PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 491 



present system. They had pushed their half-cent increases along here, 

 in a substantially equitable manner until this territory over here was 

 paying 33 ^ in some areas and 34 and 35 in areas all of which were pay- 

 ing 36 before, and still are paying 36 on hogs. 



Some of you probably remember some of the reasons which entered 

 into that. They started out to make out a case on cattle, hogs and sheep. 

 They were interrupted. Certain other interests intervened. You decided 

 — I suppose because you are steer feeders in the main — that you would 

 fight for cattle rates and let somebody else take care of the hog and 

 sheep people, the sheep interests not being so large and the hog interests 

 being very large but not being organized at that time as they are today. 

 Mr. Doty said co-operative shipping is largely hog shipping, so the hog 

 shippers are organized. 



When your case was presented, Judge Prouty was the man who was 

 in charge. At that time they established the principle, approaching it 

 from the producers' side, that this differential of 11 cents should be zoned 

 out over the state in such a way as to be equitable to the producer, de- 

 pending on what section of the state he lived in, or, in other words, his 

 distance from the terminal market. That was recognized. The railroads 

 were instructed to prepare a method. Some details were argued over, 

 some compromises were made, but the essential principle was recognized 

 by the Interstate Commerce Commission, was upheld by them, and has 

 been recognized on several subsequent occasions in the case of class 

 rates. 



Live stock rates, as you know, are a commodity rate. But that same 

 principle has been applied in the case of several subsequent hearings 

 before the Interstate Commerce Commission and has been upheld. The 

 principle upon which you fought and got recognized at that time is 

 thoroughly incorporated into the rate-making philosophy today, and so 

 you not only got your cattle rate at that time, but you laid a splendid 

 foundation for any subsequent work which may be done in the interests 

 of the hog men — the shippers of hogs and sheep. 



You will agree that what I have had to say about rates is a com- 

 paratively small part of my story, but I want to, in closing, just empha- 

 size that thing — that you are not going to get problems of that sort 

 brought to a showdown and presented satisfactorily unless you have 

 some business organization on the part of the different classes of pro- 

 ducers which is organized on a professional basis, which is organized on 

 a program basis, and which has the organization and the class of em- 

 ployes proportionate to the amount of the product and the value of the 

 service which is involved; and it seems to me that we stand at the part- 

 ing of the ways. 



We have had a sort of unprofessional organization for the live stock 

 shippers of this state. It seems to me that we have worked along with 

 tnat unprofessional, young kind of organization about long enough. We 

 can approve very heartily of the excellent things that they have done 

 under a rather severe handicap, but the importance and the size and the 

 value of that industry means that the time has come when it has got 

 to step forward from those excellent small beginnings into a really big 

 business type of organization, if it is going to justify its existence, if it 



