Arizona state miner., 1926-03-27
FARM
COOPERATIVE
SELLING
BY GLENN C. HAYES
How Wool Growers Benefit
by Organization.
S0OO0O0000O9 O00OO0OOOOOO0O
%. 1924. Western Newspaper UnionO

0XXTOOL is WOOL; that is what the
w local buyers and commission
firm representatives used to tell the
wool growers as they travelled through
the sheep sections buying the years
i clip.
wool Is wool and it's all worth
about the same price per pound"-that
was the comeback whenever an ag
gressive farmer was bold enough to
ask for more money for his long-staple
f1eeces. The poorer grades set the
! price for a whole community. The
best flockmasters grew discouraged
| and paid little attention to their
/ fieeces. There was no incentive for
| doing otherwise-all wool brought
about the same price
Since the first New England loom
began spinning cloth, wool marketing
in the United States has been along
speculative lines No wonder the wool
| business is weighed down with specu-
| 1ative features. This is partly due to
the fact that wool is such a variable
product as to quality, shrinkage and
4
too, from the production standpoint
wool is seasOnable, while the demand
| is distributed over all twelve months
| of the year This means that the wool
must be carried by someone from the
| time OF Shearing until the time it is
sold al the mill and that requires
financing
ha 0a
| industry the mills bought their sup
plies from the Boston dealers The
dealers had local agents scattered over
the country, who travelled among the
farmers buying fleeces These are the
buyers who declared that wool is
wool-they had never heard of grad
ing, and if they had they wouldn't
have favored buying that way It was
money in their pocket to put all f1eeces
In one great universal class and tab
1t wool" the price being set on the
basis of it's poorest quality. In that
early day farmers had heard little of
the doctrine of cooperation They
took the price they were given, but
; they took it with a deal Of grumbling
among themselves
Grumbling began to crystalline into
action. From time to time revolts oc-
Cured against the old-line marketing
system. But nothing much came of
them: burst Of fury, few years Of
determined action. with less than
medium results, then back to the old
system. It is only within recent years
fhof fhA hOu
influence in lettering their market
prices.
First Action In 1874.
The first action taken against the
old system was in 1874 when TIE
Changers In Michigan, Ohio and Ken
tucky established warehouses where
they assembled wool and sold II in
large quantities direct to the manu-
facturers. The gain was only tempo
rary, for with the decline Of the
Grange the warehouses passed out Of
the growers hands.
Three years later the GoOdlettsville
Lamb club at Goodlettsville, Tenn.
was formed. Today 1t is the oldest
existing cooperative marketing asso-
has pooled the lambs and wool of its
members and sold them by grade dur
ing the AZ years of it's existence
Here and there both in the range
states and the corn belt the local pools
we're put into operation These organi-
cations were generally informal neigh
!; OorhOod groups of wool growers who
nod %n HWY kn
gether and sell 1t at the same time
Different methods of sale were tried
Sometimes the wool gathered was con
signed to q wool commission mer-
chant to he sold for the group, and
sometimes the buyers were asked to
come TO the local plants. The main
object of these local pools was to as
semble large enough quantity to
make 1t worth while for buyers to
come and bid on it. Sometimes 1t was
done for convenience in consigning to
dealer at a central point-for there
has been plenty OF dissatisfaction
with prices paid by local dealers
The plan Of organixati tion was Of the
simplest. There was merely an agree
ment Of number of local growers
70 GO together in handling their wool
Sometimes they elected officers. but
more often they were represented by
committee who arranged the details of
the plan, After year or two many
of these locals failed. hut others came
to take their places. and in 1917 there
were at least 25 successful pools east
Of the Missouri river and three times
as many in the range country. State,
wide pools began about 1918 with the
formation of the Ohio State pool
Cooperative marketing of Ohio wool
may he called a result of the war.
During the war the government fixed
a schedule on prices which it would
pay for wool. Dealers all over Ohio
made bids based on a profit Of Z to 10
cents per pound more than usual. This
wide margin named was the turning
point in the old-ferm marketing sys-
tenn of the state. In one hody pro-