460 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



Some of you may not like the things I have to say, but I hope you will 

 do like I usually do when I am told things that I do not like, I always 

 reserve the right to my own interpretation of it, and I usually interpret 

 it favorably to myself; so it's all right. 



Now we have in Iowa somewhere around six hundred and fifty ship- 

 ping associations, more or less — nobody knows exactly how many; 

 but there is one thing that is startling to me, and it is information that 

 sometimes I don't like to scatter around either; I think we have got less 

 shipping associations now than we had a year ago or two years ago. 

 Here is another startling thing: We are shipping less cars per associa- 

 tion today than we were a year ago or two years ago. That is informa- 

 tion that it is well worth thinking about. What is the reason for that? 

 Well, there are a lot of answers to that question. In the first place, co- 

 operative shipping is young. We haven't had it with us very long. It 

 is a sort of overgrown individual. In 1920, over three hundred shipping 

 associations were organized alone in that year. Probably half of the 

 shipping associations we have today were organized in 1920, and then 

 quite a large bunch of them in 1921, and a good-sized bunch in 1918. 

 They have not had a great amount of experience. We haven't a very long 

 past to look back to and profit from. And then there is another factor: 

 These shipping organizations have been organized by every Tom, Dick 

 and Harry all over this state. They have been organized by the exten- 

 sion department of the college, by county agents, by the Farmers' Union, 

 and by the Grange, and some of them have just been organized by differ- 

 ent farmers' clubs, and some of them just grew, you know, like Topsy did, 

 only not on a corn stalk. Then a lot of them have been organized by 

 independent old line commission men, who usually had only this one 

 thought in mind, that we want to organize a gang here in this state that 

 will ship us some live stock. In practically every case, no matter who 

 organized them (I have organized a lot of them myself), in practically 

 every case, the shipping association has been organized, and then we 

 have run off and left it out on an island, to either sink or swim by its 

 own efforts. The extension department, it is true, has been doing con- 

 siderable work, but it has only been in the past year or so that they 

 really did the greatest amount of work. But they are handicapped. 

 They couldn't do a lot of these things that need to be done in a commer- 

 cial way. It was not until several years ago, as Mr. Horlacher told you, 

 some shippers got together and saw there was a need for some organiza- 

 tion, state-wide in character, a commercial organization, to get together 

 and try to straighten out the tangle we are in in co-operative shipping. 

 As a result of that, we have been organized by every Tom, Dick and 

 Harry. There is not much said in the constitution and by-laws. We 

 have by-laws of all kinds and colors. Lots of associations don't have 

 them, and at that I sometimes think they are a lot better off than many 

 of those that do have, because they .would be better off without some of 

 them. We haven't given much thought to the matter of economy, or 

 efficiency, or anything of the kind. We have just wanted to get together 

 and ship live stock. That is all. And the thought that has been fore- 

 most is making up a car find shipping it out somewhere. They hadn't 



