Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 46, DeMotte, Jasper County, 30 March 1933 — EDITORIAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EDITORIAL

FARM CO-OPS. In considering the farmers’ difficulties, one wonders how much worse they might have been, so far as prices arid marketing conditions are concerned, had the institution of the cooperative never been conceived. The cooperatives have faced, with courage and aggressivness, many problems, many issues. Through them farmers have struggled to keep together in a time of discontent and uncertainty, and to keep their energies bent toward the desired end. They have fought for permanent markets and better prices at a time when markets and prices for all kinds of products, farm or factory, were crumbling. They have sought to build a sound organization for the future while meeting the exigencies of the present. The cooperatives have not done all they hoped to do. But whatever justified hope the farmer has for a more prosperous tomorrow may be laid largely to them. They really have laid the groundwork. They are developing the power that is essential if the producer is to meet the buyer on a fair and equal basis. And it is an inescapable fact that, for the most part, the market has been best for those farm products which are handled thru long established, loyally supported cooperatives. Prices haven’t been at a point where the producer could show a profit--but they have been a good deal higher than they would otherwise have been. Yes, the cooperative movement is making headway, in the face of odds. It is succeeding. And if the farmers of the country stick with it, work for and with it, it will eventually achieve the degree of success it deserves.