Co-Operative Wool Marketing in South Dakota

During 1918 and 1919 several of the counties of the state, through the help of their farm bureaus and county agricultural agents, assisted sheep raisers .in marketing their wool cooperatively by the county wool pool system. This method afforded a great many advantages over the old system of each sheepman marketing his wool privately to county buyers, in that it made possible selling on a grade basis, assembling the wool in car lots, and in many other respects reduced the expense of marketing considerably. However, by the spring of 1920 it had become evident that the county pooling system had certain definite limitations in that it did not provide for cheaper storage and insurance, and that the smaller pools did not have sufficient volume to sell direct to the mills. In addition to this, it was reported that in several instances private buyers had a tacit understanding among themselves not to compete against each other in bidding on county pools