AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



The record of the Central was nothing short of spectacular. Before 

 it began business, W. A. McKerrow, a man who had organized many 

 local shipping associations in Minnesota, was hired to secure the affiliation 

 of roughly 220 local groups. Each one of these locals subscribed for a 

 $25 membership and one $25 share of stock for each fifty cars of live- 

 stock handled annually. "An agreement, but no contract, was reached, as 

 a result of which the associations promised to ship to the Central." Some 

 of the best salesmen on the South St. Paul market were also hired before 

 beginning business. 



The rapid success of the Central was due to the preliminary prepara- 

 tions and to the fact that it met a long-felt need of the farmers. From 

 the start it charged commission rates that were 25 per cent lower than 

 those of the regular firms and showed large profits despite these differ- 

 ences. This also helps explain why the company got more consignments 

 during the first month of its existence than did any of the other thirty- 

 eight firms on the South St. Paul market, and why five months after its 

 beginning it was handling about 25 per cent of the livestock coming on 

 the market. This success let loose a flood of harmful propaganda against 

 it, which, in turn, prompted the management to encourage the signing 

 of contracts between the locals and the Central. 



By 1922 the Central appears to have brought about some degree of 

 stability to the South St. Paul market. The extent of its influence is hard 

 to measure but it seems that the wild fluctuations of past years had been 

 somewhat curbed. In 1927 one student wrote that "on some days other 

 commission agencies do not sell any livestock until they have learned the 

 Central's opening price. This is especially true in selling hogs, of which 

 the Central often controls forty per cent of the daily receipts." 47 



In the spring of 1925, some 631 shipping associations owned stock 

 in the Central. Twenty years after its founding, it had 593 shipping asso- 

 ciations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Montana as members. 

 Over the period 1921 to 1939 the Central had gross sales amounting to 

 more than $465,000,000 and paid back more than $1,900,000 in patronage 

 dividends. 48 



47. Steen, Cooperative Marketing, pp. uo-n; Gaumnitz, in The Marketing of 

 Farm Products, p. 133. 



48. Minnesota Farm Bureau News, May i, 1925; Central Cooperative Association, 

 20 Years of Wording Together (South St. Paul, Minn., 1941), pp. 5, 45. 



