The Benson signal., 1919-10-25
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Continued from First Page.

within the County eF located OH
the border line. Every orc of them
IS a CO. operative creamery, owned
by farmers and managed by them.
Every one of them is complete
and unqualified success. There has
never been a cooperative failure
in the county. I want you to make
d note of that, for one of the rea-
sons why farmers in other locall-
ties are sometimes timid about or
ganizing a cooperative creamery is
the fear of failure. If the creamery
has enough butterfat delivered to
it to ensure a reasonably good size
output (and 800 cows for starter
will supply the butterfat) there is
practically no chance for the cream
ery TO slump, and there will be no
chance at all if the community has
the together spirit that it ought
to have.
The cooperative creamery, like
any other institution, has its ups
and downs. In nv county we be-
gan at the beginning. We were
raising wheat our lands had de
Perforated; we were poor; we had
no dairy cattle; we did not know
much about CO cooperation; few of us
had any business ability; most Of
us were afraid to take the first step.
There were many to prophesy fail
ure and the centraliZer agents
painted some very alarming pic
lures of the dangers and the losses
that would follow a cooperative
venture.
However, the farmers of Bertha
township got together in the spring
of 1900 and organized a co-opera-
tive creamery association. This
association had to overcome every
possible obstacle. There were
knockers within and knockers
without. The centralizer people,
as they often do, boosted prices at
Bertha in order to create suspicion
and dissatisfaction among the pat
rons with the home institution.
The cows were poor and the but
terfat production limited Every
thing was new and the trail had to
be blazed. Nevertheless, such was
the inherent advantage of the CO.
operative creamery in operation
that it outlived every knocker
overcame every obstacle, never
took a backward step, grew so rap
idly that in 1914 the association
built new creamery plant at a
cost of over $4,000.
How is that for a record? Just
tell that to the next man who says
it is not a practical thing to. organ
ize a farmers cooperative cream
ery. But the Bertha farmers cream
erv we have in Todd county.
There are eighteen others. Bertha
blazed the way until today in our
county Of twenty eight townships
there is not a farmer who is not
within easy driving distance of a
creamery owned and managed by
himself and his farm neighbors.
THE FIGURES
Just to show you what these far
mer owned and managed creamer-
les are doing, let me read you the
figures showing the business each
one did in 1914. The 1915 figures
are not available just yet, as not
all the annual meetings have been
held. Seven of these creameries are
on the border line of Todd county,
and the figures quoted are not the
total business they did, but the
but the business they did with Todd
county farmers only:
Long Prairie. ...$119, ,866. .28
Bertha ........... ........ 113, ,537.5 So
Ciarissa ................... 1O7, ,932.3S
Osakis ........... .... 1o2, 349. IS
Wadena ............ 86,889. 81
Eagle Bend .............. 8O,541.75
Verndale ....... ...... 68, ,924. 10