The Carbon County news. [volume] (Red Lodge, Mont.) 1924-1931, 1929-04-11

WIN thirty years OF successful cor
porate ranching to guide him Lewis
Penwell of Montana has been expert
menting with the idea of cooperative
mass production. This will be re-
port of the venture and of the man.
You can readily see,' he says, sit
ting in his quiet office in the Pen
we'll Block of the mountain city of
Helena, you can readily see that this
| Cooperative Sheep Company of Hell
ena, as we call it, isn't exactly what
professors of agricultural economics
would call pure cooperative
His eyes, regarding you steadfastly
through thick glasses, wrinkle Slight
", quizzieally, at the corners. He con-
tinues.
Pure or not, it seems to work. 1t
operates comparatively in the field of
production-operateS as many Coop
eratives should, in my opinion, be op-
Grating, and would be if the members
would really pull together.
|
prove anything. 1t was started to
meet critical local situation in a
profitable business way. In so at
tempting, it has taken, suppose you
might say, new trail-the middle
course between private company con-
troll and cooperative production
methods.
"The central idea is a standardized
ton of livestock and methods on a
considerable n m b er of freehold
ranches.
THE owners of these farms, or
ranches, submit under contract to a
definite centralized supervision.
"They agree to raise sheep accord
ing to the suggestions and directions
of visiting manager.
| Breeding flocks are provided by in
vestors in the company. The increase
of these flocks is sold as mutton
through company pool The wool
likewise is pooled and sold from year
to year, the investors paying half the
clipping charge.
Proceeds from mutton and wool
alike are split $3.50 between the two
groups-'investors' on the one hand,
'co-operators' on the other"
Mr.. Penwell's name may be already
known to you. For more than thirty
years he has been raising sheep on
somewhat the same extensive scale
that Tom Campbell, also of Montana,
raises wheat. From the ordinarily
uncertain returns of large-scale COM
pany OF corporate farming, Mr.. PEN
well has slowly built up secure and
comfortable fortune and reputation
for business sense and integrity that
extends considerably beyond the boun-
diaries of his native Northwest.
In 1917, when America declared
war, President Wilson called him from
Montana and made him Wool Admin
istrator of the United States. He sat
in council on the War Industries
Board with men of the caliber Of
Bernard Baruch and Henry P. Davi-
son. Quietly, thoroughly, with some
thing of that quizzical attitude with
which men who have lived much with
books confront public affairs, he d.
rected the financing, distribution and
delivery to strategic points of 30O,-
100000 pounds of American wool.
The war ended. He returned to his
home ranch near Helena, in broad
northern valley of the Rockies.
Now, as before the war, he drives
in daily from his ranch to the city
office of the Penwell Ranches, four
teen large tracts grazing sheep in
various parts of Montana and west
to the coast.
One Penwell ranch is indeed beyond
the coast, occupying that entire semi
tropical island of San Clement, which
lies just west of Catalina, off Cali
fornia.
There have been years when on
these fourteen ranches Lewis Penwell
ran upwards of 100000 head of sheep.
Fifty thousand head is closer to the
present ayerage-plenty of sheep to
manage with one-half that number
out on other mems ranchs, co-opera-
lively, in addition. "I'm more inter-
ested in those 5000 sheep right now
than | am in my own" says Mr.. Pen
well. "Of course you have to try an
idea good deal longer than two or
three years before you know whether
it's any good or not, but it does seem
as if this cooperative production
idea might have possibilities"
He is inclined to temper everything
that he says with Eat least or "per-
haps." His mind is not of a pro-
moter but of scholar. He reads
everything and questions everything
When you try to pry from him those
geographic details which are suitable
to such story as this one you would
think from his replies that he were
speaking of some other man, some
youngster whose efforts are earnest
and amusing.
This younger man was a Montana
farm boy who. it seems, spent his