/ 1355 
Co-operation! What Sins are Committed 
in Thy Name! 
The Co-operative Society of America, with head¬ 
quarters in Chicago, is to be investigated in this 
State to determine whether or not it violates a pro¬ 
vision of our co-operative laws in the use of the term 
“co-operative.” It is alleged that the concern is not 
co-operative in principle, blit is organized as a com¬ 
mon law trust. It sold securities in this State, but 
did no other business. The concern is now in the 
hands of a receiver, with liabilities of $15,000,000 
and assets of $50,000. The officials of the society say 
they sold membership t'o SI,000 people. Many 
schemes have been promoted during the past 50 
years in the name of co-operation that have been the 
direct opposite of co-operation. They have been 
organized for the exclusive benefit of the promoters. 
This field has been particularly prolific of recent 
years, and the proportion of tragedies has increased 
and multiplied. Yet it is the easiest thing in the 
world to identify the false organization from the 
true one. Real co-operation is organized and man¬ 
aged by the members themselves for themselves. The 
kind of alleged co-operation that always ends in 
tragedy is organized and managed by self-appointed 
promoters who handle the cash, without the necessity 
of accounting to anyone, and devote it in whole or in 
large part to their own uses. The true co-operative 
association is a useful and helpful agency. 1 he 
false brand of it is always the source of disappoint¬ 
ment. loss and disagreement. 
Some Observations on the Milk Strike 
One significant observation about the milk drivers’ 
strike, now well on in the second week in New York 
City and vicinity, is the utter lack of consideration 
for the producers of the milk. The drivers have 
their advocates and friends in official circles and 
otherwise. The dealers get their side of the argu¬ 
ment to the public in text, editorial and advertise¬ 
ment. The rights and interest and convenience of 
the consumers are fully and clearly expressed. Meas¬ 
ures are taken to protect them from adulterated 
milk, sour milk and watered milk. They are even 
protected from the profiteers who would charge an 
extra price for milk. This is not expressed as a 
complaint. It is as it should he in case the service is 
sufficiently vigilant. We refer to it only to contrast 
the consideration of them with the utter disregard 
of the interests of the producers. If a single word 
has been uttered or a single hand raised to protect 
the producers in this situation, it has escaped our 
watch for it. 
r he time of the men who produce the milk was 
recently officially figured at 2S cents an hour. The 
day is never long enough for them to work, and they 
know no such thing as two weeks’ vacation on full 
pay. They depend on a regular outlet day by day. 
They cannot shut down one week and start up the 
next. The dairyman must maintain a going business 
in production, and it is disheartening to see his milk 
poured into the gutter or the river, as it has been 
during these two weeks in many cases. 
The city driver, with no skill, no education, no 
special preparation, gets substantially a dollar an 
hour for eight hours a day. He limits his output 
and demands increased wages and two weeks’ vaca¬ 
tion with full pay. Eleven thousand of them pro¬ 
pose to keep 80.000 farmers idle, and keep 10,000.000 
people without milk. They have intimated that they 
want some ^f the big money going into the distribu¬ 
tion of milk. 
Up to five years ago the dealers’ average spread 
between the producer and consumer was 5% cents 
per quart. Everyone complained that this was too 
much. This spread was the producer’s complaint. 
Numerous investigations were held ro inquire why 
(he dealers got so much. During that time the deal¬ 
ers apologized for the high cost of distribution by 
saying that they had to buy all the milk produced, 
and that the surplus was handled at great loss. Now 
they have no surplus. They make a manufacturer’s 
nrofit on all the milk made into by-products, and 
the producer gets only what the milk is worth to 
make into these products. In addition to this their 
spread between the producer and consumer for the 
past six months has run from 12 to 15 cents a quart, 
as against the 5% cents when they took the alleged 
loss on by-products. We hold no brief for the strik¬ 
ing drivers. It is an economic outrage that they 
should receive nearly four times as much money per 
hour for delivering milk as the skilled farmer gets 
for producing it: but the milk dealer is fighting him 
at the expense of the producer, with no profit to the 
producer in any event. 
One other observation is significant. In this, as 
in all milk disturbances, the local stores are the main 
‘P* RURAL NEW-YORKER 
reliance for distribution. No one worries when he 
can go around the corner and get a quart of milk or 
a bottle of cream. The stores are always relied 
upon in an emergency, and they demonstrate their 
possibilities at such times: but when the trouble is 
passed, the stores are again eliminated in sections 
where milk is sold in bottles. The significance of 
this ought to sink into the minds of producers and 
consumers after the experience has been re¬ 
peated so many times. The sale of loose milk 
through the stores has been opposed by the 
bottle distributors. The subject was fought out 
in 1916, and settled in favor of the stores. 
