TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 401 



farmers have been having so much trouble in starting these or- 

 ganizations, but we have seen the handwriting on the wall as a 

 result of the terrible war we have gone thru and We are not 

 going to stop and consider our independent position, but we are 

 going to get together and put the force of our organization be- 

 hind these projects that we want to pull across. 



I heard a little story about co-operation that seems to me illus- 

 trates very nicely one of the reasons why we should organize. 

 Going out to the farm one cold morning, down at the feed lot, 

 by the hog house, I saw the old sow and a dozen pigs in the pen 

 there. It was a chilly, cold, morning, and the old sow was in the 

 nest and the pigs had nestled all around her ; they were all snug- 

 gled up close together, and I said to myself "There's one of the 

 best examples of co-operation I have ever seen. Those twelve 

 pigs are all nestled up close together there ; they are organized 

 to keep warm, and every mother's son of those pigs was there 

 not so much to warm his brother, but to keep himself warm. 

 (Laughter and applause). 



Now, don't think you are sacrificing anything when you are 

 coming to this organization to help your neighbor out. You are 

 not doing that ; you are coming into this organization to save 

 your own bacon. (Laughter and applause). That's the proposi- 

 tion. 



It seems to me if we studied these questions and thought them 

 over, w^e would not have any doubting Thomases in our organ- 

 ization. The day has passed when we can tickle the soil with a 

 hoe and have it laugh with the harvest. In fact, it has been 

 laughing the last few years with too much harvest, and that has 

 been one of the things that troubles us. It is not production that 

 we are worrying about so much now, but it is the marketing of 

 that product that we want to solve. It seems to me that the 

 big thing in this organization at this time is to keep our thoughts 

 centered on the correct end of this proposition. We have men 

 in the United States today who will stand upon the platform and 

 tell a body of people that the farmers should have nothing to say, 

 nothing to do, with the marketing end of their business in the 

 United States. I think we had one very large, brainy man at 

 Chicago a few days ago who made the statement that it was the 

 farmers' business to produce, and his business (he was a grain 

 dealer), the business of the commercial interests to attend to the 

 distribution. I want to take issue with that man. I think he 



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