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important thing right now. That is the best answer I know of to the ques- 

 tion of how to remedy farm credit, how to remedy the living conditions on 

 our farms, how to improve our school systems and how to get men back on 

 these farms, many of which are going to lie idle this year I am afraid. I 

 don't know whether that is going to be the case in your state or not, but I 

 know that in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa it is going to be a 

 serious condition. I predict that a lot of the best land in that territory is 

 going to be idle this year because the men on that land who have operated 

 it for the past two years have operated at such a loss that they are 

 no longer able to continue. I don't know how we are going to overcome that 

 condition, but I d'on't fear over-production very much for the coming year 

 when I know how much land is going to be idle in some of the good pro- 

 ductive country a little farther north, and I imagine it is going to be just 

 about the same condition in parts of Illinois. 



I don't know if I can give any solution for this condition that is con- 

 fronting us with reference to how to market our products, but I can tell you 

 in a little while what we have done in Minnesota and the territory tributary 

 to the South St. Paul market with reference to livestock marketing which 

 we think has helped us a great deal in the past few months and promises 

 to help us a great deal more. I believe that organization by the farmers into 

 business bodies which will make it possible for you to handle your products 

 co-operatively is going to be the solution that we are looking for. 



CO-OPERATIVE SHIPPING ASSOCIATIONS. 



With reference to co-operative livestock marketing, the history of that 

 movement in our state dates back to 1908. In that year, at Litchfield, Minn., 

 the first co-operative shipping association that I know of, or that is on record, 

 was established. That is only a comparatively short time ago. At that 

 time we had a condition in that territory, in that particular county in Minne- 

 sota, right around in the vicinity of Litchfield, where I am told there were 

 something like thirteen local livestock buyers whom the producers of that 

 county were maintaining as a means of getting their livestock from the farm 

 to the terminal market. And the condition was very much the same in any 

 Icoality that you wanted to go to in Minnesota. It was not quite so much 

 true in the Corn Belt, I know, where farmers were producing their livestock 

 in full carload lots on their own farm, but that is a condition that affects 

 only a comparatively small area of this country. Wherever there was a 

 smaller amount of livestock on the farms the livestock buyer was making it 

 a business to buy this stuff and speculate on it, and the price he paid for it 

 depended altogether upon the intelligence of the farmer he was dealing with. 



The farmers in that locality got together and talked over the proposition 

 and they said, "One man can do this work just as well as thirteen, and we 

 will get the difference that the other twelve are getting." So they organized 

 the first co-operative shipping association on record in this country. The 

 thing was a success, and it has been a success since that time. Out of that 

 town that shipping association has shipped nearly three thousand cars of 

 livestock co-operatively, out of one shipping point since 1908. 



The idea has spread. It was taken up by our universities, our extension 

 force, our farmers institute force, other educational bodies, our farm press, 

 and the idea has spread. It spread until today we have probably six or seven 

 hundred active successful co-operative shipping associations in the state of 

 Minnesota. It spread until last year seventy-five per cent of all Minnesota 

 livestock that went on to the terminal market was sent there by co-operative 

 shipping associations. So that you see we have the co-operative idea pretty 

 well instilled into the people of that farming community in your neighboring 

 state to the north. 



THE TERMINAL MARKET SITUATION. 



But that did not solve all of our marketing problems. We still had at 

 the terminal market a condition which was exacting a pretty big toll for the 

 service that the producer got there, and about seven or eight years ago we 



