Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1922-02-22

of the South's greatest agricultural
spokesman. DR.. Poe said he knows
what farmers are facing now because
in the early nineties he was living
on a 10O-acre cotton farm in Chat
ham county, North Carolina, where
he was struggling to help his father
pay off a mortgage, and that from
this farm he went to Raleigh to edit
the Progressive Farmer. A great
many things have been proposed to
help farmers but nothing else has
been so effective as cooperative
marketing. 1t is a proposal to mer-
chandise cotton, instead of dumping
it on the market. This plan when per-
fected will enable a farmer, after
working all the year, to demand a
profitable price for his cotton, in
stead of approaching a buyer with hat
in hand and asking him elbow much
will you give me for my cotton?"
Rather then the buyer will approach
the farmer and ask GLOW much will
you take for your c~otton?"
DR.. Poe said the two great crops
of North and South Carolina are to-
bacco and cotton and that the two
great manufacturing interests of the
states are tobacco and cotton, yet
there is a world of difference be-
tween the way in which the raw ma
terial and manufactured products are
marketed. The farmer is receiving
only is per cent. more than pre-war
prices for his crops while organized
labor is receiving SO per cent. more
than pre-war wages. The difference
is found in the fact that through or
~ganization labor is marketed coop
eratively and farm produce is not
marketed comparatively. Instead of
cursing out all creation, let US real
ize bottom facts and set about to ap-
ply the remedy, using some horse
sense. In this connection, DR.. Poe
gave DR.. S. E. Mitchell's Ia former
president of the South Carolina Uni
versity) definition of horse sense
at is a kind of sense that jackasses
haven't got"
DR.. Poe said: GIN North Carolina
we did not get jolted out of the old
way of doing things until u wives
and God Almighty made US and be-
lieve that before 10 years pass we
will thank God that He forced us out
in 1922" The speaker then gave as
an apt illustration the old colored
preachers Interpretation of the
scripture where the statement is made
concerning the prodigal son that she
came to himself" He said that cot
ton growers have at last come to
themselves and all are falling in line
with the\ cooperative marketing
movement from Texas to North Caro-
lima. 1t is neither a theory, nor is it
something new and untried. Cooper
ative marketing has been a success in
parts of Europe for two generations.
He here referred to what he saw and
learned while on a visit to Denmark
several years ago. In that small coun-
try the average farm is not larger
than Is acres and in Denmark far
mers, "rule the roost." The average
farmer in Denmark belongs to five
cooperative marketing associations,
such as livestock, creamery, truck,
etc.
Being situated $500 miles from
the markets of the east, California
had to do something to realize profit
able returns from their fruit and veg
etables, being driven to cooperative
marketing. DR.. Poe said his father
was a member of the old Farmers
Alliance which attempted co-opar-
alive marketing on a small scale but
it was a failure because farmers
would not stick. In California the
farmers stick to their organization
because they have to. They have a
workable system of cooperative mar
keting and the cotton cooperative as
ISOLATION is fashioned after the Cali
fornia plan. Dr.. Poe said a Califor-
MAN recently told him that 80 per
cent of the farmers in that state made
money last year and it was due. to
cooperative marketing, while 40 out
of so South Carolina farmers lost
money and the other n did too.
He gave the figures from the Unit