FRUITS OF THE EARTH
The Community spirit expresses itself in friendly rivalry at Union County Fair.
Largely through the influence of the Farm Bureau, two coöperative organizations were recently started in Union County, the Union County Farmers’ Mutual Hail Insurance Association and the Registered Live Stock and Pure Bred Poultry Association. There is only one other active coöperative at present, a Telephone Company at Mount Dora, capitalized at $3,000. A state-wide marketing association has 280 Union County members who produced in 1920 one-third of all the products marketed through the organization. Besides the marketing associations, Hughes has a coöperative Farmers’ Lumber Company.
All these counties have coöperative stores. A coöperative store at Wisdom in Beaverhead County has fifty stockholders. Lima had a coöperative store in 1919-1920 which failed through poor management. Two Rochdale Coöperative stores were started three years ago in Ulm and Clearmont in Sheridan County. When the central organization took the surplus earnings of the branch stores to make up failures in other stores in the chain instead of declaring dividends, both the Sheridan County stores withdrew and organized coöperatives of their own in March, 1921. Sheridan City for the past eight years has had a coöperative store in which ranchers and farmers from nearby communities have most of the shares. There is also a Miners’ Store in Sheridan City. Hughes County has one coöperative store with 150 stockholders.
Urban and Rural Rivalry
All the centers are service stations for the farmers. In some places the old, deep-seated antagonism between town and country is noticeable. There is the feeling that the merchants overcharge, that big business sets the prices, that capital is to be distrusted. Most of the merchants have been of the old individualistic type which places the dollar higher than the community, an idea which the Commercial Clubs are altering. This is especially noticeable in Union County, where the feeling between country and town has been very bitter. The farmers unfortunately are unfriendly to and distrustful of the merchants and business men. Each group is really interdependent, but ‘such’ a feeling retards progress and development. As one leading farmer put it, “The prejudice between the farmer and business man must be overcome. There is no limit to the results if we can just get together.”
The farmers feel that the average merchant in buying farm products has not discriminated between a good and a bad product so far as price goes. In short, the honest farmer does not want to sell bad eggs or sandy maize, but he doesn’t like to get a poor price for a good product. Farmers feel that the merchants have overcharged them for goods and obtained high profits and they are undoubtedly right to some extent. The farmers believe that the fact of their charging goods on credit with the merchant gives the latter an unfair advantage over them, that the merchant thinks he can pay any price he wants when purchasing from the farmer.
Chambers of Commerce and Commercial Clubs are working toward a better understanding. Get-together meetings have been started. The first Union County meeting prepared the farmers by letters and visits, in order to suggest a more friendly and constructive meeting ground. In Sheridan and Pierre, the Commercial Clubs have been very ready to coöperate in any movements that would benefit the farmer. An example of happier relations between farmer and merchant is the rest room for farmers’ wives maintained in Dillon by the Good Government Club.
