Brownsville herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1910-current, 1912-09-18
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LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
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A United Selling Agency for Truck.

A United Selling Agency for Truck.
sentiment in Brownsville that if the
truck of the surrounding farmers is
marketed by an organization with Of
fees elsewhere, Brownsville will suf-
fer in prestige and in business profit.
This sentiment is based on erron-
.eous assumption and may easily do
harm both to Brownsville and to the
farmers.
If one assumes that farmers
around a city exist merely to be *
plotted by the city then no argument
is POSSIBLE and the marketing of the
farmers should be kept isolated so as
to be completely at the mercy of the
local buyers, if they have any mercy.
But if one assume that whatever
is for the good of the farmer in the
long run is also good for the adjacent
city, then the question is open for
discussion with a great preponder-
ance of argument in favor Of a united
marketing agency.
If the resident of the city will look
at the boxes in his grocery store, he
will find them marked: California
Fruit Exchange" Citrus Growers
Association" and son IN, nearly all
of them coming from a united farm
ers selling agency, their central idea
being for one organization to sell
one product. And so one can see
from the boxes in the grocery stores
that one organization sells oranges,
another raisans, another Georgia
peaches, another Arkansas straw
berries, until in one store there will
perhaps be seer the label of twenty
or thirty such farmers organiza-
Itions.
The groceryman buys these in
preference to the products of ire
sponsible individual producers, be-
cause the supply is always ready
when in season, and he has assur-
ance that the quality will be up to
the standard. 1T is exactly for the
same reasons that each agricultural
~product when possible, should be
sold by a single organization; that
is, it gives a responsible basis for
good quality and a rational distribu-
ton OF the product.
A map Of the United States show
ing those places where the farmers
are most prosperous would follow
very closely the regions controlled
by such selling agencies. In Iowa,
where the staples, corn and wheat,
are still sold harum scarum, the ag-
r%icultural population is decreasing
decidedly. After the successful or
,ganization of the tobacco raisers in
Kentucky, the peach growers Of
! Michigan, and the beet growers OF
Colorado, land values rose rapidly in
those regions.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley has
been advertised to the world as an
agricultural paradise, and the in
coming farmers have increased the
property values of Brownsville,
many times over. Does Brownsville
wish to kill the goose that lays the
golden egg?
For there is a very general feeling
all over this Valley that the farmers
must market his products more ad-
vantageously or quit business. AS it
is, we make big profits on one thing
and lose it ell on half a dozen other
things, and very often this loss is
caused by the chaotic method Of iso-
lated marketing, which dumps the
entire product of the Valley at any
given time upon that point which
happens to quote the highest price
for that product. Then the market
goes all to pieces at that point and
other places, quoting it, refuse to
pay much higher for that product.
Practically every organization.
labelled in your grocery store, was
formed because the farmers were
starved into forming it. The fruit
growers of Grand Junction, Colorado,
had to choose between destruction
or organization. They organized,
and land there is worth from $500 to
$500 per acre. The Lower Rio
IGrande Valley has n of the most
intelligent set of farmers to be found
anywhere. Does Brownsville wish
us TO use our intelligence or be
driven brute like by starvation into
a self-protecting organization?
II by a rational distribution Of
truck the farmers increase their
earnings ten per cent each year
and this is putting the figures far