Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-03-10
Describes How Price Was
Advanced From 1-2 Cent
\ "a Pound to 81 Cents by
Work of Association
BY EDWIN CAMP

BY EDWIN CAMP
1.-THE advance of the cooperative
marketing movement is the most i'm.
portant thing in American life to-
day, and is the greatest force now
working for the safety and pros
perity of our people" Judge Robert
w. Bingham. of Louisville, declared
at a luncheonS given in his honor at
the Capital City club Tuesday after
noon by j. E. Conwen, president of
the Georgia Cotton Growers Co
operative association.
Judge Bingham is the owner and
editor of the Louisville Courier-Jour
nal and the Louisville Times, and
led the campaign which resulted in
the organization, in 1921 of the Bur-
ley Tobacco Growers association,
which in two years has achieved the
most spectacular success in the CO.
operative marketing movement.
He told how tobacco which had
brought 40 cents a pound in Janu-
airy of 1920, sold for half a cent a
pound and less in January, 1921,
during the perio dof drastic def1a.
ton, running planters, merchants
and bankers. An din May of that
year the tobacco which had been
dumped on the market by the fran
tic growers was resold by specula-
tors at as high as IS cents a pound.
Judge Bingham then recounted
how in the summer Of 1921 the
growers were organized on the COM
modify basis, avoiding the error of
organizations on the territorial basis,
the producers of IS per cent of the
hurley tobacco grown in America
joining the association and pIedging
themselves to turn over their total
crop 70 ra term of five years.
Growers Given Advance
The growers, who had been I'M
able one year before to obtain
enough for their tobacco to pay the
warehouse charge, were given an
immediate advance of 9 IL cents a
pound by the association. This was
made possible, Judge Bingham
pointed out, by the fact that pre-
Vious to the harvest of the crop the
associations directors had gone into
conference with the bankers of Ken
lucky and had studied the course Of
the tobacco market for ten years
previous, emitting the two boom
years of 1919 and 1920. They had
safe banking proposition to lend at
the rate of 8 IL cents a pound on
tobacco, and the association was
able to obtain from Kentucky banks
sufficient credit to make such an
advance TO the growers. On Febru.
airy /, when the crop had been sold
by the association to the big fac
tories, a second payment of 91-2
fS
closing the books for the year a
third payment of little over cents
a pound was made, the whole yeth
netting the producers 81 cents a
pound.
That was great move forward
But in the second year Of the asso.
| cations existence a still greater
record has been made. The asso-
citation has just sold it's entire crop
for an average price of 81 cents a
pound, and the sun shines bright in
Kentucky.
And" Judge Bingham said, "the
cigarettes which we are smoking
have actually decreased in retail
price during the time that the farm.
err was getting an increase in the
price of his product from IL a cent
THE farmer is now getting his
share of the consumers dollar, in.
stead Of letting the Spectator get
it,"
Growth Sketched
Judge Bingham Sketched the
growth of the modern cooperative
selling associations from the begin
ming in Denmark sixty years ago.
He told how that infertile land
with a hostile climate has become
the most prosperous agricultural
section of the world through it's CO.
operative buying and selling asso-
Citations, a story which, by the way,
has been eXhaustively treated by
the great correspondent, Frank G..
Carpenter, in recent issues of The
Sunday Journals Magazine section.
He told how the Danish princi-
pies were first successfully intro
duced into America about fifteen
years ago, finding most successful
development in California, though
the Florida citrus exchange and the
Georgia peach growers have been
notable examples Of it.
MANY have said" he declared,
that you cannot organize the farm
ers. And many point to failures
made in the past.
But the farmers are being or
ganized, and their organizations arg
succeeding.
There are now more than 100
successfully functioning co-opera-
tive selling associations. They sue
cessfully handled and sold last year
more than one billion dollars worth
of farm products.
"They represented more than one
and one-quarter million American
farmers.
"They borrowed $3.50, 100000 from
the War Finance corporation last
Gill; I