66 
American Agriculturist, August 4,1923 
Cooperatives Must Not Fail 
An A. A. Radio Talk Broadcast from WEAF, August 1 , at 6:50 P. M. 
W HEN Editor Ed, as those of us 
who know well the elongated 
farmer chap who weekly gets 
out the American Agriculturist, 
asked me to broadcast for him, he very kind¬ 
ly refrained from naming my subject. I am 
glad of this, for it enables me to take liber¬ 
ties with a great opportunity and to say 
some things which I have been anxious to 
get before both farmer and urban residents 
for a long time. 
First, I want to get over a message to my 
farmer hearers in 
which I believe I will 
have the support of the 
thoughtful business 
man. It is about the 
cooperative a s s o c i a- 
tions which they have 
developed in such large 
numbers during the 
last few years. Farm¬ 
ers, even after they 
have participated i n 
the organization of a 
cooperative and become 
members of it, are apt 
to think of it as some¬ 
thing apart from them¬ 
selves. As a matter of 
fact, cooperative asso¬ 
ciations o r corpora¬ 
tions as I like to think 
of them, belong to the 
farmers and the whole 
responsibility for their 
successful organization 
and operation, goes 
back to the men who 
make up the member¬ 
ship. Through their 
cooperative associa¬ 
tions, farmers have an 
opportunity to prove 
themselves in business, 
or a big chance of fail¬ 
ing so miserably that 
they will become the 
laughing stock of other 
business interests i n 
the country. 
As a matter of busi¬ 
ness or a matter of 
pride, farmers cannot 
afford to fail. Yet from 
my intimate knowledge 
of the operation of co¬ 
operative enterprises I 
want to make this point 
very forcibly: Farmers 
will fail with their co¬ 
operatives unless they 
stop chinking of such 
organizations as the 
Dairymen’s League Co¬ 
operative Association 
and the G. L. F. Ex¬ 
change as “those fel- 
fellows” and instead think of them as my 
organization and my property to be safe¬ 
guarded and used as such. . 
In this same connection I want to point 
out to my hearers who live in cities, and par¬ 
ticularly to those in the small cities and 
towns, which are largely dependent upon 
rural prosperity, that they cannot afford to 
do anything which will result in the failure 
of the great cooperative marketing move¬ 
ment. Thousands of farmers are involved 
in it. 
Let them fail and there will not only 
be a serious economic reaction which will hit 
every citizen, but what is of more vital im¬ 
portance, the spirit of hundreds of good men 
will be broken and their morale weakened. 
This, coming at a time when our nation is 
By H. E. BABCOCK 
Chairman of the New York State 
Cooperative Council 
nervous and worried, would indeed be a seri¬ 
ous blow to the security of the country as 
a whole. 
So much for the responsibility which the 
cooperative marketing movement puts on 
the shoulders of both the farmers who start¬ 
ed it and the other citizens of our country 
who stand to benefit by its success or lose 
through its failure fully as much as the 
farmers. 
The next thought that comes to me also 
relates both to farmers and to city and town 
dwellers, particularly to those business men 
who furnish farmers with their supplies. 
Because of the abundant energy and re¬ 
sourcefulness of the business men of this 
country, as well as the urge of competition, 
there have been developed great merchandis¬ 
ing organizations for the purpose of selling 
to farmers hundreds of items of farm sup¬ 
plies. Many of these farm supplies have no 
place on the farm and are put there only 
through the superior merchandising ability 
of the organizations marketing them. Again, 
a lot of the staple supplies which are sold 
farmers, such as fertilizer, seeds and feeds, 
have not been in the past adapted to their 
uses nor in accordance with the latest find¬ 
ings of the experiment stations. The pur¬ 
chase of useless farm supplies by farmers, 
constitutes a direct economic loss for them 
and the communities in which they live. 
With farming conducted on as close a mar¬ 
gin as it is at the present time, the high 
sales costs which have to go into the mer¬ 
chandising of necessary and useful farm sup¬ 
plies, to meet the. competition of those which 
are unnecessary and useless, constitutes a 
tax of unbelievable 
magnitude, for in the 
last analysis the sales 
cost always adds to the 
price of the commodity. 
Take the case of 
dairy feeds, one of the 
largest items purchased 
by farmers. I per¬ 
sonally recall a night 
when fourteen high 
priced feed salesmen 
sat around the supper 
table in a little country 
hotel. They had all 
called that day, on the 
two or three feed deal¬ 
ers in that town. They 
all drove automobiles; 
they all ate good meals; 
they all slept in good 
rooms; they got good 
salaries. And the farm¬ 
ers in the community 
absorbed the cost. 
They tell me my 
time is getting short 
but before I close I do 
want to speed up 
enough to ask these 
questions. Why should 
farmers continue t o 
throw away their 
m oney through the 
purchase of low anal¬ 
ysis fertilizers; of im¬ 
ported and southern 
grown leguminous 
seeds or seed adulter¬ 
ated with' such stuff 
which will winterkill 
the first winter as sure 
as it goes into the 
ground; of manufac¬ 
tured dairy feeds sold 
primarily to carry off 
some by-products, or of 
feeds high in fibre, or 
of feeds whose digest¬ 
ibility cannot be 
known ? Why should 
they, another year, con¬ 
tinue to support a great 
army of high priced 
skillful salesmen to sell 
them such goods when 
they are short of men to milk cows and pitch 
hay? It is about time that the rural business 
man and the business farmer got their heads 
together and agreed, the one to keep abreast 
of the development of science and handle 
for his farmer patrons only, those supplies . 
which are valuable in farm practice and 
which are needed. 
To my mind, nothing that farmers are do¬ 
ing to-day, is costing them so much as the 
scattering of their buying volume, first 
locally, second in a wholesale way. Many 
local retailers lack sufficient volume of busi¬ 
ness to permit him to perform in an efficient 
manner the services which he renders the 
corpmunity. Manufacturers of feeds and 
fertilizers and distributors of seeds are in 
(Continued on page 74) 
