PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 487 



So if any of you have some time to waste and will turn back to this 

 "State Co-operative Shipping Associations," you will find in the back of 

 that a statement made as to the necessity of welding these local associa- 

 tions into a state-wide service organization in order that that work might 

 be performed. We believe that the experience of two more years since 

 the time that was written has reinforced the conclusions which we had 

 at that time as to the necessity of such an overhead organization, if the 

 local associations are to be supported and served and kept in a healthy, 

 progressive, growing state. 



The time, I think, has arrived and it seems to me that in these annual 

 meetings which are being held today and tomorrow, history is going to 

 be made. We know very well that since the time we made that survey 

 the number of shipping associations has declined. We have not made a 

 re-survey, and we don't know how much. We know that the volume of 

 stuff shipped co-operatively is considerably less today than it was then. 

 Well, that is some of the wind going out of it, that is true; but the ques- 

 tion which is up right now is this: Are we going to, right now in this 

 very important transition period, are we going to say that the co-opera- 

 tive shipping movement is really a sound, sensible, sane sort of way for 

 farmers to get together and handle their live stock shipments, and put 

 the business on a solid basis and let it build forward, "not too rapidly, 

 but build forward solidly and permanently and to achieve really pro- 

 gressive results? That decision has got to be reached, I think, because 

 if no decision is reached, I think there is hardly a question but that we 

 will see the gradual further decline of the co-operative shipping move- 

 ment. It don't disappear. It can not possibly disappear, but it will drop 

 back to a situation in which we have a few local associations which get 

 on a permanent basis, but which do not actually do anything very signifi- 

 cant for the live stock shippers of this state. They would make some 

 small local savings, but they would not do those real big and signifi- 

 cant things that the co-operative society started out with. 



It seems to me very encouraging that the State Federation of Co-op- 

 erative Shippers has accomplished as much as it has through this past 

 year. It seems to me very fortunate also that there is a getting together 

 of this young organization of the live stock industry with the old associa- 

 tion which has been established and has rendered so much service to the 

 live stock shippers of the state back over a long period of years. I 

 hope that the fellowship may be made stronger, that the support of the 

 old association will be rendered in every tangible form to the younger 

 association as time goes on. I want to suggest in that connection what 

 it seems to me is aside from this matter of building up a commercial 

 organization in which the local associations may be federated, through 

 which they may select and train and promote managers, through which 

 they may start a study of their business. I think in addition to that 

 there are several very practical important problems, jobs which are up 

 to such an organization. 



Once you get to the point where you begin to have a stream of regu- 

 lar business statements coming from the association, you can begin to 

 analyze the items of expense, and the whole co-operative movement starts 

 out to reduce the expense item. Once you begin to analyze the items of 



