The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1944-05-05
2Co.optigg?als:f
F.U.O.T.A..,
The Good, Old Rule.
Pay Me, or Else!
Apparent Paradox.
Isaiah Wrote 1t.
How 1t Can Come.

Wnowing the incentive behind thu
present activities of industrial an'
commercial groups to cripple or de
strov cooperation farmers in the mar
keting Of their products, it might bt
justin as we'll to learn why farmers
unite on cooperative effort. Asked
the question, some will answer that
the farmer just wants more money
and the whole scrap is between him
and the grain marketing setup as tC
which shall take the cash. 1t is pure
ly a mercenary thing with no better
principles than those assigned to
Wordsworth to Rob Roy, the Scotch
bandit:
:" the good old rule sufficeth
That they should take who have the
power
And they should keep who can"
Though that was written about ITO
years ago, it still is accepted by those
who are obsessed by the notion that
the profit motive is all there is to
business of any sort and that anything
else is so much pretense if not actual
hypocrisy.
Naturally the farmer who is a stock
holder in his local elevator and in his
terminal marketing association repud-
iates that estimate of his endeavors.
His enemies like to pin that onto him
and usually he is burned up by the
accusation. Nothing is further from
his thought than the desire to benefit
by another5s loss or to play Rob Roy
in the grain market. He wants his
right to sell in the open market and
would defend the right of any other
to enter it and buy and SELL In other
words, he is not utterly selfish. He
has, in the past, proved that in score
of ways and today is proving it by his
devotion to production for Victory, re-
CARELESS of reward and in spite of lack
of manpower and implements. He
could-were he to follow the example
of some of our great corporations
put a gun to the nations head and
say: PAY me, or go hungry and
naked"
What, then, motivates the co-opera-
tive farmer? The simplest analysis
was written some $500 years ago, by
a prophet named Isaiah. He seems to
have written book of two parts, the
first opposing "entangling alliances"
practically the basis for all isolationist
doctrine since. The second assembled
to a higher plane of lifty prophecy,
in poetic form. So much difference
appears between the two that some
have held that two men must have
written the whole book. But the man
in his youth, who has written fierce
polemics in politics and in later years
has turned to writing of great moral
truths, will understand the apparent
paradox.
Isaiah was discussing what would
happen to mankind if it turned toward |
justice and fair dealing when he
wrote:
Behold l create a new heavens
and new EARTH and the former
things shall not be remembered or
come to mind, there shall be
heard no more the voice of weeping
and the voice of crying. And
they shall build houses and inhabit
them; and they shall plant vine
yards and eat the fruit of them.
They shall not build and another in
habit; they shall not plant and an
other eat; for as the days of a. tree
shall be the days of my people and
my chosen shall long enjoy the work
of their hands. They shall not labor
in vain, nor bring forth for calam-
ity."
That may fairly be set forth as the
ideal of the cooperative farmer. All
he seeks, through cooperation is to
build the home on the farm and to (
dwell in it; to plant and eat the fruit
of the labor of his hands; to labor for
a just return and to escape the calam-
ity of a depression. Is it too much
to ask or to seek?
That, which Isaiah foresaw may be
coming, through cooperation. 1t has
not come through the ancient Rob
roy SYSTEM II CAN CoHe, easily anu
simply, through the Agricultural Re-
lations Act, proposed by M. w.
Thatcher of the GTA, and endorsed
by co-operatives. 1t sets guard
around the farm home; it insures that
the farm family need not suffer for
lack of necessities of life; it bars the
of the recurrence of that
the depression that followed
the end of the first World war, and
which, unless farmers cooperate to
secure such plan, can return with
force after the end of this
war Cooperation is not a cash and
carry system. 1t is, above all else,
a system which has for its aim the
betterment not alone of the farmer,
- LIZ. l..