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Show FARM CO-OPERATIVE SELLING By GLENN G. HAYES 1 (, 1321, Western Ncwpapr Union.) ' General Plan for Marketing of Fluid Milk JOHN MARTIN swung his long black truck up to the loading platform of the local milk station. "Here's my three cans," he called to the manager. "Three cans every morning morn-ing from now on. I signed a marketing market-ing contract yesterday." Three other dairymen drove up and left their morning and evening milking, milk-ing, pocketed their delivery receipts . and drove away. John watched while the local manager weighed the milk and carried the cans into the cooled storage room to await the morning i train. . Three hours Inter the cans were unloaded un-loaded at the Chicago freight depot j Into the waiting trucks of the Milk Producers' Marketing company and hnuled to the company's plnnt on South Canal street. Here the milk was : tested and put through the processes ' of pasteurization. Three hours later it stood bottled and capped ready for delivery to Chicago consumers. Only ten hours before it was being strained I In a farm kitchen almost forty miles 1 out of Chicago. Six o'clock the next morning a white truck stopped at the back en- trance of a large Loop hotel. The white- I clad driver lifted ten cans out of the wagon and enrried them Into the supply sup-ply kitchen. The next stop left five enns at the door of a nearby fashionable fashion-able French restaurant. The truck belonged to the Chicago Milk Producers' Pro-ducers' Marketing company. It was delivering the milk that John Martin and his neighbors had hauled to their , local shipping station just 24 hours earlier. It Is very nearly "cow to table" service. This type of city distribution of producers' pro-ducers' milk Is a part of tin enormous marketing plan that the fanners themselves them-selves are building up around every great city. It Is co-operative market-, Ing on a scale so large that dairymen of a half-century ago would have, mocked the suggestion. The co-operative marketing of fluid milk didn't get Its start until America began to build cities so big that there wasn't a lot left on which to picket the city cow. The cities grew too big for cows, but not for milk. So the farmers close Into the towns raised more cows and sold their surplus to their city neighbors. The cities grew still larger and the milking radius Increased In-creased accordingly. Fanners now lived too far out to make their own deliveries. They shipped their milk In to the city dealer who handled the direct selling and delivering end of the business. Formed Associations. The dealers formed associations to set prices and the dairyman didn't always get his Ju: t share of the consumer's con-sumer's dollar. Then the dairymen Joined forces and formed co-operative bargaining associations which would meet with the dealers and arbitrate price.". Sometimes the dairymen organized or-ganized co-operative sales agencies and handled the selling end of their own business. This all came about slowly over a period of more than a hundred years. I'.y V.12'2 there were 174 cooperative co-operative milk marketlnK associations ranging all the way from loose bargaining bar-gaining units to million-dollar dls- . trlbutlng plants. There Is no one general plan for the co-operative market In ;,' of fluid milk. The dairymen of every big district have worked out their own individual problems; they have made an Individual Individ-ual plan to fit their own case. In the Chicago district a particularly unique plan has been put Into oerntlon ; a plan that could be used In any metropolitan metro-politan dairy district. It must he remembered that the dairy co-operatives are of two distinct types the dairymen of the metropoll-'. metropoll-'. tan districts, that Is the fluid milkmen around our laruc cities, and the dairymen dairy-men of the strictly rural district. In the remote dairy district each manufactured manu-factured product Is affected little, or not at all by the other. This Is not true In the districts around large rlties. Here four belts fluid milk, butter, condensed milk and cheese lire each Influenced by the market conditions of the other. It was to eliminate the evils of the Inter-belt Influence that the Chicago dairymen organized the Milk Producers' Produc-ers' Marketing company under a four- j pool contract. I!y this plan the fluid milk man pays premium to the hut- ' ter man In order to keep him off the fluid milk murket. The best market Is taxed for the benefit of the member In the poorer market. In that way all j are satisled and no two markets can consollda te to break one of the other two. More than 7, IKK) contniclH have I been signed under this plan, but Ihe organization Is barely complete. Largest Marketing Concern. The largest co-operative milk marketing mar-keting enterprise in the world Is the I inlryuien's I'incue Co operative Asso- I elation. Inc., of New York. In a way i II Is built on the same four-zone basis lis the CftlcHKo association. Instead of dividing the district Into four pools the tullk Is sold by grades---cIiihhih i 1, 2. 3 and 4. The entire district, ' which Includes nil the Mate of New York md the northern part of New ,7 rxc.v and northeastern Pennsylvania Is Included In the fluid milk yooi. i A system of payment has been worked out by means of freight differential dif-ferential by which the Inner-belt milk producers forfeit a small fraction of their market price, which is added to the lower price of the producers' product In the outlying districts. So In the East as in the West we find the fluid milk man paying a premium to keep lower priced products off his market. The Dairymen's league plan .has been In operation only three years, but during the pnst year the league operated 123 manufacturing plants and 944 receiving stations nnd Its business averaged around $8,000,000 a month. -Another metropolitan milk producers' produc-ers' association that has become known throughout the United States because of Its outstanding success Is the Twdn City Milk Producers' association of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which was started In September of 1910. At least 90 per cent of the milk used In the Twin Cities Is co-operative milk and about one-half of this comes In on big trucks which go directly to the dealers' plant; the other 50 per cent goes to the company's plants. There are 14 plants located within a radius of 40 ndles of the city equipped to make both butter and cheese and with enough capacity to handle every drop of the milk that Is sold. During 1922, 4,200 dairy farmers of the district were under contract to deliver all their milk and cream to their local plants. The members average av-erage from 25 to 60 cents per hundred pounds more for their milk than the unorganized producers. Have Different Arrangement. Producers around New England cities have still a different type of co-operative arrangement. Dairymen of Ave New England states, 20,800 of them In all, have formed the New England Eng-land Milk Producers' association. The district Is divided Into 21 zones. In the largest city of each zone a committee com-mittee made up of four local producers produc-ers and one representative of the parent par-ent organization bargain wdth the dealers In selling the members' milk. Boston being the largest city In the district, acts as chief arbitrator. Each member has signed an agreement to make the milk committee of the association asso-ciation his agent In selling all the milk he produces. For this service the association asso-ciation receives one-half of one per cent of the proceeds. The producers of the Philadelphia territory have been organized for some years, but up until 1910 they drifted along unable to better their condition. A crisis In the milk situation that year resulted In the reorganization of the Inter-State Milk Producers' association. associa-tion. Then began the present era of collective bargaining. The association Is purely a selling agent It hasn't a dollar Invested In plants. It handles no milk. It Is simply the representative representa-tive of 17,000 dairy farmers In Pennsylvania, Penn-sylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland to bargain with the dealers of the Philadelphia territory In nrrtv-Ing nrrtv-Ing at a fair milk price. For these services the dairymen pay n commission commis-sion of one cent for each 100 pounds of milk delivered. In this territory a seasonal surplus plan Is being used. Producers receive the regular milk price only for their "basis production." The amount delivered de-livered by a producer In October, November No-vember and December Is bis busls production. pro-duction. If he delivers more In uny other month than In the average of the three named the excess Is paid for only at a little above butter-fat value. In May. June or July a producer mny deliver 110 per cent of the busls amount at the full price. Pittsburgh dairymen have a duplicate dupli-cate of the Philadelphia plan. Baltimore, Balti-more, Washington, Cleveland, Cincinnati Cincin-nati and St. Ixmls have for seversl years been operating on bargaining bn.ilB, but they are now coming by one route or nnother to tl Chicago or New York Ides. |