The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1922-07-06
WATER SH|P:iNTS
LINKED i FARMER
IMPORTANCE OF COOPERATION
POINTED OUT BY NATIONAL
MARINE LEAGUE HEAD
THEY MUST SINK OR SWIM TOGETHER
Shipping Interests Need Votes Of All
The Agriculturists to Win
The Battle
BY p, H. w. Ross

president of the National Marine
League. AS chief of that body his
interests have led him to an exhaus-
tive investigation Of every phase of
American industrial life and the re-
suits Of that investigation have fur
Their led him to the fixed belief that
the prosperity of America in the fu-
ture must rest largely with the degree
of cooperation that will exist between
all forms of production in their boost
ing of American ships for American
goods" a slogan that means more
than it says for it is only by active
ship building, he thinks, that there
will be ships under any flag to give
the required means of transportation
to our ever increasing expectations.
First-The interests of the farmers
are bound up with those of the nan
facturer to a greater extent than is
generally understood. In fact they
are in the same BOAT and must sink or
swim together. Whenever a carload
OF machinery or a crate Of shoes is
marketed abroad, the farmers product
has been marketed with it.
For instance: The greatest OBJ
stacle to prosperity for a farmer is
the cost of the transportation of his
products. The more that costs the
less he gets. 1t may be stated broad
ly hat it hardly ever pays a farmer
to market this product in it's raw con
dition.
| used to raise hay in the state of
Washington. The cost Of transporta-
ton was SO great that we could not
afford to bale the hay and ship it by
railroad to market, except in the case
of extra fancy timothy, and even then
it had to be doubly compressed for the
special Alaska trade; consequently we
had to employ the services OF a manu-
facturer, and the first to handle was
the cow. We fed our hay to the COW
after being shaken up a bit turned
into butter, and then we did come
out ahead, because the freight on but
ter in proportion to it's value was
much less than the freight on grain,
hay or the average grades of mixed
timothy and alfalfa.
We next found that the man was a
much more profitable manufacturer
for us w than the cow, and so we
fed the man with our products and he
in turn produced many things much
more valuable than butter, and thus
we found that the most profitable in
vestment for the farmer was the in
dustrial capacity of the intelligent
working man.
l have gone into these extremely
simple details to show how the sale
of every pound Of manufactured prod
uct of any description is really the
ultimate sale Of some farm product,
and just as it was absolutely impera-
tive to our interests that our manu-
featuring allies, the cow, the sheep
the OK, the pig and the hen should be
kept in first class condition, kept
calm, productive and contented, so in
the larger fields of feeding humanity
we speedily found that the welfare
Of the manufacturing communities
was exactly identical with our own.
In other words the existence of a
prosperous, MISUNDERSTANDING
industrial population resident as close
as possible to our farming regions,
was the most valuable asset that we
could possibly have.
We then discovered that unless the
industrial workers could market their
product, our prosperity would vanish
because then we were forced to pay
transportation charges for long dis
tances on a larger proportion Of our
agricultural output and consequently
receive smaller net returns, than if we
could dispose of our product to nearby
consumers.
This was especially the case with
regard to the largest and most produc-
tive farming region in the world, to-
wit:
The eight states of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota and Missouri, all of which
are farthest away from tidewater and
world markets, than in other consider
able farming area in the United
States.
Fortunately these eight states also
constituted the greatest industrial
region in the world, and so we were
all right so long as we could sell the
greater part of our farm produce to
the industrial population resident
within those eight states. But as
soon as the industrial products Of
those eight states were not freely ma
keted, we found that our own local
market was restricted and that we
were forced to pay transportation
charges On our wi agricultural prod