Soldier Settlers Seek Strength in Numbers
Ex-service men on the state land project look to unite local farmers in a cooperative vegetable venture to combat high shipping costs.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Land Settlers Association, whose membership is made up of soldier settlers on the state project in this valley, are planning their crops for the coming season. Some of them, Roy C. Robinson in particular, have had expert experience in the production of vegetables on a commercial scale, and they believe that with the early season that prevails here, they can make these crops pay the grower a nice return. They want to go at the job systematically, selecting those vegetables that experience has shown to produce well in this valley, and setting out enough acreage that the shipments will come on in carload or partial carload lots, so as to get away from the high express rates. The acreage of the different crops selected is also to be divided up among the growers so that in the event anything happened to any of the crops, or the market, the grower would have the other crops to fall back upon. In other words, they do not want any of the growers to put all of their eggs into one basket. The soldier settlers do not believe they will have enough of their own number this year to furnish the required acreage, particularly as theirs is all new land, and they would like to have the other farmers here to cooperate with them.
“They do not want any of the growers to put all of their eggs into one basket.”
This early 1920s attempt to organize agricultural collectives reflects a recurring tension in Washington's rural development: the struggle of small-scale, new-land farmers to compete against industrial shipping rates. Cooperative marketing remains a vital, albeit modernized, pillar of regional agriculture today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.