American Agriculturist, April 5,1924 
Problems of Cooperation 
0 Continued from page 34-8) 
per bushel, or too much per box. Second, 
you have to have a large enough minimum so 
that you are an important factor in that mar¬ 
ket from the day that you open your doors. 
Merely being another commission house isn’t 
worth a single thing to the farmer, although it 
may mean some jobs to some of the farmer 
representatives. You have to be a different 
thing; and that different thing is a unit which 
has enough in quantity to make the control 
of the flow of that supply really mean some¬ 
thing. . . 
There is no fixed minimum. Sometimes it 
might be 30 per cent., sometimes it might be 
50 per cent., sometimes it might be 75 per cent, 
—the minimum must be determined by study¬ 
ing the commodity and its local conditions; but 
any co-operative which forgets and starts with¬ 
out a minimum is committing a fatal blunder 
right there; and is either going to take twenty 
years to accomplish what could have been 
done in one year—or it is headed straight for 
the rocks. There is the whole technique of 
co-operative marketing. 
Need Expert Personnel 
Finally, you have to get expert personnel in 
co-operative marketing groups. A smooth¬ 
tongued man who can talk well is the man you 
must always avoid when it comes to trying to 
market your product. A man may be the best 
farmer in the world on production and not 
know a thing about real merchandising or 
marketing. You have to get expert marketers 
to do the technical job of marketing; expert 
traffic men to do the technical work of trans¬ 
portation; expert banking men to guide you 
on the right banking and financial channels. 
You have to use experts; but the experts have 
to be your hired men, just as much as the 
fellow who works for four dollars a day, your 
hired man to help with production on the 
farms. If he doesn’t suit you, throw him out; 
but, in each case, your aim is to get an expert 
instead of an amateur to run a co-operative 
marketing association. 
Pay the Right Man Well 
You have to stop being afraid of paying these 
men, these technical men, high salaries to get 
them. Don’t pay a ten-thousand-dollar man 
twenty thousand dollars; and don’t try to get 
a twenty-thousand-dollar man for five thou¬ 
sand dollars. The best investment that the 
growers’ co-operatives can make is technical 
men who know tobacco, technical men who 
know wheat, technical men who know cotton, 
technical men who know apples; and if the 
farmers will learn to spend some of their money 
directly for such men instead of spending it 
indirectly, as they are, to those very men to 
exploit them if they will get some of those men 
as their hired men and have a co-operative 
rightly organized, with the right aim, then I tell 
you there is real daylight for the farmer, as far 
as marketing problems are concerned in the 
United States. 
This is the technique and personnel problem 
of the co-operatives. 
To-morrow, we will discuss what all this may 
mean to the community and to the public 
generally. 
It Pays to Treat Seed 
{Continued from page 342) 
of good vitality that has grown last year 
or the percentage of kill may disappoint 
the man who tries it. 
Seed treatment is no protection against 
club root because that mainly lives in the 
soil. However, if any of the disease organ¬ 
isms are in the seed, the corrosive sub¬ 
limate will kill them. If club root is in 
the soil, it may be that an application of 
about 7.5 bushels of slaked lime to the 
acre will help matters. Club root does 
best in acid soil, so the answer is LIME. 
Same Material for Potatoes 
So much for cabbage. Now let’s turn to 
potatoes. That same material, corro¬ 
sive sublimate, sometimes called mercuric 
chloride, the deadly poison that it is, 
can be used on potatoes. Four ounces of 
die chemical are dissolved in a little hot 
water. It dissolves more quickly in hot 
water than cold. And another thing use 
on y w °oden, earthen or glass containers as 
mercuric chloride reacts with metals. 
When it has dissolved, it is diluted to 30 
gallons and is ready for use. The whole 
Potatoes are soaked in this for an hour 
and a half and are then removed and 
spread out to dry. Nothing hard to that, 
’ MK surely cuts down the yield of un¬ 
salable potatoes caused by such diseases 
as scab and rhizoctonia. However, the 
solution loses its strength quickly and is 
good only for three different batches of 
potatoes. The second batch can be left 
to soak for an hour and three-quarters 
and the third for two hours. 
This corrosive sublimate treatment, as 
I said before, kills scab and rhizoctonia, 
but it won’t put all scab out of business, 
if the scab is in the soil. I know of 
several fellows who treat their seed every 
year and still get scabby potatoes and 
they blame the farm bureau man for not 
knowing what he is talking about. Scab, 
once in the soil, will live there as long as 
the soil is sweet. Scab seems to live on 
lime. The only way to get around scab 
in the soil, and I know several fellows 
that are doing it now with success, is to 
use this new material, inoculated sulphur 
that will turn soil acid in one season. 
One fellow thought that if a little was all 
right, a whole lot would be better and 
spoiled his crop. But those fellows who 
followed directions from the farm bureau 
and from the salesman, had mighty fine 
success. I haven’t used it because we are 
not bothered with scab in the soil, but 
those fellows who did and used it right 
made money on the potatoes. 
Formalin for Oat Smut 
Oat smut is another disease easily 
controlled by chemicals. Fifty bushels 
of seed oats are piled on a well cleaned 
floor after having been run through a 
fanning mill to take out smut patches and 
trash. They are then sprayed with a 
solution of formaldehyde or formalin 
made by adding one pint of 40 per cent, 
formalin to a pint of water. This solu¬ 
tion is placed in an ordinary hand 
sprayed and evenly sprayed over the 50 
bushels of oats as they are being shoveled 
from one pile to another. After this 
treatment the oats are piled and covered 
with blankets or grain sacks and allowed 
to stand there for five hours. 
There is another treatment that in¬ 
volves the use of formalin, one pint of 
the solution being used in 40 gallons of 
water which is sprinkled over the pile. 
This is known as the wet treatment and 
has been found to have caused more 
weakening in the seed than the dry 
treatment I have just mentioned above. 
It is funny, but some fellows go to all 
the bother of treating their seed, and then 
put the seed back in the old bins or bags 
and reinoculate the seed with the disease 
germs. If the seed is going to be put back 
in the bin, it should also be sprayed. 
Now there is another factor that comes 
into this seed treatment and that is labor 
—no small item on the farm these days. 
If I treat my cabbage seed and get a 90 
or 95 per cent, stand compared to my 
neighbor who gets about 30 to 40 per cent, 
stand, it means that where he plants and 
works six acres, I can get about the same 
yield by working in the neighborhood of 
two acres. And I’d much rather plant, 
hoe and cultivate two acres than six for 
the same money any day" in the week. 
And the fellow who says he woiddn’t is 
crazy" or too stubborn to know when he is 
well off. 
The State’s Tax Dollar 
{Continued from page 339 ) 
a part of the tax that is for the benefit of 
all. 
A Government tax is a tax for our own 
benefit and that of our fellow men and 
women. When we pay a tax it is to make 
our life more livable, lovable and safe. 
Without taxes these things would be 
utterly impossible and we would go back 
to the bad roads, cold houses, candle 
dips and other discomforts suffered by 
our great grandfathers. 
Make your lemon rinds do double duty. 
Keep one or two near the sink, and when 
your hands are stained rub them with the 
rind. Most stains will come right off. 
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