The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1945-11-16

OF the numerous attempts to revise
the Farm Credit act many have failed
land usually the cause of their rejec
ton has been firm resistance from
the farmers who use and partly own
the system and who have a practical
understanding of what is needed to
correct existing evils. To the farmer,
his credit facilities are just another
farm tool and every farm tool has to
prove itself and have the bugs" taken
out of it in the field. The farmer is
the first man to know what is wrong
with his machinery and what is re-
quired to make it function. The me-
chanical engineers and designers are
important, to be sure, in making farm
tools, but the what's-wrong and what's
needed has to come sooner or later
from the farmer, and he usually has
the answer first
All types of farm co-operatives are
tools of the farmer. He has thorough
ly tried out and developed this way of
doing group business, he understands
it. he believes in it, he likes it, he
knows it is fair and right to all par
ties concerned. He knows it is based
on simple and easily applied princi-
pies. He knows it does no injustice
to anyone, and that it both protects
his own interests and apportions fair
share of profits for all, in short, it is
his system, it works, and works best.
The farmer has developed the CO.
operative till it has now become big
business, a type of big business that
seems pretty we'll able to take care
Of itself in any company of competi-
tors. 1t does not resent or quarrel
with competitors unless they become
truculent; it even renders them an
important neighborly, though unappre-
ciated, service by reason of the fact
hat the cooperative supplies an eff
'ective yardstick for proper charges
and profits, or, perhaps betteb it
serves as a thermostat to save rival
business systems from burning down
heir own houses with the otherwise
furnaces of over-reaching
creed.
The cooperative system of federal
arm credit had its beginning back |
n the days when automobiles were |
till 'horseless carriages whose design
RS had not passed beyond the idea
hat road vehicle had to have body
hape like horse-drawn buggy. The
of the automobile, and the
Mechanical and bodily form that it
hould take had to be slowly devel-
ped about the inner principle latent
n the newly contrived internal COM
ustion engine. A studious perception
f that principle, and it's faithful en-
loyment gradually transformed the
rude horseless carriage into the super
e luxe car of today; which is conclu-
i've proof of the sound validity of
PROCEDURE that seeks to develop what
yer is being built when the principle
hat should govern is first discerned
nd then followed through to com
leteness.
The members of congress that built
he first model of cooperative farm
redit were much like their contempt
aries who built crude automobiles.
he latter were dealing with the prin-
iple of applying gasoline power, about
-hich they did not know too much,
} problems of transportation while
le congressman were dealing with
le principle of cooperative organiza-
on, about which they knew little and
elieved less, and applying it to the
roblem of farm finance. They were
bviously hesitant and distrustful of. 4
plan so unfamiliar and unproven as
lie cooperative method of doing bust '
sss. Their misgivings are apparent t
hen we recall that they had so little j
18th in cooperative type of land s
INK that they built an alternate t
,ency designed on the familiar joint C
ock corporation plan so that the lat c
r agency could take over in case