The record-union., 1897-11-27
OPPORTUNITY FOR CO-OPERA-
TION.

The Oakland Enquirer" says that
the larger portion of the German beet
sugar factories are cooperative con-
Germs: that some of the factories in
Northern Germany have as many as
1880 beet growing stockholders.
There is no reason why the beet
growers should not become stockhold-
ers in the sugar factories. Some loose
thinking people have declared that they
will not do it, While it is true thai
failure results in encouragement, the
duty of directing public thought and
public action in right channels remains
the same.
If in Germany l, 800 beet growers can
be combined into stockholders in fac
tory, manufacturing their own beets to
secure the greatly enhanced profit over
that which would inure to them by SELL
ing the beets to a factory, it can be
done in California.
Beet growing for the purpose Of
selling the beetS will result just as
every OIHeE COlillCClCd Will lIC
soil has resulted. 1t will put the price
OF beets wholly at the option of the
manufacturer of beet sugar, and he will
make that price sufficient only to in
duce the production of successive crops
and no more. The industry is capable
of comforting wealth to the extent of
an annual income of 500, 100000 per
year, provided the rest of the country
will permit California to make all the
beet sugar consumed in this country.
Enormous wealth will ensue from this
income, but will be accumulated by the
few and not be shared by the many.
So far as we are concerned, we are
totally Indifferent whether there is any
beet sugar industry in the State of Cal
ifornia or not. if the result of that in
dustry creates millionaires on the one
hand and pauper farmers on the other.
No country Increases its permanent
wealth in this way. The millionaires
emigrate, and California has been the
victim Of impoverishment in this direc-
ton to an unlimited extent. Whatever
industry tends to unequalize the distri-
button of wealth among men simply
creates wealthy class who leave a re-
mote region like California and gravl-
tate by an inexorable law toward East
ern metropolitan centers.
Unless the beet sugar industry is to
be founded upon a basis which will
broaden its benefits, we are simply to
witness a repetition of the enslavement
Of the agricultural classes by comforting
upon the purchasers of products the
absolute right to fix a value upon the
labor of producers. The sugar trust
in the United States has it's hand at the
throat of the commercial instrumental
fties which distribute that product to
the people.
The great specific and antidote for
trust methods is cooperation. A
thousand growers have it in their power
to acquire for themselves all of the
profit arising out of the industry except
the mercantile profit which must be
paid for Its distribution.
Here is a field for intelligence and
the exercise of organizing faculty. Here
is a sphere Of activity for the Grang-
ers, the Farmers Alliance, and for as
sociated effort among a class subject
to the same exigencies. 1t will be i'm
proved at the inception of the new in
dustry or never. After vast individual
capital has been invested cooperation
will be confronted with a competition it
cannot meet. The contemplate selfish
ness which continually proclaims that
farmers cannot unite prevents cooper
alton, because 1t breaks down the conf
dence OF this class in each other. CO.
operation viii never come in conse-
quence of discouragements which are
presented. Nothing ever succeeds by
augmenting the difficulties which stand
in its way. and no right or good thing
has ever been accomplished except by
overcoming obstacles.
The beet sugar industry will take on
the form of an oppressive monopoly or
a cooperative benefcence, and which
ever gets the start of the other will
have possession of the field.