TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 485 



change at Omaha doing a big business, and practically every state that is 

 organized maintains its state exchange or purchasing agency. We are 

 also worlving along the line of selling produce. The buying is the easiest 

 and most easily attended to. One can join the Union tonight and make a 

 purchase tomorrow, but not quite so easy on the selling of produce. 



That is a slower process. We come up against long-standing monopo- 

 listic tendencies, and we have a hard fight to make inroads into those cor- 

 porations and exchanges. In the line of stock selling we are simply mak- 

 ing a start. At Omaha, Sioux City, St. Joe, Kansas City and Denver the 

 Farmers' Union has live stock commission companies doing business. It 

 is co-operative in management. When you ship to them you pay exactly 

 the same commission that you would pay to any other commission firm, 

 but at the end of the year the expense of doing that business is figured 

 and all that is received above the actual cost of doing the business is 

 pro rated back to the individuals who paid it in. 



Last year, the first year for the Omaha house, they returned to their 

 customers 38 cents on every dollar that was paid in commissions. This, 

 the second year, is not ended yet, and will not be for sixty days, but the 

 manager told me recently that if the balance of the year proves as pros- 

 perous as it has been so far, that he would be able to return some 57 or 

 58 cents on every dollar of commission that he had received. That is co- 

 operation in selling. You are getting your commission at cost. 



This is the line we are working along. If you should go to Omaha and 

 happen to mention the Farmers' Union Commission Company in the offices 

 of some of those old-line companies, why, they would feel sorry for you. 

 They would think what a horrible mistake somebody was making. But 

 you can judge for yourself, gentlemen, from the facts as I have stated 

 them. 



The Farmers' Union Commission Company started in less than two 

 years ago in Omaha. They couldn't get a room in the Exchange Building 

 and had to establish offices in a building on the hill over on the east side 

 of the viaduct. But now they have offices in the Exchange Building. When 

 the extra large influx of cattle from the ranges started last fall to those 

 old companies that had loaned money on those cattle the Farmers' Union 

 Commission Company held third place as to the total number of carloads 

 of stock shipped to Omaha. 



Those old firms that had been doing business for a longer time than 

 some of us can remember were outstripped, and only two of them were 

 ahead on all classes of stock combined. On hog shipments it has held 

 first place, handling more hogs than any other firm there. These things 

 tell us that there must be quality of service there. They can say what 

 they please, but the results tell finally. You can fool a man a time or 

 two, but you cannot fool him all the time. The houses at Sioux City, St. 

 Joe and Kansas City are all on a paying basis. The one in Denver was 

 started last June and is now on a paying basis notwithstanding its youth. 



In the matter of grain we had a fight. It was impossible for the Ne- 

 braska men to buy a seat on the Omaha exchange. They wouldn't sell to 

 them from the fact that they wanted to pay back the trade benefits, but 

 the Omaha men went into the legislaure and secured a law that com- 



