REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 391 



pervision of the Secretary of Agriculture, has done away with many of the 

 practices followed in the old days of the original co-operative commis- 

 sion company that we undertook to operate in Chicago. This law has 

 furnished the protection we lacked then. 



No Discrimination Against Company 

 The first four weeks in Chicago we operated almost exclusively with 

 the packer (buyers because the other fellows were afraid to trade with 

 us. But that is all done away with. Everybody trades with us, without 

 regard to whether we have a membership in the Livestock Exchange. 

 The market is open to us, and we trade with the eastern order buyer, 

 the shipper and all. We are getting along just the same as the other 

 firms. Our salesmen sell to shippers and eastern order buyers just 

 like the old-line firms are doing. For a number of weeks our sales of 

 hogs to outside buyers ranged as high as 45 per cent. 



Now, this organization has been placed in Chicago for the benefit of 

 the producers of the country. It is your organization. It doesn't belong 

 to dny board of directors, to the manager nor to anybody else. It be- 

 longs to the producers of the country. It is there to assist you in the 

 co-operative marketing of your livestock. And I want to impress upon 

 your minds here today the importance of patronizing your own organi- 

 zation. That is the big thing. If you don't help support it your influ- 

 ence goes to help to destroy it. After the Farm Bureau Federations 

 have gone as far as they have in establishing these co-operative mar- 

 keting agencies you certainly cannot refuse to patronize them. 



Salesmen Are the Best Obtainable 



Next comes the question of equipment. Our salesmen are among tne 

 very best to be found in the yards — they don't take a back seat in any 

 of the departments. Our head cattle salesman bought for Swift and 

 Company about fifteen years. He was also with Clay Robinson sev- 

 eral years, resigning his position to go into business on his own account, 

 and was operating for himself when we took him over. Our butcher 

 cattle salesman is a man of the same type, although younger. He has 

 not been in the yards so long, but has handled cattle for ten or twelve 

 years, and has been connected with some of the best firms at the yards. 



Our hog salesmen are the same class of men. Our head hog man has 

 more than twenty years' experience in the yards. He knows hogs. On 

 January 10 we took on our third hog salesman, took him from Morris 

 and Company. He had been one of their hog buyers for eight or ten 

 years. Our hog business increased to such an extent that we had to 

 add a third alley and a third salesman to handle it. That is the class 

 of men who handle your livestock when it goes to the Chicago Live- 

 stock Producers' Association. Men of high caliber, men who know live- 

 stock, men who can sell your stock for all that it is worth. 



Refund Not the Important Thing 



I suppose you want to know what benefit you are going to get out of 



this thing. You men who have been patronizing it know that you will 



get a part of your commission back. From the very first our house at 



Chicago has operated at a profit. Some months a bigger profit than 



