September, 1932 



THE I. A. A. RECORD 



Page Eleven 



Co-operation, Consolidation, or Decay 



Farmers Must Take Their Choice of These Three For Their Industry 



By Ray E. Miller 





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A good farmer in one of Illinois 

 best counties remarked the other 

 day that in spite of all he could do, 

 in spite of the hardest kind of work 

 by himself and family, he was face 

 to face with the fact that his equity 

 in his farm home was gradually 

 slipping away from him. 



He went ahead to say that he 

 had done everything humanly 

 possible as an individual to protect 

 his property but that he had come 

 to the realization that acting alone 

 he was powerless. This farmer was 

 willing to join forces with other 

 farmers to act collectively in the 

 interest of agriculture. 



The avalanche of farm foreclos- 

 ure continues. Where is it to end? 

 Some of our best thinkers are stat- 

 ing in no uncertain terms that ag- 

 riculture is at the cross-roads. The 

 industry is faced either with cor- 

 porate control of large areas of 

 land — and a lot of our great in- 

 surance companies are already in 

 the farming business — or individual 

 farmers must join forces in doing 

 those things which other industries 

 are doing for their own protection. 



; .; Glenn Frank Said 



Glenn Frank, president of the 

 University of Wisconsin and one of 

 America's foremost thinkers, said 

 "A farmer must choose between co- 

 operative and chain control. He 

 must organize as the rest of eco- 

 nomic America has organized or be 

 lost in the shuffle." In another part 

 of the same address he states, "He 

 (the farmer) is today suffering the 

 fate of the individualist in a cor- 

 porate age." Unless individual 

 farmers everywhere are willing to 

 face these facts and not only face 

 them but act upon them agriculture 

 in this country will come to occupy 

 a permanent position at the foot of 

 the economic ladder. 



Every industry passes through 

 three rather definite stages of de- 

 velopment. First, there is the period 

 of experimentation, then there is a 

 period of expansion and the third 

 period which usually occurs "with 

 some variations is one of consolida- 

 tion. 



In the railroad industry there was 

 first that period of experimentation 

 with the funny little engines, the 

 cars about the size of the modern 

 truck, the wooden rails and all 

 those other things which we re- 

 gard as absurd now. Then there 

 was the period of expansion when 

 the steel ribbons were pushed 

 across the uncharted prairies of 



this country and great railroad sys- 

 tems were developed. Giants in the 

 railroad industry such as the Har- 

 rimans and Vanderbilts and all the 

 rest, were part of that period of 

 expansion. We are told that there 

 were something over 8,000 railroad 

 systems in operation at one time in 

 this country. Now the railroad in- 

 dustry has reached the stage of 

 consolidation and almost on every 

 hand we see evidence of this tend- 

 ency. Now the bulk of the railroad 

 mileage is controlled by a few 

 great systems. 



Same Three Stages 



In the automobile industry there 

 were the same successive stages. 

 Remember the sputtering little two 

 cylinder Buicks and earlier still 

 those high wheel crosses between 

 the old fashioned buggy and the 

 modern automobile. That was the 

 period of experimentation. Then we 

 had a period of expansion when the 

 automobile industry grew by leaps 

 and bounds into one of America's 

 greatest industries. There were 

 literally hundreds of automo- 

 bile manufacturing concerns in op- 

 eration. Later we had that same 

 period of consolidation that we 

 note in the case of the railroad. 

 Now we have the General Motors 

 group, Henry Ford, the Chrysler 

 group and so on. One-half dozen 

 great automobile groups manu- 

 facture the bulk of the cars. Most 

 industries take more or less the 

 same course. 



Perhaps you are thinking that 

 agriculture is an exception to this 

 rule, but is it? Shortly after our 

 country was first settled we had 

 that same period of experimenta- 

 tion in which our pioneer fore- 

 fathers were experimenting with 

 the virgin soil on this continent. 

 They were not only experimenting 

 in methods of production but they 

 were also experimenting in those 

 methods of distribution which pre- 

 vailed at that time. 



Next we had the period of ex- 

 pansion and who is there who has 

 not read thrilling stories of the 

 prairie schooners that fought their 

 way westward in the face of all 

 sorts of obstacles. Indians, disease, 

 starvation, uncertainty, hardships 

 of all kinds that I am afraid would 

 stop most of us moderns if we 

 were called upon to undergo half 

 of them. That was a period of ex- 

 pansion. The American agricultural 

 industry developed from a few 

 pioneer farmers clustered along the 



Atlantic seaboard until it reached 

 its gigantic proportions of today 

 with total investment of fifty- 

 eight billion dollars producing an- 

 nual gross income under normal 

 conditions of around twelve billion 

 dollars. 



What does the future hold? Does 

 agriculture face the next step 

 through which the railroads, the 

 automobiles, the airplanes, and 

 other industries too numerous to 

 mention, have gone through? Farm 

 implement manufacturing, chain 

 stores, theaters, newspapers and 

 banks are other examples of the 

 same thing. Is the farmer not fac- 

 ing some sort of consolidation? 



There is no question but what 

 American agriculture is today faced 

 with one of perhaps three al- 

 ternatives. Farmers must either 

 consolidate their holdings into great 

 operating units or cooperate in do- 

 ing the things the individual cannot 

 do for himself. The third alter- 

 native is continued and permanent 

 economic ruin of the industry and 

 poverty for the individual farmer. 



Organize For Progress 



A. E. Russell, the great Irish 

 philosopher and thinker, said, "I 

 assert that there never can be any 

 progress in rural districts or any 

 real prosperity without farmers' or- 

 ganizations or guilds. Wherever 

 rural prosperity is reported of any 

 country inquire into it and it will 

 be found that it depends on rural 

 organization. Wherever there is 

 rural decay, if it is inquired into, 

 it will be found that there was a 

 rural population but no rural com- 

 munity, no organization, no guild 

 to promote common interests and 

 unite the countrymen in defense of 

 them." 



Russell recognizes that it is only 

 through cooperative effort that the 

 agricultural industry can cope with 

 organized groups in other fields. 

 There is the matter of taxes. To- 

 day real estate in the middle west 

 bears about 85 to 90% of the taxes 

 although producing not more than 

 10 to 20 per cent of the total in- 

 come. There is the field of market- 

 ing. The farmer is compelled to take 

 what's left after the middleman, 

 the wholesaler, the manufacturer, 

 the transporter has taken his toll. 

 What remains, if any, is finally 

 passed on back to the farmer for 

 the subsistence of himself and fam- 

 ily. 



In the field of legislation we know 

 that the politicians listen to those 



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