission man, outside buyers, little Jew cow 

 buyer, and everybody that ever bought a hoof of live stock, outside of the 

 packer buyers, wouldn't look over our alley fences. And if it hadn't been 

 for the support of the farmers, we would have had a real problem. If the 

 farmers had sent us in only five or eight cars of live stock instead of 

 seventy-one for the first week, we would have had a real problem. What 

 do you suppose we would have done with that dozen dairy cows that would 

 have come in? What would we have done with a half dozen or ten steers 

 of one class, with a dozen other classes on our hands? We couldn't make 

 up a carload lot to send to the feeders. We sorted this stuff and dealt 

 with a steer buyer from Iowa; we had four or five from Illinois, two dairy 

 cow buyers from Wisconsin, and they were on the job to buy our stuff. 

 We could sell them a carload at a time, and we moved them off at fair 

 values, and from that day on we have had more country buyers — I think 

 I am safe in saying this — than any ten firms in the South St. Paul market, 

 and most of the days, I believe, as well as all of them put together. Why? 

 Because we can sell the live stock. I mentioned the stocker and feeder 

 department. Now, don't think that all of our cattle go from the commis- 

 sion association into the stocker and feeder department, because every 

 hoof that we can sell direct from the farmer shipper to the farmer buyer 

 is sold that way, but only the live stock where the local shipping associa- 

 tion wants its returns at once and won't wait until we sell that stuff, is 

 passed through the stocker and feeder department, and this word has gone 

 to the country and you buyers in Iowa, and the buyers in Illinois and in 

 Indiana, are continuing to come to us for business. I have a lot more to 

 tell you of the experiences we have gone through, but I am not going to 

 detain you any longer about this problem. 



The South St. Paul Farmers' Commission Association is here to stay; 

 it is here to grow, and I predict that before long, not a month, probably, 

 or two months, but within a year, 50 per cent of the business at South St. 

 Paul will be going through the Central Commission Association, because 

 our farmers are co-operators; because they have faith in their own organi- 

 zation ability, their own business ability, and I want to see every Corn 

 Belt Meat producer, every true live stock producer in this state, put his 

 shoulder to the wheel in the development of a co-operative marketing asso- 

 ciation at Chicago, and I want to tell you gentlemen that the thing is going 

 to succeed bigger than most of you can conceive of. All we need is good, 

 true co-operative effort. (Applause.) 



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