Richmond daily register. (Richmond, Madison County, Ky.) 1917-1978, 1921-06-14
CALIFORNIA RAISIN GROWERS SET EXAMPLE

ture things. Today it is the largest
employer Of labor in England. There
are $4,000 people employed in their
mills and factories. Next they estab-
| lished steamship lines, coal mines
and dairy farms. But that is coop
Grafton developed from a consumers
standpoint. That is why you have
to have capital to start with and
give the so-called patronage dividend
to the people who buy from you.
The Danish Farmers Plan.
We understand English in this
country and we don't understand
Danish. Therefore, it is only of late
years that the Scandinavian groups
have made known their contributions.
When the American farmers heard of
cooperation in England and so on.
they started to cooperate on those
lines. They started to build coop
erative elevators and started coop
erative tobacco buying. They thought
that the right method of cooperation
was to initiate the movement of the
consumers co.operatives. Take the
Rochdale system, consumers sys-
tenn. Apply it to farms and market
ing problems. What is the result?
Well, take the whole Mississippi
Valley. You have 1000 alleged CO.
operative grain elevators. The ele-
--.4o. ,,-;1I 10 oro,o,,i1ad With oo-i.a I
stock. 1t takes in as members pri-
marily farmers and limits the divi-
dends to 8 per cent. Then it pro-
ceeds to buy grain from the differ
ent growers, either members or non-
members. 1t might buy your grain,
Mr.. No. 1, at $40 a busheI. 1t
might buy the next gentIemans grain
at $1.60, and the next one at $3.50.
And the manager says, No. 1 must
come in and sell his wheat to me-"
As manager of the association, he
doesn't tell him he thinks it is not
wise for him to sell his wheat-be-
cause he must make some money for
the cooperative elevator. He lets
him sell at $1.40, so that he can make
a profit and not a loss. When this
second gentleman comes in and wants
to sell his wheat at $3.50, the man.
ager doesn't advise him either. Yet
he is the paid servant of both of
them. When the next man comes
in he will buy at $3.50 from him, ex-
pecting to make a profit. He is
specializing on all three doing the
same as any Spectator on the Chi
cago Board of Trade, except that
he is owned by the farmers, and the
spectators in the Chicago Board of
Trade are owned by the city fellows.
An Unfair System.
At the end Of the year what hap
pens? He will say, 81 have made
lot of profit. Because No. 1 didn't
guess right, and No. 2 didn't guess
right, 1 have won something. There
is a patronage dividend of cents a
bushel. so No. 1 gets s1.45 for his
years experience; No. 2 gets S1.65 for
his years experience, and No. 3 gets
$1.S5. Two made money off of one;
one made money off of two; and the
association, which was supposed to
be cooperative, has made money off
the farmers instead of making money
for the farmers.
That is the whole course of proceed
ure Of these so-called Rochdale stores
and elevators throughout the Missis-
sippi Valley. Each one stands as a
separate unit and sells against the
other elevator. AS soon as they think
the market is going to be high all
dump their wheat in and proceed to
swamp it. AS soon as they think
the market is going down they hold
off until the banker puts pressure on
them. 1t is not good merchandising;
it is not cooperation. They are
building the system from the wrong
That is why every time
a crisis appears those men run
around in circles, holding indigna-
ton meetings, urging everybody to
punish the firms who dare to break.
The trouble is not with the men.
They are modelled from the wrong
They started to follow
a consumer model instead of model
that would be developed naturally in
a country that produced. That is
I have devoted some
time to it because I want you to
know that has been one of the most
egregious blunders committed in the
agricultural part of America. The
worst of it is, the men who were
to lead-the university men
as well-never knew the difference.
The California Idea.
Those are the two lines along which |
America has developed the co-opera-
tive association. In California they
have stabilized industries. That
is why in California if the men
do have a hard year the Nom |
partisan League cannot make them
listen to it's tenets.
The California farmers have found |
way of salvation for themselves even |
IN a hard year. Go somewhere else in |
he United States and you will find |
the League or something like that
growing like wildfire, because it feeds
On discomfort. 1t offers to the farmer
4 political remedy. We have shown
N California we can solve our own
problems by purely economic means.
We don't have to depend on politics
1r radicals; we just keep a solid bust
nesslike arrangement.
This is almost universal in Cali |
'ornia. We have practically all the
dominant industries there organized,