486 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



state now have organizations through which those figures are being 

 studied by a surveys committee on that comparative basis; and if you 

 were to talk to any of those managers, I think that every one of them will 

 say they are learning more about the business from the scanning of their 

 own reports, and then by comparing those reports with the reports of 

 other associations in that county, than they ever dreamed was to be 

 learned in that business. 



Now I want to say just a word in that connection as to how far we 

 can or should go in connection with that work. It is very obvious that 

 the experiment station or extension service is not authorized to go into 

 the business of running co-operative shipping in this state. I think that 

 thing is perfectly clear. On the other hand, we know it is apparent that 

 there is a problem to be investigated there. We felt and still feel that 

 we were amply justified in going in and rendering such service as we 

 could through a trained staff of specialized workers, such as we have 

 been building up there. We could not indefinitely supervise the work of 

 shipping associations in these seven counties or any other counties. In 

 other words, that was first an investigational problem, the work of the 

 experiment station. It was, second, a demonstrational problem. 



We had to take those results out and show them, just as the results 

 of feeding or any other work are taken out to show the state what they 

 mean, and the value of those results, and the benefit which can be se- 

 cured by following those methods. It is not our function to carry through 

 the commercial operations in which those results will be applied in day- 

 to-day operations; and you will see that in developing my subject in this 

 way, I am explaining somewhat our attitude with reference to co-operative 

 organizations and development. 



We feel that there is along just these lines a work of supervision and 

 of assistance, if you please, of overhead service, such as the head office 

 of a big company renders to all its parts, which must be done outside of 

 the local village where the shipping point is located. That is the con- 

 clusion which has been impressed upon us at every stage of our study. 

 You can not expect a local group of farmers to find the right sort of a 

 manager and get him started on the right sort of business methods, and 

 keep him lined up to give the service with reference to a very large 

 number of pressing problems which are coming up in the operation of 

 that association. In other words, the local association can not go it 

 entirely alone. 



I think that the experience of shipping associations in this state, 

 running back many years, running, if you stop and study the records, 

 away back into the Grange days even, is that there were many, many 

 failures and comparatively a small number of successes that ran over 

 any long period of years. A very large number of associations were 

 formed a few years ago which made a promising beginning, but whose 

 future stability often depends upon being welded into some sort of a sys- 

 tem which holds them in their place and enables them really to get the 

 benefits of big business organization, which I take it was the goal to- 

 ward which they started at the beginning, and the only way througn 

 which co-operation is going to bring any real substantial business saving 

 to them. 



