The Climax-Madisonian. (Richmond, Madison County, Ky.) 1914-1917, 1915-08-11

lishment of Farmers Cooperative
Warehouses. Quite block Of stock
in most of the warehouses is held
by the farmers. I am stakeholder
myself and would willingly vote my
stock in that company for a board
of directors who would favor the pol
icy of making it growers co-opera-
tive warehouse 1t would be the job
of your executive committee to see
all of the farmers who are stockhold-
ers in warehouses, to get their proxies
and to vote in a board who were IA
vorable to that policy. / do not feel
that it is necessary to dwell at
length or in detail to you upon the
advantages to the grower of having
warehouses controlled by yourselves
and you receiving first consideration.
If it were not for you and your crops
there would be no warehouses, and
where you are also a stakeholder in
addition you should certainly make
your wishes and needs felt.
Now, my friends, am coming to
feature that should be approached and
handled with the utmost prudence and
wisdom. l think it essential that you
eventually consider the control of the
acreage of tobacco to be grown To
my mind that will prove your most
difficult problem, and should not be at
tempted until you have demonstrated
to yourselves that you are capable as
a body of cohesion and of carrying out
certain definite and fixed policies. If
you first succeed in that, then the con-
fidence and faith and trust in each 9TH
er, born of that triumph, will enable
you to travel this long step forward,
which if successful will prove a great
blessing, but if it fails or miscarries
will be a curse.
In reviewing the general and aver
age prices that have prevailed upon
the tobacco market for the past fif-
teen years, think it is safe state
ment to say that as a whole we to-
bacco growers have not made more
than wages or a living price, if we
exclude the three years Immediately
following the cut-out. That is the
only movement on the part of the
farmers that the tobacco trust really
fears and breads, but it is to be
equally dreaded by us unless We first
prepare ourselves by the self-disci-
pine of successful organization to
take it up in an enlightened, self-con-
trolled and lawful manner. In this
connection, and at this point, / can
not refrain from saying that 1 think
the land owners of the Blue Grass
region have frittered away their birth
right for a mess of pottage in direct
ing their efforts and attention almost
exclusively, or at least so extensively,
to the growing of tobacco. l will
state something that you all know,
but that you seem to have forgotten
that this little spot or section of
country is the most favored and pc
culiarly adapted for the most perfect
growth and development of all breeds
of live stock by reason of soil condi-
tions and climate of any section on
this entire continent. Friends and fell
low farmers, l believe that God
Almighty intended these few blessed
counties of the Blue Grass to be the
nursery from which to supply all the
rest of the continent with all pedi-
greed live stock. This is the spot,
the fountainhead, so to speak, where
each breed of all the domesticated
animals SO essential and necessary
for the comfort and pleasure of man
can be made to attain perfection upon
the least possible cost and effort. In
fact it is so easy it has been our I'M
doing We have frequently folded our
hands and left it all to nature, with
the result that even the arid but pro-
gressive West has taken from us our
unquestioned prerogative.
/ ask you men who are here pres
ent to go back with me for the past
fifteen or twenty years and contrast
in your minds eye the condition of
your farm, and pocket books, if your
farms had been given over to fine cat
tie, hogs, sheep, horses, alfalfa, clo-
yer, soy beans and blue grass; the
magnificent woodlands preserved,
which are mathematical of thought
full, contented and prosperous people
the soil fertility conserved, and the
whole landscape breathing richness
and abundance. Instead, we have I'M
slightly and in many instances dilapi-
| dated tobacco barns, woodlands de-
stroyed and impoverished looking
farmes to mar the view. We have as
a result of twenty years sweat and
toll in growing unlimited tobacco, a
| legacy of poorer farms and the strife
and turmoil of trade conditions.
do not want you to infer for mo-
| ment that l do not consider it wise
or profitable for us to raise certain
amount of tobacco. 1t is, of course,
with us tae one big cash crop, just as
cotton is to the farmers of the South.
| Our neighbors of the South are suf-
fering now from the many economic
evils of one-crop system. 1t would
be, in my opinion, an incalculable ca
lamity if our section of the country
should be beguiled into the same err
ror. By successful organization and
complete cooperation on the part of
the growers, do not think it vision
| airy to hope to avoid that evil, by all
of the growers organizing to uniform
| ly limit or scale their acreage. So
a further duty of your Executive Com
mittee shall be to make complete list
| or inventory of the acreage of each
| farm in the white hurley belt, and to
submit carefully worked out plan to
| your organization for its most earnest
and thoughtful consideration.
To arrive at this result in an intel
ligent manner, the committee should
ascertain from careful examination
and study of the Federal reports the
amount of tobacco and stock in the
hands of the manufacturers, and the
amount held in reserve by the farm
] ers and spectators. From that data
the total acreage necessary to pro-
duce enough tobacco for the next
years consumption could be figured
| and the acreage for tillage pro-rated
among the growers. The owner OF
| each farm to he nntified what his nro.