34 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Union took the lead in this, largely because of the influence of C. H. 

 Watts, a prominent cattle grower and livestock dealer. The Farmers' 

 Union Livestock Commission was organized in Omaha on April i, 1917. 

 This firm began business with the modest sum of $2,000, which it had 

 borrowed from the Nebraska Farmers' Union. But when it applied for 

 membership on the Omaha Livestock Exchange it was denied because it 

 issued patronage dividends. 



This ban failed to check the growth of the Omaha firm. After eighteen 

 months of business it had surpassed all but one of the fifty commission 

 houses on the Omaha market, and by the end of the second fiscal year, 

 it had showed a profit of 56 per cent. The Nebraska Farmers' Union, after 

 making payments into a sinking fund and deducting other expenses, re- 

 turned to its shippers forty-six cents on every dollar it had received in com- 

 missions. From 1921 on it was the leading firm on the Omaha market. 



This was merely the beginning of the Farmers' Union livestock-market- 

 ing program. A second agency was set up at St. Joseph, Missouri, just 

 six months after the Omaha house began business. In August, 1918, a 

 third agency was established by the Nebraska Union on the Sioux City, 

 Iowa, market; and in October of the same year, a fourth house was opened 

 with the cooperation of the Kansas Farmers' Union. Late in 1919 a fifth 

 firm began operations in Denver under the joint sponsorship of the Ne- 

 braska and Colorado Unions. In 1922, when the Iowa Farmers' Union 

 bought the Equity houses on the Chicago and South St. Paul markets, 

 the number of houses jumped to seven. The Farmers' Unions of Iowa and 

 Missouri had also acquired an interest, along with the Missouri Farmers' 

 Association, in a firm in St. Louis. The building of these agencies en- 

 couraged Union spokesmen to think in terms of building a national sales 

 organization, the Farmers' National Cooperative Livestock Marketing As- 

 sociation, which never materialized. 43 



Obviously the Farmers' Union had made considerable headway in both 

 the local and terminal marketing of livestock before the American Farm 

 Bureau Federation began to project itself into the field. Once the latter 

 had made known its plans to establish the National Livestock Producers' 

 Association system, through the efforts of the Committee of Fifteen, a 

 clash between the two was imminent. This committee, much to the con- 



43. Ibid., pp. 109-16. 