The trade was then developed and increased until 
it is nearly one-half the city trade in milk. The 
plan then was to develop the bottle trade in stores. 
Alone the dealers could not defeat it. With the aid 
of the Whitman politicians, including the late George 
Ward of Little Falls, they did defeat it. To esti¬ 
mate what the defeat already cost dairymen would 
carry us into hundreds of millions. How many mil¬ 
lions it will yet cost, no one knows, but we again 
assert the economic fact that the distribution of milk 
is a part of tlie process of production, that it is a 
function of the farmer, and that in the control of 
the wholesaling of milk in the city he will make the 
price to the consumer, increase the demand for his 
product and cover himself in the legitimate cost of 
production. 
The Western Farmer’s Day’s Work 
Refore a group of business men in Chicago recently 
,T. R. Howard, president of the American Farm 
Bureau Federation, gave the following analogy to 
illustrate the farmer’s position. The Eastern farmer 
will not fully understand this method of husking 
corn where the wagon is driven through the field and 
the ears are snapped off and thrown into the wagon, 
but he can easily imagine other jobs to fill out the 
14-hour day: 
“Through my long years of experience on the farm I 
have come to consider this season the most charming of 
the year. It’s the time of the shortening day and the 
lengthening night. I know full well what it is to be 
awakened in the Iowa night by.the flapping of the blind, 
the crow of a rooster, or the soughing of the wind in the 
trees outside the window, and to note that it is darker 
than it was an hour or two before or when I went to 
bed. I cannot see my hand before me. It is the darkest 
hour of the night. Instantly I know that that darkest 
hour is the time when I should rise and go to work. 
“It is the night’s darkest hour when the farmer gets 
up. He takes his lantern and goes to the barn. He 
feeds his stock. He milks his cows. He curries and 
harnesses his team. He goes to the house and eats 
breakfast, all before there is yet the first rosy tint of 
dawn in the east. 
“Breakfast over, the farmer hitches the team to his 
wagon and rattles off downhill, across the bridge, and 
up the road into the cornfield. He pauses for it to get 
a little lighter ; he cannot yet see his row. And while 
he is putting his sideboard over and getting his coat off 
he listens. From every direction there comes the sound 
of other corn wagons going to other cornfields. Soon 
there reaches his ear the rhythmic beat of the ears 
against the sideboards—the cadence of the corn—that 
corn which is converted into the gold and silver of com¬ 
merce and manufacturing and industry. Where in all 
the world is there another song to equal it? Before 
noon the farmer brings in his load, and another at 
night. 
“We are in the dark hour just now. But it is time 
for us to get up and get our lanterns, whether we be 
farmers or manufacturers or business men. We want to 
get those chores done, and our breakfast over, for morn¬ 
ing is close at hand. Let’s put on an extra sideboard 
and grease up the old wagon this morning, for we have 
got the biggest job we ever had ahead of us in America. 
It is going to take the energy and the faith of the 
American farmer combined with the energy and faith of 
the American business man to put it over. But we have 
just one common interest—service to the whole people. 
“As a farmer of this country, I ask you business men 
to join with us in the procession toward national pros¬ 
perity.” 
The Crowded City Life 
The population of New York City is reported at 
5.753,751, the area 327 square miles; that gives 
17,595 persons to each square mile, or about 27 to 
each a ere. On one business block in the lower part 
of New York is a building of 20 stories which is said 
to house during the day about 11.000 people. It is 
visited during each 24 hours by nearly 150.000 peo¬ 
ple who come and go through its halls and elevators. 
That gives something of an idea of the way human 
beings are jammed together on this island of Man¬ 
hattan. It cannot be said that this close packing 
has developed human sympathy or kindly feeling. 
There is very little of the neighborly feeling which 
is, or formerly was, found in most country neigh¬ 
borhoods. City life is a battle for food and shelter 
and amusement. The latter becomes a necessity as a 
result of the exciting and nervous existence which 
most city people go through. In the country most of 
us can find ample amusement in our own homes, but 
the ordinary city home is more like four narrow 
walls wedged into a great box in which men and 
women eat and sleep. The modern city is develop¬ 
ing a new race, a new strain of the old race, and each 
generation removes it a little further from the orig¬ 
inal stock which is being preserved in the country. 
This development is not a healthy one. It is the 
same old growth and tendency which has in years 
past broken down civilizations and broken national 
power. Thoughtless people may rejoice in the growth 
of cities, and take great pride in their development, 
but when this growth is made at the expense of the 
country it is the indication of a national disease. 
Our cities are already too large. We should be far 
better off if many of them could be scattered into 
smaller towns back at the water powers and nearer 
the producers. 
