Retiring President R. H. Veorhees, Jersey county, presides at annual meeting of Illinois 

 Agricultural Auditing Company in St. Louis. Others at table are (I. to r. ) Carl Lage, B. H. 

 Horan, Roy Edwards, George Metzger, Nancy Anderson, secretary, and Manager C. E. 



Farmer-Owned Cooperatives Finish 

 Greatest Year in Their History 



THl: i2 aci.ouiit.ints who work tor the Illinois A^rJLultural Audit- 

 ing Association scanned the book.s on .in estimated §250,000,000 

 worth of business transacted last year throu^'li cooperatives owned 

 principally by Illinois farmers. 

 C. 1:. Strand, manager of this unicjue cooperative, an associated 

 company of the Illinois Agricultural Association, reported at their 

 annual meeting licld during the lAA convention in St. Louis that this 

 was tiie greatest year in history for larm cooperatives in Illinois, in- 

 cluding tlie auditing cooperati\c. 



Organized in 19^4 as tlie first cooperative of tlie Illinois .Agruul 

 tural Association, the auditing company this vear handled the l>ook> 

 for 471 member companies. 



Its members consist of 92 I-'arm Bureaus, O"' larm Hur^-au >li1v 

 sidiarics, 36 cold storage lockers, 98 grain elevators. 21 livototk coiii 

 panics, 85 service companies, 3 Home Bureaus. 31 dairio and i.ream- 

 eries, 5 insurance companies, and 33 miscellaneous organizations. 



Strand said it took -15, 13*1 hours of work and 1 i0.2i)S miles oi 

 tr.avel to handle the work for this vear. 



G. E. MERKER JOINS 

 lAA LEGAL STAFF 



G 



EORGH 1:. MLRKER of Harvey has 

 joined the legal staff of the Illinois 

 Agricultural Association under the direc- 

 tion of General Counsel Donald Kirk- 

 patrick. He will be 

 engaged in general 

 law work for the As- 

 >ociation. 



Merker was born 

 and reared in Chica- 

 go I leights w here 

 he attended local 

 schools. He attended 

 Thornton junior (Col- 

 lege, tlic University 

 i)f Chic.igo, and was 

 uradu.itcd from the 

 Kent College ol Law, Ciiik.igo. in 1<)l2. 

 He passed his bar exam in September 

 1912 and went into the army the fol- 

 lowing month. He .served with the 

 90th Infantry in the Philippine and 



Okinawa (.ainp.iigiis .liul was dis- 

 charged in January. 1')Hi. SiiKe his d;s 

 diarge, he has been prai.tii.mg law as a 

 partner in the firm of .Adlcr and Merker 

 of Har\ey. 



Southern Illinois 

 Picks 4-H Camp 

 At W. Frankfort 



F 



ARM advisers and home advisers 

 representing 28 southern Illinois 

 county I'arm and Home Bureaus 

 li.ue unanimously approved the se- 

 lection of a 4-11 Cdub camp site at 

 West Frankfort City Lake for the 

 )utliern Illinois district. 



The camp site, comprising an area of 

 approximately 100 acres, was offered to 

 tlie 28 southern Illinois counties by the 

 Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis Club 

 and the city council of ^X'est Frankfort. 



Twenty-live acres of the site were 

 given as an outright gift and the re- 

 maining 75 acres were offered on a 99- 

 )i.ar lease agreement. Terms of the lease 

 were scheduled to he drawn up the first 

 part of December by Paul Mathias, lAA 

 .secretary, and representatives of the Uni- 

 vtrsitv ot Illinois extension service. 



llie i.amp will he lor the use of all 

 rural young people's groups in southern 

 Illinois. The lake on which the camp 

 fronts is approximately 25 1 acres in area 

 .md will be an excellent site tor swim- 

 ming, iishing and boating. 



The new camp will be the third in a 

 series of four being laid out in tlie .state. 

 Ihe northern Illinois (amp is (^mp 

 >haw-waw-nas-sce in Kankakee county; 

 liie central Illinois camp is at C^amp AJ- 

 lirton in Pi.itt county. A fourth i ainp 

 i- lo l^^.• scic. tci! for \\cstcTn Illinois. 



G. E. Merker 



A group of southern Illinois farm advisers who tooSc part in the meeting opproving th« 

 selection of a 4-H Club district camp at Lake West Frankfort ore shown together during 

 the lAA convention in St. Louis. Left to right: Paul T. Wilson, Saline county; J. G. Mc- 

 Call, Perry; C. J. Christenson, Franklin; Don Lee, Jefferson; W. C. Anderson, Jackson; and 



Edward V. Barnes, Richland. 



JANUARY, 1948 



35 



