100 



wants to bny them or not." I said to those men, "No, your viewpoint and 

 mine are different. My idea is that the outside buyer or producer who wants 

 the cattle to feed is the man who has got the first right to bid on them. If 

 you are willing to compete with them you are welcome." 



That is the principle we are doing business on, and the speculators 

 haven't come down because we haven't needed them. It is the Illinois 

 feeders, the Iowa feeders and the southern Minnesota feeders who have come 

 there and been our patrons. 



They have sent out stories broadcast that we could' not get the price, 

 we were giving the stuff away. There is no way to disprove that statement 

 except to come there and look at the books and compare them with the 

 markets, and anybody, except our competitors, are welcome to do so. They 

 are open at all times to any producer who wants to come and look at them. 

 But I want to say to you that I don't believe that we could hold twenty-five 

 or thirty per cent of the business of that yard day in and' day out, week in 

 and week out, if we were not getting full market value for the livestock. 

 That is the best evidence I can give you people that it is possible for a 

 co-operative organization to go into the market and sell the stuff just as high 

 as anybody can sell it if you will just organize properly and be sure that 

 you are going to have a fair supply of livestock coming in all the time so 

 that you can afford to hire the best sales talent in the yards. 



Now what are the possibilities with reference to sales by this co-operative 

 handling? I don't know how much we have saved on speculator cattle; 

 I do know that when we started hiring men last year one of the speculators 

 in the yards came to us and wanted a job as cattle salesman, and he took 

 the president of our organization into his office, opened up his books for a 

 year's business and showed him what a good cattle man he was, and the 

 books that he presented showed that his profits for one year as a cattle 

 speculator were many thousand dollars. Now, I don't know whether there 

 are many speculators making that much money, but I know some of them 

 must be making pretty good money or they would not be living and dTiving 

 big cars, and all that sort of thing, as they are. I know that when we spread 

 the stocker and feeder business in our yards over forty to sixty firms that 

 they have got to make a pretty good profit on every hoof that they handle 

 to even exist, to say nothing about laying aside any money. 



We have done as much business in the stocker and feeder line, I think 

 I am safe in saying, as any ten speculator firms in the yards since we started. 

 Now, that is the only estimate I can give you as to what we have saved along 

 that line. But I do know this, that from the time we started we operated 

 for an average of twenty-five per cent less commissions than the old line 

 firms were operating on. Our Railroad and Warehouse Commission was 

 given authority to reduce commissions. They issued an order. That order 

 was enjoined in court. It has been in court for pretty nearly a year now. 

 I don't know how much longer it will stay there. We could not get any 

 results in that way. We cut out commissions twenty-five per cent below 

 what the old line firms were charging. 



THE FINANCIAL SIDE. 



Working on that basis, on an investment by the farmers of $16,775, we 

 returned to them at the end of 1921, after a little less than five months' 

 business, over $19,000 as refund, as interest on their investment and as 

 refund on the commissions that they had paid us. Is it worth while on an 

 investment of $16,775 to return about $19,400 in five months? Is it a pretty 

 fair kind of investment from the standpoint of the farmer? Our books for 

 January alone show that after paying all of our salaries, office rent and other 

 expenses, and operating on a commission that is now about 15 percent less 

 than the old line firms, because they cut it the first of the year to try to get 

 back a little business, we had a net profit of $12,400. That money is held. 

 there as earnings that belong to the farmers. Is it a worth while proposi- 

 tion? Do you begin to understand why the commission man has always 

 liked to see you come in? Why he always felt that he could meet you with a 

 smile and glad hand? You begin to understand it, don't you? 



