The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1911-08-03
Farmers Union Meeting.

Farmers Union Meeting.
Editor The Bamberg Herald:-|
Will you kindly convey little mess
age to the members of the Farmers
Union of Bamberg county, through
your most excellent paper, from a
visitor to the State Union convention
which met in Columbia last week.
When we left home we felt like we
were going to attend the funeral of
the Farmers Union, but when we
got to Columbia we found it very
lively corpse indeed. We met intel
ligent men from every county in the
State, progressive thinkers, men who
have the good of the order at heart
and are working for it's success.
One popularity about the assembly
was the number of bald heads in the
hall. By actual count there were
twenty-five out of a total of a hun
dred and twenty-five, and it wasn't a
very close count, either. know it
was not less, but very likely more
than that number.
The membership of the order has
increased thirty-three per cent. in
this State in the last year. Instead
Of being in debt, as it was year or
two ago, there is a cash balance of
over seven hundred dollars in the
treasury, and that after having an
organizer. in the field all the year,
and three parts of the time.
After what I saw and heard at the
convention, let me make this predic-
tion: That in less than five years
from to-day the farmers of this coun-
try will be selling their cotton from
their own warehouses to the spinners
of this and other countries, and. they
will ask you what you will take for
your cotton instead Of debating the
price to you.
Farmers of Bamberg county, yea of
the whole State, come up to the help
of your brethren, to the help of your
brethren against the devils of Wall
street, who have been robbing you
of your rights even since you were
born. Cotton has gone of fifteen
dollars bale in the last three weeks.
If you are going to make ten bales of
cotton you have already lost one hun
dred and fifty dollars. If you are
going to make one hundred bales
you have lost fifteen hundred dollars.
Now, then, let's figure just little.
If we make million bales of cotton
in South Carolina, and the makers
of every bale would turn in the pit
tance of two dollars per bale to the
Farmers Union, as members or 9TH
erwise, with this fund at hand we
could protect ourselves. What is two
dollars a bale when we have already
lost fifteen. With this fund we could
keep enough cotton off the market
and carry the price up more than it
has gone off, Some sap head may
say what is two million dollars to
fight the cotton market with? Well,
that will be little South Carolina's
share. The other cotton States are
at work and will do their part.
Mississippi has had an agent in
Europe all summer making arrange
ments to sell their cotton direct to
the mills, and when all the States
catch up with Mississippi the cotton
mills will ask you what you will take
for your cotton instead of debating
price that would bankrupt any busi-
ness on earth.
Farmers of Bamberg county, won't
you come out and help us? We need
your help and you need our help.
We have helped you in the past and
can help you in the future. You
never would have gotten the price
for cotton that you got last year
and the year before had it not been
for the cotton the Farmers Union
kept off the market. Perhaps you
didn't know that they kept three mill
lion bales of the market until the
price was assured. Some men say
the Grange and the Alliance failed
and the Farmers Union will fail also.
Not so, my friend. The Grange and
the Alliance both did wonderful
work, but they got mixed up In poll
tics and that was their ruin. Wei
will profit by experience and keep
politics out of the Union, and as
long as we have such men as E. w.
Dabbs, B. F. Keller, ]. Whitner
Reed, J. B. O'Neal Holloway, and
numbers of other that I could men
tion at the head of the Farmers
Union, we are safe.
D. R. MATTHEW.
Bamberg. S. c., July 81, 1911.