The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 22, 1917, Page 6

Distributors handled over half of the 1914 crop, but they had no co-opera- tion from the private- marketing con- cerns or from the horde of speculators and market pirates. The crop of the four states — including Montana — totaled nearly 18,000 cars of apples. The war had just started and its ef- fect on the apple market could not be forecasted. The bottom fell out of the market, despite everything the big farmers’ central selling agency could do. The speculators and the big private exchanges cut prices and the ‘Distributors had to also, or get caught with over half the crop of the four states on their hands. Apples that crop year brought an average of 40 cents a box—40 cents a box for the carefully picked and sorted beauties of this in- comparable apple country; 40 cents a box for fruit that cost twice that to grow! FAILURE OF'V CO-OPERATION PLEASES THE SPECULATORS It was the chance the private agen- cies and speculators were waiting for. It proved the failure of co-operative selling by the growers themselves! It proved that the hope of the fruit in- dustry rested with the profit-taking fruit agencies and that farmers’ co- operative efforts were failures! At least this was the gist of the propaganda started among the growers. The powerful private agencies with un- limited financial backing were able to utterly discredit co-operation among the growers. With limited funds, es- pecially after this disastrous year, the co-operatives could not successfully meet this adverse propaganda among the growers. Suspicion of their own co-operative agencies was prevalent among the growers. Discord, lack of confidence, factional strife broke out, all fostered, of course, by the interests who saw no money for themselves in co-operative selling plans that handled fruit for cost for the farmers. Then there was another reason for the great wave of distrust of co-opera- tive marketing that set in. The co- operators had not learned to co-operate in bad years as well as good. The great lesson of sticking together in ad- versity as well as prosperity had not been learned. The North Pacific Fruit Distributors began to disintegrate. The Hood River (Ore.) and Spokane valley (Wash.) co-operative companies drop- ped out, as did some other sub-central co-operative companies, and of the 1915 crop the big co-operative central . agency handled only 25 per cent, against over 50 per cent of the tonnage handled the year prior. WAVE OF DISTRUST AFFECTED ALL DISTRICTS Frank E. Sickels, executive secretary of the North Pacific Fruit Distributors, formerly manager of ‘the Yakima co- operative company, is a fruit grower himself. He has seen 20,000 boxes -of A fruitful lesson for farmers everywhere in this true story of the failure of co-operation—alone —to solve the problem of the orchardist of the Pacific northwest. ( the commission men together have taken the profit out of apple growing. Never was a more conspicuous example of the need of state control. The real estate boomers and A VRN This picture shows what some Pacific Northwest orchardists are doing .to make both ends meet. Here are melons between the rows of fruit trees. During the boom in fruit land a few years ago the slogan was “A family on every five acres.” Now the man with 20 acres has to use the general diversified farming to make any money—to peaches hanging on his own trees ready to pick, with the market 13 cents a box, and he has let them rot on the stem, for 13 cents would not pay him for picking them. He has no illusions about the fruit industry, especially in regard to the disintegration of the co- operative movement that set in after the disaster of 1914. “The wave of distrust in co-opera- tion that began after 1914 did not af- fect the central selling agency alone,” he told me at his office in Spokane. “The sub-centrals, the district co- operative companies, have felt it. They have lost prestige and membership. Some of them are still strong, but not as strong as before. Only four dis- tricts remained affiliated with the Dis- tributors last year—Yakima, Western Oregon, Wenatchee and Montana. Idaho would have been in but the whole crop was a failure there from frost. In 1916 we handled only 12 per cent of the crop, against 60 per cent in 1914 and 25 per cent in 1915. “l do not put all the. blame on the propaganda and under-mining influences of the private, profit- taking marketing agencies. They ~have fought us in many round- A group of fancy cartons for apples which private fruit exchangoé and prowers’ co-operative companies in the Pacific Northwest lately devised for mak- ing the apple more attractive to the consumer, thus increasing the sale and disposing of the great crop the fruit country finds on through the ill-advised fruit land boom of a few years ago, which filled up the country with struggling orchardists. its hands every year about ways, never directly, and they have had unlimited financial resources, and we have not. They have corrupted many officers in co-operative sub-central agencies by putting them on the payroll on one excuse or another, and taken the sub-central’s