The South and the Cotton Crop 
The Commissioner of Agriculture of South Carolina 
believes that the boll weevil which made its first serious 
inroads this year on that State’s cotton crop will prove 
a great blessing. He declares that this pest will help to 
drive the farmers away from the disastrous one-crop 
system which for generations has been a drawback to 
the South, and for that reason should be welcomed by 
everyone who is conversant with the agricultural situ¬ 
ation of the State and desires its advancement. 
Fifteen years ago Commissioner Harris attended a 
convention of farmers in New Orleans and caused con¬ 
sternation when he said: “I say in all seriousness, 
gentlemen, that if we could bottle up a goodly supply 
of these boll weevils and distribute them liberally 
throughout the cotton belt we would deserve to be hailed 
as public benefactors.” He then explained his reason for 
holding those views,' the gist of which was that the cot¬ 
ton growers would thereby be forced to go in for crop 
diversification, producing their own food supplies and 
become no longer absolutely dependent on cotton. 
To this writer Mr. Harris a few days ago expressed 
these same opinions. “The farmers of South Carolina,” 
he said, “will now be unable to- obtain the usual credit 
the banks hitherto have allowed on prospective cotton 
crops; moreover, the ravages of the weevil this year 
have shown our farmers the folly of relying on a single 
cash crop and purchasing their food from Western 
States. A result of this year’s destructive visitation of 
the boll weevil and the activities of our cotton associa¬ 
tion in pleading with the farmers to reduce their cotton 
planting operations will be a largely decreased acreage 
in cotton next year, and a, widespread determination 
among our farmers to abandon the one-crop plan, two 
vitally important steps our agricultural leaders are advo¬ 
cating. 
“It is strange and it is pitiful,” continued Commis¬ 
sioner Harris, “that those who have a practical 
monopoly in the production of one of the world neces¬ 
sities should be required to live under conditions of 
privation and often of want and be brought at intervals 
to a period of bankruptcy and even of starvation. The 
production of cotton, instead of being a source of con¬ 
tinuous and increasing prosperity to the South, has been 
the cause of economic slavery and has led not only the 
producer but the entire South into recurrent shadows 
of disaster. The reason for this unfortunate develop¬ 
ment is plain. We have produced cotton not as a busi¬ 
ness, but as a gamble. We have put all the land pos¬ 
sible into cotton without any regard whatever to our 
ability to cultivate or pick it properly, and with no 
thought of cost. In urging reduced cotton acreage. I 
have in mind objections advanced to the effect that a 
considerably reduced cotton acreage and extensive crop 
diversification in the production of food and other neces¬ 
sary supplies would bring about such a surplus of food 
and feed grown that there would be no demand for it. 
One thing is certain, if we grow a surplus of cotton 
there will not only be no demand for cotton, but it will 
break down the price of all cotton. It is better to have 
a surplus of food for man and beast than no food at all. 
But there will be a market in the South for all the 
surplus food and feed that we can produce. We can 
feed the hogs and the cattle, and we can sell the surplus 
hogs and cattle in the cities. That problem, however, 
is far away.” 
Mr. Harris says that in the 40 years of his experience 
as a farmer cotton has never been sold at a profit to the 
producer, with the exception of the years 1917 1918 
and 1919. 
“While it is obvious that no country can prosper or 
progress without a contented farming class. I think it 
is a good idea to keep that fact ever before the people.” 
the Commissioner continued. “Commercialism has been 
pampered, and our ‘infant industries’ have been cod¬ 
dled. but. whenever one wishes to raise his voice in pro¬ 
test against the one-sidedness of such government and 
to appeal for more attention to our agricultural interests 
he is frowned upon as one who raises class issues. 
“It should be as plain as the nc f> upon one’s face 
that if the producers fail or decline to produce they be¬ 
come consumers, and the larger the number of con¬ 
sumers the shorter the division of the necessaries of life. 
Agriculture is the base upon which the entire structure 
of the wealth of our country is built. Cripple agricul¬ 
ture and you cripple whatever depends upon it. I say 
with the assurance that the statement will meet with a 
sneer in some quarters that cotton has always been 
worth a great deal more than it has brought. I mean 
to say that it has actually cost more to produce than it 
has brought upon the market. That is what has kept 
the South one year behind—the farmers being forced year 
after year to borrow money to grow the next year’s crop. 
We have been behind since the close of the Civil War 
and have been kept down so long we have assumed, as 
a kind of second nature, an air of commercial humility. 
That is unfair to ourselves and unjust to the crop we 
produce. Those who make up the estimates of the cost 
of producing cotton take into consideration merely the 
planting, the cultivating, the harvesting. Tlmy do not 
give due consideration to the fact that the farmer is 
entitled to just as high a grade of living as the best paid 
mechanic—even more so. for he takes his chances in a 
lottery. wiHt th° fickle seasons, while the mechanic lias 
a powerful union to make his future measurably 
secure.” E. o. DEAN. 
