The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1922-06-08
It TAKES BRAINS
TO BEL FARMER
PRESIDENT HOWARD ADDRESSES
BANKERS AT ABERDEEN
THIS MORNING
FARMERS ENTITLED TO LOWER INTEREST
Farm Bureau Head Puts Some Plain
Facts Before Convention
OF Financicrs

can citizen and business man. 1t
takes more brains to run a midwest
farm successfully than it takes to
run a bank said j. r. Howard, presi-
dent OF the American Farm Bureau
federation this morning to the South
Dakota Bankers association who are
holding their annual meeting in Aber-
deem. Il have tried hem both and
| know"
The farmer has to use an applied
knowledge of business, chemistry,
mechanics, electricity, electricity,
physiology and botany, and he has to
be fairly expert in them all. We are
not an ignorant or a bolshevistic class
OF people. The organization which l
head is largely an educational one,
promoting a better farm life, better
production and more economical dis.
tribution.
You probably know us best by what
newspapers have said about our work
at Washington. The agricultural
bloc has made you all sit up and take
notice of the farmer and it is pos
sible that you think that is our only
activity. You may be surprised to
know that our Washington work is
only taking about one per cent Of
the funds which we eXpend in the
work of the farm bureaus of the
country. We are building community
life on the farms.
The farmer has but one turnover a
year. He cannot stop his factory for
six months or three months or a
week and then resume 1t takes him
a year to produce his crop, and it
ought to take him practically another
year to market it; for any market
ing agency which forces the commod-
ity Of the farmer upon the market as
adv nee of its consumptive need, is
not efficient or scientific or salts
factG.. marketing system.
The farmer certainly is entitled to
a credit for marketing, as much as
he is entitled to a credit for pro-
duction. He is entitled to eve more
credit and a better rate Of interest
for his destributive credit than for
his productive credit, because after
he has produced and has his crop
in his ware houses and granaries he is
a better risk than he was when he
was subject to floods and %droughts
and frost. | think there is no doubt
that the fact hat the farmer has in
the past paid higher rates of interest
for his money than has the manufac-
turer has been due in the main to
his long turnover.
The farmer is entitled, even though
his productive period and his turn
over be longer, to an equivalent rate
to that granted the merchant OF the
time on his oar and there must be,
Of course, some means established
whereby the bank must have a liquid
asset.
| am not sure but what you are
nightly interested in farmers CO.
operative societies. Let me point
you to the experience Of Denmark.
Eighty years ago it was a land Of
p%easantry. A school teacher who af-
forwards became a bishop taught his
boys the first principles Of co-opera-
ton. Today not only are the farmers
products sold comparatively, but
homes and villages are built co-opera-
lively in that country. Today so per
cent OF the land in Denmark is owned
by the farmer himself, with less ten
antry than in any other nation on
earth. The distributive costs, the
costs between the farmer ana the ulti-
mate consumer in this country are
about in the ration Of 81 to 63, ac-
cording to Chairman Andersons' con
gressiOnal committee. In Denmark
it is about 70 to 20; the producer get.
ting about 73 cents of the consum.
er's dollar.
Cooperation Is -. it's infancy in this
country. We are the last OF the great
nations to take it up. The farmers
are making mistakes well as pro-
gress in cooperation, but on the
whole are gaining both in the eff
cheney of handling and in the volume
Of business. Without discussing this
at length, W. are learning thai CO
operative selling is merchandising.
Farming is producing. We must do
our business as business men, on bus
mess principles, do it with unselfish
motives, with the good Of the whole
country at heart, and we shall sue
coed. Otherwise, we will fail, and
we ought to fail.
Thus for both home improvement
and marketing. the farmer feels q
real need for this intermediary credit
extending over a period too long to
be handled by a bank of deposit and