The labor standard., 1922-02-15
COOPERATIVE PLAN PROVES SUCCESSFUL
 WITH DAIRYMEN
Should Encourage Other Produc- CTS and Distributors to Estab- fish Direct Communication Between Farms and Homes


 apparently been successfully tested b, the extensive dairying interests o1 New York state, says The Christian Science Monitor. The effort to organ ize the system of direct dealing be. tween the producers and consumers followed the recent strike of milk. wagon drivers in New York City ano in adjacent cities in the State and ir New Jersey. The delivery of milk was so completely held up by the strike that necessity compelled the adoption of some independent means of market. ling the products of the dairies and ot supplying the needs of the millions ot consumers temporarily deprived ot service. What seems to have been proposed and adopted as an .emer- gcncy measure has now been accepted as permanent marketing system managed and directed by what is to be known as the Dairymen's League Co., operative Association, Inc,
 Here is concrete example of what may be accomplished by the intelli- gent application of the cooperative plan to what, it is agreed, is one of the really vital domestic problems. The proved success of the system should encourage its extension to other producing and distributing in- dustries until there has been estab- lished, between the farms and the homes of the consumers, direct line of transfer and communication. ~ It required a disrupting of the former distributing agencies resulting from the sconrinued strike of the drivers to make apparent the possibility of es- tab,i.hing the neWers3systena. It may require combined refusal of con- sun,ers to continue the payment of excessive tribute to profteering mid extending the operation of the sys- lem to include other essential prod ucts of the farms. The farmers al- ready recognize the need of correct ing present methods. They daily see the disa streus effects of allowing the natural flow of their surplus products to be interrupted and impeded by those agencies which have acquired the power of dictating, not only the price at which those products may be sold, but the volume in which they may be offered to the consumers.
 1t cannot be denied that the ability to maintain commodity prices at their present high levels results from the fragrant exercise of the power to re- strict the natural supply. Raw foods are systematically destroyed or. all lowed to go ungathered through the machinatians of those who control agencies. If it is esti- mated that as great a net profit can be made by handling and distributing one-fourth of the total production as by distributing the entire marketable crop, the farmer, dairyman, orchardist or stockman finds himself without a market for his surplus, and the con suner finds himself forced to pay whatever price the distributors care to charge for the restricted portion of the crop they choose to make avail- able.
 These are the abuses which co-ope- rative marketing, if properly conduct ed, promises to correct. The New York state farmers, beginning with the products of the dairy, propose to include in the marketing plan all other perishable products of the farms. Such an undertaking under conditions now existing, is of the greatest economic It's complete success de pends upon the necessary cooperation of the consuming public, which has been compelled to endure, with the farmer, serious abuses at the hands of the profteers. Its success other wise is doubtful. No cooperative plan can succeed without actual co-opera- tion. The name, in itself, means noth- ing.