crop from us. They have overlooked no means of creating suspicion of co-operative effort. But it is a fact also that the growers of the Pacific Northwest have not learned the most impor- tant thing necessary to successful co-operation—that you ' must co- operate all the time, in good or bad years; you must take losses as well as profits, when necessary, and al- ways put up a united front. “Personally I do not think that the cause of co-operation is utterly lost in the Pacific Northwest. I think the pendulum will swing back. I think co- operation has seen its worst year and that we will begin to gain ground again from now on.” After my talk with Mr. Sickels I learned that the Yakima growers’ co- operative sub-agency, one of the most successful district co-operatives and the main stay of the North Pacific Fruit Distributors from the start, will withdraw this year. Many 60k upon this as the “finish” of the Distributors. ANOTHER KIND OF CO-OPERATION ON FOOT “When the disintegration of the strictly growers’ co-operative move- ment set in after the 1914 disaster, a new kind of co-operation was proposed, co-operation of the fruit shippers, rather. than the fruit. growers. This was to be an, organization of all agen- cies that handled fruit, whether co- operative or not, to include anyone or any company that bought fruit of growers or handled it for Browers on commission. It was organized as the Growers’ council immediately after the 1914 blow to the fruit industry. W. H. Paulhamus of Puyallup, Wash., head of & most successful co-operative grow- ers’.association and growers’ fruit can- nery, was elected president of this council. “From the start the growers them- selves and the growers’ co-operative agencies looked with suspicion on this new movement,” Mr. Sickels told me. “As 4 matter of fact representatives of farmers’ companies that were strictly co-operative were more or less openly slighted in the organization of the Growers’ council in 1915.” The touncil, in fact, while called a growers’ organization, was a fruit mid- dleman’s organization and as such in violation of the federal law. The fed- eral law exempts fagmers and labor unions from the anti-trust restrictions, but it does not exempt organizations of middlemen that seek to control the market. The growers’ council, intend- ed to get co-operation among the mid- dlemen in keeping the market stable, SIX space between the trees to produce other crops, and has to go into o often just to make a scanty living. N did not have much success. Some of its investigations of markets were of value. 5 Gordon C. Corbaley, secretary of the Spokane Chamber - of -Commerce, one of the active’ spirits in organizing the Growers’. council, admits that it did little, ! “We went down into Yakima valley in 1915,” said Mr. Corbaley, “and bought up a lot of peaches, to stabilize the market. Independent shippers forced the price down to 20 cents a box and it looked as though all the big Yakima peach crop that year would go for that or less. The council borrowed some money and advertised that we would buy peaches at 25 cents a box, and succeeded in preventing a drop below that figure. We sold what we bought in markets we found that were out of peaches and were not getting any from Yakima. The council did some other good weork along the line of this Yakima activity.” Of course, 25 cents a box was better for growers than 20 cents or less, but it probably cost three times 25 cents per box to grow those peaches. FEDERAL AGENTS ADVISE DISBANDING'MARKET COMBINE Commercial clubs, bankers—in fact the Dbusiness interests generally throughout the fruit districts—realized that something had to be done and done soon, if another year like 1914 was to be headed off. They were anxious to see the grower at least get cost out of his fruit. If he didn’t, it meant hard times in many lines of business besides fruit growing. So the federal government office of markets was called in, in 1916, to investigate the situation and propose some plan. The experts of the office of markets at once recommended the dropping of {he Growers’ council, for the reason that it was an illegal combination of middle=- men, growers’ combinations alone be- ing exempt from the anti-trust laws. It seems that the government investi- gators concluded that an organization strictly of growers, or of growers’ coni- panies, to tover the whole field and stabilize the market, was not what was wanted, or could not succeed. At least the office of markets, of which Charles J. Brand is chief, in its report made this significant statement: " “It was thought (by the office of markets) that a co-operative organi- zation - of - selling agents alone would meet the economic demands, but realiz- ing that lack of confidence in the Paci- fic Northwest has been one of the chief difficulties, it was thought more wise AND SAFE LEGALLY to provide the neutral feature in order that growers at all times might have the opportunity to watch and assist with every activity and be in a position to know rather than to suspect what is being done.” In other words, the government merely wanted-to organize the. selling (Continued on page 18) .