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find that quite often in a talk more is brought out in the discussion from 

 the questions asked than the talk itself. 



I want to say that the success of all of our farm movements the farm 

 bureau, the shipping association, the commission association, and everything 

 of that kind depends upon three things: Individual effort, organization, 

 and team work. 



ADVANTAGES OF COOPERATION. 



Mr. ABBOTT: Will you go into detail now and tell the connection 

 between the shipper and this commission house; where it is any better for 

 the shipper than any other commission house? 



Mr. FULKERSON: We have various kinds of shipping associations. 

 We have the local shipping associations of Indiana. In some counties they 

 are organized into county associations, a county association consisting of 

 various local shipping associations in that county, and they are under one 

 county manager. Part of the fees for shipping go to the shipping association 

 and part to the managers. Now, then, by the shipping association patroniz- 

 ing their own market, patronizing their own commission company, they are 

 benefited in this way: The terminal association charges just the same rate 

 that the old line commission company does; then at the end of the year, 

 after all of the expenses are deducted for operating that terminal association 

 house, or that is left over the actual expense of running it, is prorated back 

 to the shipper; whereas, in the old line house it goes down into the pockets 

 of the company. Now that is the difference. 



Another advantage in dealing with your own commission house is that: 

 The old line commission companies charge $16 a car commission for buying 

 feeders feeder hogs or feeder cattle, or stockers. Your commission com- 

 pany doesn't charge anything. They do that service for nothing. They go 

 out with you and help you buy this stuff, or you may send them an order 

 and they will fill it the best they can, just the same as an old line commission 

 company, but they don't make any charge for it. It makes a better demand 

 for their own stuff among their own people. When a man comes and buys a 

 load of stock, takes it home and fattens it, and you have rendered him that 

 service free, accommodated him in that way, nine times out of ten you have 

 made a customer that is coming back with a finished load. We are simply 

 overrun down there with orders for hogs. We have more orders for stockers 

 and feeders than stock coming in to fill them with. We bought a load of 

 hogs for Mr. Johnson at Bloomington the other day, and he said the only 

 trouble was that we did not send him enough of them. I had a letter from 

 him, saying one of his neighbors who was not friendly to farmers' organiza- 

 tions had placed an order with us. 



There was a great deal of talk went out that we would*not be able to 

 do this business like the old line firms; we would not have the outlet they 

 have. Week before last one of the biggest and the best old line companies 

 in the yards, a company that sold stuff for me in days gone by they are all 

 gentlemen, try to be as nice as they can under the circumstances had ten 

 carloads of yearlings that they kept two days and could not sell. They sent 

 a part of them to Chicago and a part of them east, because they could not 

 get rid of them there. Now, if that would happen to the Producers Live 

 Stock Commission Association, it would be all over the country and in all 

 the papers, telling what a woeful failure this Producers Live Stock Commis- 

 sion Association had made, because they had ten carloads of yearlings that 

 they could not sell. When it happens to any of these old line fellows you 

 don't hear a word about it. 



Then they say we make mistakes we don't get as much for the stuff 

 as we ought to. Sometimes we have kicks from the hog department; the 

 hog salesmen there can't get the prices that the old line fellows get. Now, I 

 have had this happen; and in my own town, where a farmer shipping 

 throught the shipping association sent in a load of hogs, and a shipper 

 that bought and shipped stuff sent a load of hogs not a bit better than 

 the farmer's and after our hogs had been sold, the shipper who shipped 



