that agriculture thrives on stability. 

 The speculator, he>^id, thrives on in- 

 stability, has rio thought for the fu- 

 ture. Farmers suffered in the past be- 

 cause no one knew or cared of their 

 difficulties. An encouraging develop- 

 ment is that the public is taking an 

 interest in farmers and their problems. 

 Things are looking up in co-operative 

 marketing, he said. 



S. S. Tanner of Minier said that if 

 the Farm Bureaus and the elevators 

 would co-operate a fair price could be 

 set on f^rm products, and that price 

 secured. "Perpetuating the Farm 

 Home" was the subject of an address 

 by Mrs. A. R. Sabin, Delavan. 



A. J. Surratt, State Agricultural 

 Statistician, gave a much needed talk 

 on government crop reports. Many 

 have a very hazy idea of the value of 

 these reports. Mr. Surratt impressed 

 his audience that crop reports are 

 helpful, the work is done fairly and 

 impartially. 



Dr. L. J. Norton, College of Agri- 

 culture, Urbana, ably discussed "Ef- 

 fects of the Tariff on Prices of Farm 

 Products." Dr. Norton recently ap- 

 peared before the House Ways and 

 Means Committee, Washington. He 

 gave a report on the hearings relative 

 to the tariff on agricultural commodi- 

 ties. Other speakers who made inter- 

 esting talks were W. W. Martin, Fed- 

 eral Land Bank, St. Louis; F. S. Betz, 

 editor of the Farmers Elevator Guide; 

 President, D. H. Allen. 



Farmers Can Do Much 

 To Help Themselves 

 Says James C. Stone 



Can't Legislate A Poor Business Man 

 To Prosperity He Declares 



THE farmer must put his own house 

 in order first before asking for 

 help, James C. Stone of the Burley 

 Tobacco Growers Cooperative Asso- 

 ciation, Lexington. Ky., told dele- 

 gates to the anni^ meeting of the 

 • American Farm Bureau Federation. 



"You can't legislate a poor busi- 

 ness man to prosperity," said Mr. 

 Stone, "neither can you paas laws 

 that will be beneficial to the farmer 

 until he does certain things himself 

 in order to be able to take advantage 

 of the legislation." 



"Before we farmers are entitled to 

 help we should demonstrate to those 

 we want help from that we have done 

 everything we could ourselves con- 

 sistent with good business to put our 

 house in order." 



More Ardent Tlian Ever 



Mr. Stone related the story of the 

 Kentucky tobacco raisers' disastrous 

 experiment in cooperative marketing 

 but declared that today he is a more 

 ardent believer in farmer cooperative 

 marketing associations that he was 

 seven years ago. 



"The Burley Tobacco Growers has 



demonstrated," he said, "that cooper- 



~%tive associations properly organized 



and properly managed are sound both 

 economically and financially and will 

 produce beneficial results both to the 

 grower and to the community as a 

 whole. 



"They are not miracle workers and 

 will -not accomplish the impossible. 

 They are not price fixing organiza- 

 tions and if operated as such will fail 

 and should. 



"The principal thing farm organ- 

 izations do for the farmer is to give 

 him more trading power through 

 unity of action, thereby putting him 

 more an on equality with the buyer 

 and enables him to feed his commod- 

 ity to the market in an orderly way 

 without congestion and in quantities 

 that the market can consume at a 

 fair price. 



Only Seasonal Surpluses 



"We have heard much in the past 

 few years about farm surpluses. To 

 some extent this is a misnomer. We 

 have seasonal surpluses, due largely 

 to the weather, but no surpluses over 

 a period of years. 



"Cooperative marketing would solve 

 this if the farmer would organize and 

 stay organized. I am convinced that 

 if the farmers of this country today 

 would organize commodity cooperative 

 marketing associations for all their 

 crops and live stock, select honest and 

 competent men to run them and then 

 stand behind them through thick and 

 thin, fair weather and foul and boost 

 their . own organization instead of 

 knocking it, they wouldn't be asking 

 for aid, they would be giving it to 

 the other fellow. 



