The Mercedes News (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 73, Ed. 1 Friday, August 3, 1928 Page: 4 of 12
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SEMI-WEEKLY
Published each Tuesday and Friday morning at Mer-
cedes, Texas, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, by the
United Printing Company, Inc.
SUBSCRIPTION: $2.00 per year.
ADVERTISING RATES: Classified, full information
on classified page. Display rates upon request.
TELEPHONE 431-2-3 for news, advertising or job
printing. Entered as second class mail matter at the
postoffice at Mercedes, Hidalgo County, Texas.
SOLVING SURPLUS CROP
PROBLEM BY COOPERATION
There has been in progress for more than
two weeks at the University of California,
Berkeley, Cal., the annual convention of the
American Institute of Cooperation. Because
this is the most widely attended convention
ever held by this organization and because it
was in session in the American state which
first successfully developed an organization of
growers to handle the distribution of their com-
modities, the gathering is of unusual interest
everywhere. It is of particular moment in the
Lower Rio Grande Valley because cooperation
promises to be the salvation of this very fer-
tile region.
A great many authorities on cooperative
marketing were there, including representa-
tives of thirty-three states of the union, three
provinces of Canada and eight foreign coun-
tries. As was to be expected, the discussions
turned to over-production, the handling of sur-
plus crops and restricted plantings. How
deeply these problems are being studied, the
speeches showed, nor could any of the speak-
ers point out an exact antidote for this
situation.
“Discover,” said C. C. Teague, chairman of
the American Institute of Cooperation and pres-
ident of the California Fruit Growers Exchange
and the California Walnut Growers’ Associa-
tion, “howf to control surplus production or
over-production of agricultural commodities
and you will have solved the big question be-
fore American farming today. There is dis-
tress in many lines of agriculture due to over-
production, often due to lack of proper distri-
bution, or development of markets. A real
problem indeed is presented when all known
remedies, including economical distribution,
national advertising, and reduction of producer-
consumer margins have been applied and found
wanting. Men will work together if they can
ship their entire crop, but when you ask the
growers to leave part of their crop in the fields
dr on the tree, or otherwise dispose of it at less
than the market price, cooperation is likely to
fall apart.”
Teague declared that over-production control
can be effected only by a well-seasoned cooper-
ative organization which handles a large per-
centage of different commodities. The organi-
zation, he said, must practice a merchandising
program that permits withholding a percentage
of the production and diverting this into by-
products, giving the grower a better price for
his entire crop than he would receive inde-
pendently.
I. W. Heaps, secretary-treasurer of the Mary-
land State Dairymen’s Association, said that
control of production is one of the vital factors
in surplus disposal and control. He said
further:
“It is my opinion that we should endeavor to
control production first and then plan to dispose of
the surplus later. If we control production we can
largely eliminate surpluses. I feel the time has
come when cooperative marketing organizations
should be more than mere bargaining associations.
They should endeavor to set up such marketing
plans and policies as are fair between producers
and will tend to control production to an amount
equal to the consumptive demand.
“The problem of controlling the surplus of farm
products generally resolves itself into two major
issues—regulating production of the product from
the seasonal standpoint, and controlling produc-
tion to equal, as nearly as possible, the consump-
tive demand of the particular product. In any at-
tempt to regulate seasonal demand, the weather
factor will be found to be the most serious consid-
eration. The second problem, of controlling pro-
duction through a definite policy among the farm-
ers of a commodity organization, may be found
almost as difficult.
“However, very definite results can be obtained
by ascertaining the amount of the product nor-
mally consumed and allocating to the producers a
basic amount equal to the consumptive demand,
based on the individual producer’s production over
some period during previous years. The quantity
of that product produced over and above the nor-
mal demand becomes a surplus and should be mar-
keted as such. No producer should be limited in
production, but each would receive the basic price
for only his share of the market.”
In the Baltimore milk market, Heaps said, the
penalty of over-production has been shifted to
those individual farmers who will not comply
with economic market conditions in their pro-
duction program.
Surplus disposal is merely using good busi-
ness judgment in disposing of a crop, E. T.
Haack, manager of the Central California
Berry Growers’ Association, said.
