Evening star., 1925-01-05
URGES
COOPERATION CURE
FOR FARMERS ILLS
Declares Such Remedy Must
Start at Soil in Address
to Leaders.

Cooperative marketing can and
should be made a success in America,
because it provides the best means of
stabllizing the 'country's agricultural
marketing organization, Prcsid ent
Coolidge declared today to the an
nual convention of the National
Council of Farmers Cooperative
Marketing Associations.
Addressing the delegates to the con-
vention at the White House. the
President warned that cooperative
marketing possessed no magical at
tributes, and asserted that it must
start from the soil and be developed
upward
Must Start at Bottom.
There is school of co-operators
who seem to believe that the program
can be started at the top and built
downward" he added. They want
the Government, or the banks, or
philanthropies, or Providence to lay
out a scheme big enough to cover the
country, set its machinery moving,
guarantee it all needed capital, and
then invite the farmers to sit in the
places reserved for them and proceed
to garner their profits. Let me say
that / offer no such Aladdin like prof.
ect wan. society as whole to
help; but 1 want the farmers to dc
their share, and l warn them that
this will be the lions share"
The Presidents speech, in full, fol-
lows:
"In welcoming the members of your
conference. and wishing all success TO
your deliberations, l find myself dis
m fn h1lt SIlh n
order to enter a protest against some
current misconceptions. 1 wish to urge
consideration of some fundamentals
that, if understood and appreciated
would, l believe, clear away some of
the greatest obstacles to effec eve CO.
operation in agriculture.
Sees No Mystery.
There has been much tendency 10
surround cooperative organization and
processes with mystery. 1t has been
announced solemnly and sepulchrally,
from the hollow deeps of self -consti-
tuted oracies, that Americans are not
the sort of people who possess the
genius for cooperation. We have been
assured that they are too Individuals
tic. too loath to yield any part of their
independence and initiative.
People who indulge this kind of
nonsense invariably assume that CO.
operation is new and comparatively
untried formula. Their whole treat
ment of it proves that they have not
caught the idea. They have complete
ly missed the forest because there
were too manv trees growing all about.
They have overlooked the fact that all
human society is a vast system of CO.
operations and corporations. From its
simplest to its most complex. manifes-
tations. there is nothing to it but CO.
operation. 1t began with the discovery
that two people could together roll a
heavier stone or move a bigger log
than could be done by one alone. That
was the beginning of cooperation and
of social organization. A long time
later, these aborigines made the further
discovery that with the help of a lever
they could handle a still greater
weight. That was the beginning of
tools, machinery, the factory method
All the way down, from those earliest
discoveries to the Ford achievement of
a motor car every Is seconds. the ma
terial advance of the race from saw
development of cooperation and the
adaptation of new tools for it to use.
Among First Discoveries.
"The truth is, and it cannot be toe
often or earnestly emphasized, that
cooperation is the earliest of mans
social discoveries, the one that has
served him beyond all others in max
ing material progress. Doubtless its
earliest application on a considerable
scale was in making war. But al
government, all systems of finance
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