"Should seasonal surpluses develop, 

 and they will, they can only be 

 handled through marketing associa- 

 tions, financed, if needs be, by some 

 agency of the government, so that the 

 farmer can get his money promptly. 

 The necessity of this character of 

 financing would diminish from year 

 to year in relation to the better un- 

 derstanding and cooperative action on 

 the part of seller and buyer." 



Co-ops Must Improve 



Service To Succeed 



FINANCIAL standing of farmer- 

 owned cotton cooperative mar- 

 keting associations is so favorable 

 that in many instances the coopera- 

 tives are able to obtain from big 

 banks lower interest rates on loans 

 than can be obtained by directors of 

 these same institutions, says C. O. 

 Moser, president of the American 

 Cotton Growers Exchange. 



"There is no mysterious virtue or 

 superiority in cooperative marketing 

 as such compared with private mar- 

 keting, that renders it a panacea or 

 cure-all for farmers' troubles," de- 

 clared Mr. Moser, "but it does offer 

 the vehicle by which farmers may 

 effectively organize the marketing 

 operations of their business on the 

 basis of equality with industry. The 

 £:rowth or decay, success or failure of 

 cooperative marketing will be deter- 



mined by whether the cooperatives 

 are able to do the task of marketing 

 in a better way than private hand- 

 lers." 



"In all the essential phases of the 

 cotton industry there is a complete 

 utility of genuine interest between 

 the cotton grower and the spinner, 

 but this is not always true between 

 the private handler and the con- 

 sumer," Mr. Moser claimed. As an 

 instance he asserted that the specula- 

 tive system of marketing cotton dis- 

 courages quality production. 



He stated that both according to 

 the opinion of mills and the studies of 

 scientists, the quality of American 

 cotton has been steadily deteriorat- 

 ing. 



"This," he said, "is only the fruit 

 of our speculative marketing system 

 which puts the premium on the lowest 

 quality, by buying on the basis of a 

 community's average quality." 



"The cooperatives, contrary to this 

 method, employ their own expert 

 classers, assemble the cotton into 

 pools according to its commercial 

 value and return to each member the 

 full benefit of the consumer price, ob- 

 tained according to the quality with 

 each member ships." 



He related how the farmers in the 

 interest of reducing operation costs 

 have established cotton gins, tackled 

 the problem of obtaining fair and rea- 

 sonable freight rates, erected mod- 

 ernly constructed warehouses, at 

 strategic points, that save millions of 

 dollars annually in distribution and 

 in addition, by reducing the fire haz- 

 ard, have lowered insurance costs to 

 a minimum. 



"Since we have adopted the policy 

 of concentrating in modern ware- 

 houses," he stated, "our fire loss has 

 been negligible, and insurance rates 

 reduced until they also are neglible, 

 as compared with the rates paid dur- 

 ing the first year of our experience. 

 The difference is that our rates on 

 our best warehouses are only about 

 ten to twenty per cent of the less 

 desirable structures generally used by 

 the cotton trade." 



Regarding the financial phase of 

 cotton marketing, he pointed out that 

 the cotton crop represents huge sums 

 of money values and that large finan- 

 cial facilities are required in financ- 

 ing the crop movement. 



"Where cooperation touches fi- 

 nance," he said, "it has been prop- 

 erly said that the result is a miracle. 

 Generally speaking, cotton farmers 

 are people in relatively poor financial 

 circumstances, yet collectively they 

 are able to finance their marketing 

 operations at lower rates of interest 

 and the most favorable terms ac- 

 corded the oldest and best established 

 business concerns or corporations of 

 the country. 



"It is no uncommon thing for a co- 

 operative, having thousands of 

 farmer-members to borrow money 

 from local banks or banks in the large 

 financial centers, at a lower rate of 

 interest than are the directors of the 



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