ill 



and that, on the other hand, when you have four or five buyers and 

 forty or fifty hog salesmen, that the buyer has the point of vantage? That 

 is a business principle that you can't get around, which you all know, if you 

 have done any trading. 



The condition has gotten to the point now at the South St. Paul market 

 that every commission man is afraid to price his hogs until our salesman 

 has sold, and he is absolutely setting the price of hogs on that market. I 

 would not say he could set that price very much higher than it normally 

 should be, but I will say this: If you will take the South St. Paul Reporter 

 and study the hog market for the last five months as compared with any 

 other five months in the last ten years, you will find that the price of hogs 

 has been closer to Chicago market for the last five months than for any 

 previous like period. We have sent a good many of them to the New York 

 packing plants and other places. We have had an outside buyer all the time. 

 When the outside buyers found that there was an organization on that 

 market which was on the square that they could buy their hogs from, we 

 have had no trouble whatsoever in getting the orders. 



Now, I want to say to you that that can be true of any producers' organi- 

 zation that will get together and have the right kind of management and 

 get organized, so that their business can be operated on the square. 



THE PRINCIPLE IS BIGHT. 



Now, then, when we carry this thing just one step farther, you have all 

 heard of the Committee of Fifteen. You all know, probably, of the producers' 

 organization that has been started at St. Louis. I don't know so much about 

 the fundamental plan on which they are organized; but I know this, that if 

 their groundwork has been properly laid in the country before they started 

 and if they have got honest men at the head of it the thing will succeed, 

 because the principle is right and you can't get away from it. 



When you get an organization of that kind at each and every one of the 

 principal markets, and get them built up to where they are controlling a 

 third or a half of all of the live stock, or possibly a higher percentage than 

 that, of all of the live stock that comes into those markets, then you begin 

 to get where the producer is somewhere nearly on an equal footing with the 

 man that he Is trying to deal with. 



That, it seems to me, is the condition that ought to be brought about. 

 It is the condition that we ought to be working for. It is the condition that 

 we must have if we are to continue to operate this business and continue 

 to exist as a farming population. And I want to say that I believe the 

 answer to our problem, I believe that the means, and the only means, of 

 bringing about those conditions is through cooperative marketing. 



I thank you. 



THURSDAY AFTERNOON SESSION. 



February 23, 1922, 1:30 o'clock P. M. 



Girls' Glee Club Monmouth College 



Vocal duet Doris and Dorothy Sites 



PRESIDENT MANN: Mr. Thome, whom we fully expected to be here, 

 was called to Washington and had to send his assistant, Mr. W. R. Matheny, 

 who will present Mr. Thome's discussion of the subject, "Organized 

 Agriculture and Its Problems." 



