Description
Oregon Wool and Mohair Growers Cooperative Association and Pacific Cooperative Wool Growers, Portland, Oregon, Published 1921-1922. Archive of five pieces of printed and manuscript ephemera; certificate 27 x 18 cm, bulletin 18 x 23 cm folded and 36 x 23 cm open, mailing envelope 10 x 23 cm, advertising slip 6.5 x 11.5 cm, insurance envelope 16 x 9 cm; the association's "Wear Virgin Wool" ram device on two pieces. Comprising: (1) Membership Certificate No. 1718 of the Oregon Wool and Mohair Growers Cooperative Association, issued to E. Derry and dated 19 November 1921, printed within a green foliate border and completed in manuscript, with the blind embossed corporate seal and the ink signature of the Assistant Secretary; printer's imprint at foot of Bushong and Co., Portland. (2) Pacific Cooperative Wool Growers, Bulletin No. 10, Portland, 3 July 1922; single sheet folded, 4 pp. (3) The illustrated advertising envelope (cover) in which it travelled: Pacific Co-operative Wool Growers, Morgan Building, Portland, addressed in type to E. Derry, Albany, Ore., franked 2 cents and cancelled Portland, Oregon, 8 July 1922 with the "Columbia River Highway / Oregon National Forest" slogan die. The bulletin folds a second time down its center to 9 x 23 cm, fitting this envelope exactly, and the cancel falls five days after the bulletin's date. (4) Printed advertising slip of the American Shropshire Registry Association, LaFayette, Indiana, offering "A Private Flock and Herd Register" with space for 600 pedigrees at $1.00. (5) Mailing envelope of the Oregon Branch Office, New-York Life Insurance Co., 613 Board of Trade Building, Portland, franked with a 2 cent Panama-Pacific commemorative; unrelated to the wool material and roughly a decade earlier, but found with it.
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Certificate toned, with two horizontal folds where folded in thirds, embossed seal crisp, manuscript entries and signature clear and unfaded. Bulletin toned on green stock with both original mailing folds, text clean and complete. Advertising envelope toned, with chipping and paper loss along the right edge where opened; ram device, typed address and slogan cancel all clean and fully legible. Advertising slip with a small foxing spot at lower left. Insurance envelope lightly soiled, its stamp lifting at one corner. Assembled by one Willamette Valley member in the founding years of cooperative wool marketing in Oregon. Wool prices collapsed in 1920, leaving growers holding advances worth more than their clip, and Western producers organized in response. The Oregon Wool and Mohair Growers Cooperative Association incorporated 25 May 1921, nine months before the federal Capper-Volstead Act granted farm cooperatives their antitrust exemption; Derry joined that November, three months before it passed. An Ed Derry of Albany appears in the Albany Democrat between 1908 and 1920 as livestock buyer for the M. B. Craft meat market. Bulletin No. 10 reports membership at 2,025, "the largest strictly cooperative wool marketing organization west of Iowa," and advances to growers cut from 7 to 6.5 percent effective 1 July. The directors are printed with their own sheep and goat holdings beside their names. The text notes that dealers were offering members five cents a pound over mill value "as bait to tempt members to break contracts," and states that any member who violates his contract "is stealing from the loyal members." A "Tariff Facts for Members" column answers the retail clothiers' claim that the proposed 33 cent duty on scoured wool would add $5.00 to a suit of clothes, computing the true figure at $1.32; the Fordney-McCumber Tariff was signed eleven weeks later. By 1925 the association was described in the Oregon press as the largest concern marketing wool and mohair west of the Rocky Mountains.
