The Price of Disunity
A local growers' association leader condemns farmers who bypass collective bargaining, warning that consigning produce to commission agents leads to market collapse.
The story, cleaned up
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I am writing this not in the hope that it will do any good for this season, for that time is past, but simply to get it out of my system. It happened in the same old way—baits offered by commission men, premium returns on the first consignments—a lot of growers falling for the bait, taking the quarter today and losing the dollar tomorrow, and then blaming the other fellow. I want to repeat what I have often said before: the blame rests nowhere but with the growers themselves. So long as a considerable part of the growers ship on consignment, giving the buyers an opportunity to work both ends against the middle, no other results can be hoped for. I know positively that no blame for the chaotic condition now prevailing can be charged to the Exchange. Manager Crawford has at all times co-operated with the Association and did his very best to protect the interests of the growers, and if the growers who will not co-operate with us had heeded my advice of two weeks ago, there would be a different story to write. What consignments do to the markets is evidenced from the following quotation from a letter from our Spokane representative: 'The local situation on berries is about as bad as it could be. The demand is exceedingly limited; many shippers are consigning and today our market in Spokane is lower than your quotations in Kennewick.' When the battle is raging fiercest and your local dealers are doing their very best to maintain prices, to see growers, at this critical moment—the very time they should stand pat—drive away with the ammunition wagon and consign additional supplies to the enemy, it seems to me that even a man with a wooden head could foresee the result—disaster. Next winter when you are sitting about your firesides discussing how you have been robbed by the commission men, don’t overlook considering the 'damphool' grower who consigned his berries and made this possible. Yours, H. W. V. V., Kennewick Richland Growers' Association.
“When the battle is raging fiercest... to see growers, at this critical moment—the very time they should stand pat—drive away with the ammunition wagon and consign additional supplies to the enemy, it seems to me that even a man with a wooden head could foresee the result—disaster.”
This 1910s dispute over agricultural supply chains and the power of middlemen highlights the perennial struggle of producers to secure fair market prices. Similar anxieties about corporate middlemen versus collective producer autonomy remain central to the Pacific Northwest's agricultural landscape today.
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