464 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



said, "you can not get it; you can not put in a shipping association 

 there, because the stock buyer has the Ottumwa market — we can not get 

 it." 



The manager says, "I will ship my first car there." Now we have 

 two hundred members, and we are shipping there. We have got the 

 same kind of a deal up at Clear Lake, just eight or nine miles away from 

 a big packing plant, that had one of the strongest buyers located at 

 Clear Lake. Today they have two hundred fellows signed up, shipping 

 seventeen cars in exactly thirty days' time. The manager says he is 

 shipping twenty-six cars in less than two months. There are a good 

 many men here who could tell you the same thing. I am just telling you 

 that much to show you that this job can be done. We have got a lot of 

 good shipping associations; we have got a lot of good managers; we have 

 got a lot of good boards of directors — good work, but they are in the 

 minority — that's the thing I want to bring out, and these other points 

 really go to the founding and reorganization of them. If we don't do 

 that, they won't be shipping much. But we want to do just what I said 

 and believe, and if we don't do that, men, then this co-operative shipping 

 business will not live long. We will never get any farther than we are 

 right now. The little shipping association out in the country is the abso- 

 lute foundation to all the market work that will ever go on further down 

 the line. We can not get away from that. If we don't build the founda- 

 tion well, we can not expect the shipping firms in their work that is 

 being done, to get anywhere. I think there is one thing we have been 

 carrying in mind a little too strong — maybe not too strong, but at least 

 overshadowing the other thing. We have been talking big propositions — 

 the thing away down yonder that needs to be settled and taken care of. 

 And that is all "right. That ought to be done; but while we have been 

 doing that, we have overshadowed the thought and idea that there are a 

 lot of things back home that need to be taken care of, or else the solu- 

 tion of other things will never be possible. That is the way I look at 

 this thing. We have got those things to take care of, and let's clean our 

 own houses first — each of them, and then perhaps we will get somewhere. 



Now, one of the biggest pieces of work we have done in the state 

 organization has been the thing Mr. Horlacher alluded to — get into the 

 local markets. We have got about twenty of them in Iowa, or right 

 across the border. Packing plants and concentration points would not 

 any one of them handle any business as a shipping association, but hunt 

 up the stock buyer and do business with him and refuse to do business 

 with us. In northern Iowa, that condition was very acute. We felt this 

 thing would work out, if the farmer was willing to do his share. We got 

 the producers' contract and we got this stuff going out. You know that 

 when you were a kid in school and you got into a fight with one of the 

 other fellows — which we frequently did; you know that if he pounded 

 with both fists and hit all over the body he didn't bother you very much; 

 but the minute he began sending his fists on your nose, it began to have 

 a telling effect. We began to figure that perhaps that was equally true 

 of an organization. 



We took the territory up around Mason City and Waterloo and Albert 

 Lea and Fort Dodge, and we started in — not to tell you details, because I 



