them having their suppers paid for by 

 money taken from the public treasury. 

 We will never have the America that is 

 intimated by the resourcefulness of this 

 country until we are able to maintain an 

 equalization of opportunity and to estab- 

 lish a suitable purchasing power for all 

 who produce and create the basic wealth 

 of this country. That is the thing which 

 must be done! 



I want to jump to Denmark for a 

 moment. Denmark is a great agricultural 

 land. In 1880 the Danish farmer was 

 receiving 32 per cent on his products of 

 the final cost price, while the distributor 

 and the food speculator were getting the 

 Other 68 per cent. But today the Danish 

 farmer is receiving 68 per cent of the 

 final cost price while all the other agen- 

 cies involved in the sale and distribution 

 of the farm products are getting only 32 

 per cent! And that's how it should be 

 in the United States! What is it in this 

 country.' Of course you are a city audi- 

 ence and so you wouldn't know much 

 about these things. But then, you and I 

 are dependent upon agriculture, and so 

 it becomes a vital problem to each and 

 every one of us. In the United States 

 at the present time it is almost exactly 

 what it was in Denmark in 1880! And 

 after the co-operative system was put into 

 working order in the field of agriculture 

 in Denmark, an alliance was formed 

 which included every allied industry. 



The cooperative movement has turned 

 out to be a greater success in the field of 

 agriculture than perhaps in any other. I 

 don't know of any part of our own eco- 

 nomic life in America which needs re- 

 adjustment more than does agriculture. 

 There certainly is no group in the eco- 

 nomic stmcture of these United States 

 that has less to say about its own affairs 

 and about what it will get for its own 

 materials than has the agricultural group. 



The farmer is dumb — literally as well 

 as figuratively — when it comes to deter- 

 mining what he shall get for his work 

 and for his products. There isn't a single 

 farmer in America who has anything to 

 say about these matters! The farmers 

 raise their hogs, for instance, and then 

 they will be told either to kill them or 

 to market them; but whatever else they 

 are told, the conclusion of the whole 

 affair will be that they will be told what 

 they are going to get for their hogs. The 

 same sort of policy is being applied to all 

 other farm produce. Speculators, gam- 

 blers, and racketeers in food in the 

 United States are in the same category as 

 Al Capone and Roger Touhy. One of 

 the most damnable things a man can do 

 in this world is to speculate and gamble 

 in the matter of food 



You won't hear or read very much in 

 the newspapers about the co-operative 



CO-OPERATIVE DEPARTMENT STORE 

 IN STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 



movements, either here or in other lands. 

 They did their very best during Kagawa's 

 visit to America, in every city which he 

 visited, to belittle and to give false em- 

 phasis to his philosophy of co-operation, 

 while they sought out the more non- 

 essential things that he had to say about 

 religion, etc. ! What he had to say about 

 co-operation was taboo! My friends, 

 there is none of that in Scandinavia! 

 They may disagree entirely in their fund- 

 amental principles with those of Kagawa 

 or of any other peoples or nations, but 

 there is a certain spirit of fair play which 

 exists quite definitely in all their proceed- 

 ings! 



Well, the people of Sweden decided 

 to go to work upon this program, and 

 they carried out their decision. One must 

 not forget that Sweden is a combination 

 of both agriculture and industry. Be- 

 sides being engaged to a very large ex- 

 tent in agricultural pursuits, the Swedish 

 people are great producers of iron ore 

 and many other minerals. They found 

 themselves up against the problem of 

 monopoly. And the Social Democratic 

 Party of Sweden (which is in control of 

 the government and out of whose ranks 

 came the present Prime Minister) has 

 done what.' The record speaks for it- 

 self. There is today in all of Sweden 

 practically no unemployment. I don't 

 believe there are more than a thousand 

 unemployed persons in that country right 

 now. Why is that so? For the reason 

 that I shall be willing to challenge any 

 university professor or any economist in 

 this assemblage to prove to me that it is 

 not true — and I make this statement 

 without any hesitation: That you can 

 never cure a depression in a country 

 until a way is found to restore the 

 PURCHASING POWER of the people 



TO the people of that Nation ! I would 

 like to hear some of these learned econ- 

 omists dispute that successfully! They 

 will make the effort when their masters 

 "crack the whip," but it will only be a 

 feeble effort at best! 



Sweden restored purchasing power 

 by guaranteeing, through the co-opera- 

 tives and through the social-democratic 

 philosophy that settled down upon the 

 country, the opportunity of her people 

 to buy back that which they had pro- 

 duced ! And it worked ! That's where 

 lies the fallacy of the whole thing at 

 home. 



The idea for our Federal Farm Loan 



system came from Denmark, a country 

 about as large as Southern Illinois, says 

 The Hammer, official publication of 

 Monroe County Farm Bureau. This 

 little country with 90% cooperatives 

 came through the depression better than 

 the United States with only 10% co- 

 operation. When the Farm Loan sys- 

 tem was introduced some 20 years ago, 

 interest rates to farmers went down 2 

 to 3 percent. A court fight entered the 

 picture some time later and no loans 

 were made. Interest rates, during this 

 period, again shot up two percent. 

 Down they came again as soon as the 

 Supreme Court gave a decision favor- 

 able to cooperative financing of farm 

 loans. 



Say Credit Sales . . 



Violates Cooperation 



Selling to its members on credit is a 

 primary cause of the downfall of many 

 cooperatives in the behef of V. M. Ruck- 

 er, assistant professor in agricultural eco- 

 nomics, Kansas State College of Agri- 

 culture, who was a guest sp>eaker of Illi- 

 nois Farm Supply Company at a recent 

 managers' meeting in Champaign. 



He expressed the opinion also that 

 when an organization is set up to give 

 customers credit it violates the principles 

 of cooperation. An organization on such 

 a basis is likely to "write off " its books 

 at least 5 percent of its business, and 

 create an additional 5 percent expense 

 for increased bookkeeping, collection 

 costs and interest on working capital. 

 Thus cash members are deprived of 12 

 or 15 percent dividends that could have 

 been refunded on their patronage. 



As evidence supporting his opinion, he 

 gave the record of one cooperative m 

 Kansas that had written off an annual 

 average of 15,000.00 in "bad debts" for 

 the last five years. Then it went on a 

 strictly cash basis and within 18 months 

 was able to set aside a reserve equal to 

 a monthly cash patronage dividend of 

 $1,000. 



SEPTEMBER, 1936 



19 