“Surplus problems,” he declared, “will stare
every cooperative in the face sooner, later or
always, and I have yet to hear of a plan that is
workable under all conditions. A reasonably
successful plan of one organization may prove
—
FAR FROM THE MADDENING CROWD
disastrous when adopted by another.”
Ralph P. Merritt, manager of one of Cali-
fornia’s largest cooperative firms, asserted that
“no single method exists for the solution of all
problems of marketing. A cooperative market-
ing organization that may be successful in one
locality may fail in another, or a cooperative
that makes a success in handling one sort of
commodity may make a dismal failure in try-
ing to put across another. The organization
must be made to fit the case.”
Merritt defined cooperative marketing as
“the act of the working together of producers
of agricultural products to improve their op-
portunities in marketing by the adoption of
methods best suited to the point of view to the
producer, to the commodity and to the channel
of distribution.”
“Our problem,” he continued, “mainly is one
of uncontrolled surplus. The human and eco-
nomic problem are interlocked and dominate to
a great degree the mechanical problem involved
in the cooperative marketing of our farm
products.”
J. M. Newhouse, of’Portland, Oregon, man-
ager of the North Pacific Prune Exchange, told
how his state solved a problem of local interest.
“Oregon,” he said, “solved the cooperative mar-
keting problem by getting the growers’ view-
point and keeping it. We determine our policy
by the’ growers’ desire and this we obtain
through meetings where the producers are
asked to freely express their opinidns.”
E. L. Adams, manager of the California Rice
Growers’ Association, explained how an agree-
ment between growers and millers to effect an
export project had solved a marketing problem
two years ago. Practically twenty per cent of
the rice crop of California, he said, was ex-
ported to Japan, where it brought eighteen per
cent less than that sold in the domestic market.
But local prices were increased thirty-five per
cent by the move, resulting in an approximate
gain of $2,000,000. He warned, however, that
price setting is a dangerous practice.
The cooperative movement in farming has
come to stay and is a billion dollar business,
Charles W. Holman, executive secretary of the
American Institute of Cooperation, declared.
“When the present cooperative organization be-
gan in 1912,” he said, “there was only one conspic-
uously successful cooperative association in the
country, the California Fruit Growers’ Association.
There are now 13,000 farmer organizations doing a
billion dollar business. ' Of this number 150 in the
last year have done business amounting tq more
than a million dollars apiece and several have
passed the fifty million dollar mark. A million and
a half farmers are now members of cooperative
associations.
“The organization of these associations is simi-
lar to thdt of the ordinary business corporation ex-
cept that the members vote as individuals and not
by stock. The ordinary corporation also exists for
the apportionment of dividends. The farmers’ or-
ganizations pay dividends in a way but exist pri-
marily to serve the membership by intelligent fix-
ing of prices and standards.
“The quality of farm products has been appre-
ciably raised by standards set for the membership.
“The cooperative organizations also aid the
farmer by maintaining -officers in Washington,
D. C., to watch legislation. The cooperatives inves-
tigate thoroughly each measure and only send wit-
nesses to combat inimical measures when they are
sure they are detrimental to agriculture and have
the facts to prove it.
“But in spite of the size of the cooperative move-
ment it is still in need of leaders for further
expansion.”
In respect to legislation, Holman urged the
setting up of a national agency to present the
common views of the cooperatives before a leg-
islative body. His suggestion was approved
and a committee of seven will be appointed to
meet this fall and make arrangements for the
project’s execution.
Representatives of the Valley cooperatives
are in attendance at these meetings and may be
expected to return with a great many beneficial
ideas.
PATRONIZING THE RAILROADS
H. P. Boyd, manager of the Valley Gin Com-
pany, has announced that his company here-
after will not sell cotton to buyers who ship by
truck. He takes the position that truck ship-
ments are unfair to the railroads who serve this
Valley and who pay taxes here.
This position has been widely applauded by
those who hold that trucking concerns have no
local interests, but on the contrary put a heavy
strain on the roads which have been built at
public expense. There has been a considerable
movement of cotton by truck from the Valley,
particularly to Corpus Christi. Whether other
gins are taking the same attitude Mr. Boyd has
assumed is not known. The public will be in-
clined to agree with the Valley Gin Company
that as long as the railroads are serving the
Valley adequately, they should have the
business.
With the employment of General Beach the
Arroyo Navigation district is definitely
launched on its campaign to build a Valley port.
