Business Leaders Corner Strawberry Farmers to Force Market Union
When sixty acres of berry crops remained unsigned for a new marketing cooperative, forty local business men took to the fields to persuade growers to join or face the economic consequences.
The story, cleaned up
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The 'last straw' which yesterday wavered over the back of the Kennewick-Richland Strawberry Marketing Union has been lifted. At noon today, 60 acres of berries remained unsigned, and promoters admitted that unless at least half that acreage joined, the cooperative would fail. Tonight, 35 of those 60 acres have been brought into the fold as a result of a 'go-get-em' excursion where forty business men accompanied the Union’s directors into the valley and camped on the doorsteps of the principal 'hold-outs' until signatures were obtained. Lee M. Lampson, president of the Union, stated: 'We went after the growers of the largest acreage and we put it straight up to them with a do-as-you-would-be-done-by argument. When we had convinced them that unless they assisted in the success of this movement, many of their neighbors would go broke and be forced to abandon the berry business, they came through with their signatures.'
“We went after the growers of the largest acreage and we put it straight up to them with a do-as-you-would-be-done-by argument.”
This aggressive push for a marketing monopoly reflects the early 20th-century desperation to stabilize agricultural commodity prices. Today, Kennewick still grapples with the tension between individual farming independence and the collective power of large-scale industrial agribusiness.
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