The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-09-02

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North Carolina. These benefits we're
all the immediate and direct results
of cooperation. You will pardon me
for citing n other illustration, show
ing the benefits of cooperation, con-
fined to a small area, comparatively
speaking, in our State.
A REDUCTION IN FREIGHT RATES
BROUGHT ABOUT BY 90
OPERATION.
A few years since the price for car
rying cotton per bale to Norfolk,
Va, from Washington, and possibly
other contiguous counties, was ninety
cents or a dollar a bale. The rail
road operating in that section
changed hands and after securing CO.
operation with the steamers plying in
the waters of the Albemarle sound
advanced the price of carrying cot
ton to Norfolk to 1925 per bale. The
farmers met and organized; appoint
ed a committee with power to act, to
go to Norfolk and arrange with some
other steamship line to come into
their waters and take their cotton to
Norfolk and on return trips bring
such freight as they needed. This
committee found no trouble in secur-
ing steamers that would carry their
cotton for seventy-fve cents a bale.
A contract was entered into and the
line began operations.
It was then that the railroad COM
pany offered to carry it for fifty cents
a bale, but the farmers recognizing
who had been their friends, refused to
be drawn away from the independent
line with which their committee had
contracted. As a result of this CO.
operative movement among the far
mers of that section they have saved
fifty cents a bale freight on every
bale of cotton that has been shipped
from that section for the last four
or five years.
HOW THE PRICE OF ooTToNsEED WAS
ADVANCED.
I will cite one other and more re-
cent incident with which I am some
what familiar, and covering possibly
the entire cotton raising section of
the South, which shows the benefits
of cooperation. A year ago it was
announced in the papers that the men
who "fxed" the price of cottonseed
had met in New Orleans and named
the price at about II to IA cents per
bushel, though conditions and prices
of food products of all kinds seemed
to warrant a higher price for cotton
seed than had been paid for them in
several years. The State Farmers
Alliance of North Carolina appointed
a committee to take some action on
the subject. A call was issued to the
cotton farmers of the State, and as
a result an Association was formed
that fixed, under then existing con-
ditions, a minimum price of twenty
five cents per bushel, cash, for cot
tonseed, or 1888 pounds cottonseed
meal for a ton of seed when seed were
exchanged for meal, the mills to pay
freight on the seed and the other
party to pay freight on the meal, when
shipped. Not a few of our farmers
disregarded the action of the Associa-
ton and paid no attention to it's
workings. They continued to sell
their seed to the oil mills as fast as
ginned at from IS to 21 cents per
bushel, Ga price named by the oil mills
Immediately before the first meeting
of the Association) while some of
those who stood by the Association
and its prices received as high as 81
cents a bushel for their seed and as
much as 1,5OC POUNDS c~ottonseed meal
for a ton u cotton seed. In some
sections of Texas, where there was
more competition than in North Caro-
lima, seed sold for 81 cents a bushel,
cash.
Mr.. President, these illustrations
of the actual workings of cooperative
associations should convince the most
skeptical of their value to the farmers
of the South. What can be accom-
plished in New York, California, and
North Carolina, can be accomplished
in other States, with good manage
ment, determination and co-opera-
ton among the farmers. It is well
known hat the farmers of the South