An engineer of the general’s standing will be
a tremendous asset to the Harlingen port move-
ment and his estimates and opinions undoubt-
edly will be taken as authentic. This is the
first definite and tangible move to secure
water transportation for the Valley, and it
promises to be successful. The people of the
Mercedes territory, and all Hidalgo county, for
that matter, are in thorough accord with the
arroyo port movement and wish it every
success.
Facts About Investments
The Dawes Plan
By W. S. COUSINS, INS Financial Editor
New York.—There has been a striking improvement
in European conditions since the Dawes plan four years
ago “ushered in a real peace and made possible the
resumption of normal processes of production and
trade,” according to George P. Auld of New York City,
former accountant general of the Reparations Commis-
sion and author of “The Dawes Plan and the New Eco-
nomics.”
Auld says the continued successful operation of the
Dawes plan “remains a matter of vital consequence to
the political and economic stability of Europe and thus
of large immediate importance to us in America.”
“The record of the Dawes plan to date is one of un-
qualified success,” Auld declares. “Its prospects, fun-
damentally, are of the best. It is powerfully supported
by public opinion.
“Public opinion is reasonably clear, and properly so
that the burden placed on Germany by the Dawes plan
is an equitable one, that it is not based on the idea of
revenge and that it has no reference to the tangled
question of the responsibility for the war. The burden
is laid in the interest of a fair distribution of the war
losses among all the ntions of Europe, no one of which
could undertake to carry a disproportionate load with-
out involving all of them in the common danger of
collapse.
“The French are pinning their hopes of rehabilita-
tion to the Dawes plan; and the Germans, under the in-
telligent leadership of men like Marx, Stresemann and
Luther, are able to recognize the benefits of political
stability and economic reconstruction which the plan
confers upon Germany itself.”
Auld believes that the predictions of a breakdown of
the Dawes plan are “intrinsically unsubstantial.” He
makes clear that the plan functions in a very real and
definite sense as a part of the world credit system. He
says it is the dollar exchange being made available to
Germany through American loans which furnish the
means of transferring the payments out of Germany.
He declares that the operation of the Dawes plan today
depends upon the American investor.
“Today,” says Auld, “Europe and the rest of the
world owe us on commercial debt about nine billion dol-
lars (net after deducting American obligations owed to
abroad); and on inter-ally debt, about seven billion dol-
lars (representing the real present values of the annui-
ties contemplated by the funding agreements, if capi-
talized at four per cent). The total is 16 billion dol-
lars. As against this 16 billion dollars owed to the
United States at the present time, the United States
and the rest of the world before the war owed Europe
the equivalent of 50 billion dollars in present day
values (our share being 7y2 billions. Thirty billion dol-
lars of this debt was owed to England alone and most
of the remainder to France and Germany.”
International debts, Auld points out, never have been
paid by means of an export surplus. International
debts arise solely, he says, as a consequence of the fact
that the debtor countries possess no export surplus; and
over long periods of years they are paid, as they ma-
ture, by the creation of fresh debt.
“Nothing could be more natural, more healthy or
more profitable for all concerned than the working out
of this cycle of world distribution of capital,” he adds.
“The world is divided at any given time into natural
debtor countries and natural creditor countries. A nat-
ural debtor country is one whose current needs for cap-
ital for internal development or reconstruction exceed
its annual savings—thus the United States before the
war and Europe today. A natural creditor country is
one whose current needs for capital at home are less
than its annual savings; thus Europe before the war
and the United States today. And the index of these
needs lies in interest rates. Capital follows interest
rates as the tides follow the moon. It is obedient to
the law of supply and demand; and so today our sur-
plus capital, the product of our industries, loaned
abroad by our investors, is flowing across the Atlantic
in a steady stream.”
The Mercedes News is mighty proud of its new home.
Well, the News deserves the best there is. It is a
mighty good newspaper, and has put Mercedes on the
map.—Rio Grande Valley Sun.
Rural Weather Lore
Is Frequently Reliable
Intelligent farmers nowadays are not greatly inter-
ested in predictions in almanacs or in other long-range
fiction, according to Dr. W. J. Humphreys, of the
Weather Bureau. They rely on official reports by radio
and on their own observations. Scientific forecasting
of the weather does not place reliance on many of the
old “signs,” particularly of those that are supposed to
forecast one season from occurrences in the previous
season.
