OCR Text |
Show Cooperative Movement Helps Farmers The Southern cotton producers, like the New York dairy fanners, have had the benefit of a strong, aggressive, well-supported cooperative cooper-ative movement. That movement has done a remarkably re-markably efficient Job as the Shannon Committee T n q u iry, which investigated the cotton coops, co-ops, showed even though the inquiry in-quiry was started by distributors in an effort to destroy the cooperatives. coop-eratives. The cooperatives influence influ-ence has been to Increase farm efficiency and to bring farmers a more equHable share of the final selling price of their crop. Where, before the days of the cooperative, there was very little classifying of cotton and ali staples were bought At one price, the co-op maintains an office in which an exp"rt classer gives the grower a written statement of the grade and staple and the market value. The merchant mer-chant must then meet the co price or lose the cotton. Before the co-op classing offices were opened farmers in small towns near Memphis were gettinr? $2.50 to $3.75 a bale less than the Memphis price. Now they are getting get-ting within $.75 to $1.25 of the Memphis price a gain to the farmer of between $1.25 and $3.00 a bale. Through the united efforts of the co-op and southern bankers bank-ers 7,000,000 bales were held off the market last fall, as a principal result of which the market iinme -1 diately rallied better than $5.00 a bale. This Is what Southern coopera- I tlves have done. It is also what other strong cooperatives, in other parts of the country, dealing in other farm produce, have done. It Is no wonder that the cooperative movement Is generally considered the farmers' brightest hope for future fu-ture prosperity. |