Montana labor news., 1945-08-09
FARMERS CO-OPS
POINT ROAD
TO BETTER LIVING

IO BEIlEk Living
When Ruyard Kipling sang about The
Road to Mandalay, where the old Flo
tilla lay; can't you ear their paddles
chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay'
he may have voiced the longing OF the
British soldier for the sunshine, the
palm trees and the tinkly temple bells.
But it is more than likely that Kipling,
who was born in India, was expressing
his own remembrance of the sounds and
scenes of his youth. It was just a touch
of nostalgia that the years bring. It
happens to the best of us-whether poet
or peasant.
Now this columnist cannot hear any
paddles chunkin'n although he has
some dim recollection of the heavy oars
in the roWlocks as the fishing boats
headed in of a morning for the wharf
with the early catch. That was on the
west coast of ireland. But particularly
at this time of the year another sound
echoes in the ear of memory. It is the
clickety-clack of the binders as they
moved their swath through the horizon
wide fields of barley, of oats and later Of
wheat. Flax came later, a finicky crop,
on a delayed pass. Nowadays the binder
has been greatly replaced by the COM
bine, but there are still many farms
which must use the binder, sometimes
in poor repair due to var restrictions,
because combines are not available yet,
So when we read that Riehland county
IN. d. reports its first cutting of barley
that ran so bu. to the acre and was about
As pounds to the bushel, or that Barnes
county claims a first with barley at IS
bu. to the acre, it is just as though the
old binder vas clicking beside US and the
growl of the thresher and the shrill
whistle of the engine calling for more
loads, or water, is just as audible as it
was twenty or thirty years ago. Chunkin'
paddles have nothing on that for a
Renaissance.
And just as war has changed and
brought devastation to the road to Man
dalay and to the pleasant landscape on
each side of the river, SO things have
changed on the farms of the Northwest.
The farmer has come, so far, through an
economic war that has lasted more than
half a centure. He has made his gains
but his enemy still holds some Of the
strategic points. The frozen e%nterprisers,
as represented by the National Tai
Equity League, are still sniping at him.
The reason? The farmer has built and
now owns many hundred local grain
elevators and gets from them in patron
age dividends the money that once was
the vested right of the frozen enterpriser.
Most Of these elevators offend the frozen
entrprisers doubly-they not only handle
the farmers grain and return the saw
ings, over expenses, to the farmer but
they ship that grain to the farmer
owned terminal elevators, which are OPP
Grated for the farmers by the GTA.
While this is %subversiye to the interests
represented by the NTEA, it seems to
suit the farmers, who, after all, have to
keep the binders, threshing machines
and combines going at greater cost than
before and with less help.
If, a few years ago, anyone had sug-
gested that harvest help be paid Csc an
hour, with overtime, and board and
lodging, that unbalanced individual
would have been put in a stockade as
they did years ago, with the I. w. w.
members who asked not half that wage.
That you will recall, was one at Minot,
N. D., before the farmers got organized.
There the poor wretches who only asked
a decent wage we're held, as in a Nazi
prison camp, without shelter from the
sun by day or the chill of the night.
That could not be done nowadays, The
GARNER knows that his income must
come from a better price and better
merchandising of his crop and not from
crashing down the wages of his help.
There has been gain not merely in in
come for the farm family but in an un-
derstanding of cooperation with their
fellow man. The farm family now knows
that the hired man is not an outlaw or
an alien but one of themselves. 1t per-
ceives that the laborer is worthy of his
hire" and that when the rush of harvest
is on its gains can only come from hon.
est marketing and efficient distribution.
Perhaps this year the binders are click
ing more merrily than they did long
years ago, and if they do and the music
is pleasant to the ear, it is because CO.
operation has taught farm folk to love
their neighbors as themselves.