But Director Humphreys says that many of the say-
ings in regard to the weather that have been handed
down from generation to generation are based on many
observations and are often reliable. For example, he
says a warning of some value but not highly reliable is
embodied in the verse:
A rainbow in the morning
Is the shepherd’s warning;
A rainbow at night
Is the shepherd’s delight.
“A pretty good guess” is to be found in:
If the sun sets in gray
The next will be a rainy day.
One of the “very best indicators of the weather for
the day,” Dr. Humphreys says, “is the state of the
dew in the morning. It gathers on grass and other ex-
posed objects when they are cool enough to condense
it out of the air, just as moisture is condensed out of
the air on the side of a pitcher when filled with ice
water. Now, the grass and other outdoor things cool
considerably only on still, clear nights, the kind that
occur during a spell of fine weather and at no other
time. Hence a heavy dew means that the air was still
and the sky clear, at least during the latter half of the
night. And it is pretty certain that if there was neither
wind nor clouds during that time, the day will be a
good one for all outside work. On the other hand, if
there is no dew in the morning it is almost certain that
either the sky was clouded or that there was appre-
ciable wind, or both; and both, as a rule, precede a gen-
eral rainstorm by 6 to 12 or even 24 hours, according
to circumstances.”
Consequently Doctor Humphreys says there is much
reason back of the two proverbs:
When the grass is dry at morning light
Look for rain before the night.
When the dew is on the grass
Rain will never come to pass.
SLEEPING GIANT
New Haven, Conn.—(INS)—The Sleeping Giant has
added two more human victims to his score. The Sleep-
ing Giant is a high hill range on the outskirts of New
Haven that in outline resembles a recumbent man.
Since the days when the first settlers of Connecticut,
and the Dutch before them, coasted Long Island Sound
the Sleeping Giant has been a landmark, and today the
passengers on Sound steamers casually observe and
sometimes comment on the strange feature of the Con-
necticut skyline as their boats pass.
Efforts, under way for years, had finally acquired
part of the Giant for a state park, but the head, a sepa-
rate peak called Count Carmel, has been pecked at for
a decade by a trap rock concern. Apparently nothing
could be done to save the Giant’s head. Suddenly, as
two hundred men were laboring on the sides of the head
on a humid summer afternoon, the Giant seemed to
shake his head and tons of rock rushed down, burying
one man so his body was not recovered for days, killing
another by flinging him over a precipice, and injuring
scores.
Panic-stricken workers fled the jflace in horror and
could not be induced to return to seek their compan-
ion’s body. Then someone recalled ancient legends con-
cerning the Sleeping Giant that hadn’t been thought of
for years, and recounted past scores against the Giant.
But no theory has been raised to account for the sud-
den latest avalanche.
We feel that real and permanent relief for agricul-
ture lies in the scientific development of cooperative
marketing. The farmer must handle the distribution
of his own produce. The examples of the California
Cooperatives, of the Canadian Wheat Pool, and of Dan-
ish cooperative societies, teach us that this is the prac-
tical way out.—Donna News.
—-------„-----.----A-----
_
Growth/
The population of Mercedes has in-
creased approximately 25% in
the last five years.
DEPOSITS IN THE
FIRST NATIONAL BANK
HAVE MORE THAN TRIPLED
DURING THE SAME PERIOD.
Its loans to the people of this commun-
ity have correspondingly increased.
Capital and Surplus have been in-
creased from $60,000 to $145,000.
Surely this in convincing evidence of
the way in which this strong bank is
growing with the city and community,
and offers a very definite reason why
YOU should make this institution
YOUR banking headquarters.
Z~/ze
FIRST
BANK*.
OF MERCEDE/ W
Gre a ter JSdnkfora Greater Va f/eyfSfi
H. B. SEAY
President
JOHN C. JONES
Vice-President
S. H. COLLIER
Active Vice-President
JACK TROLINGER
Cashier
O. W. DUBE
Assistant Cashier
DRS.
HELMBOLT
Chiropractic
and Swedish
Massage
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The Mercedes News (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 73, Ed. 1 Friday, August 3, 1928, newspaper, August 3, 1928; Mercedes, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth651716/m1/4/?rotate=270: accessed June 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library.