Pops stayed with Carolina Cotton until 1942, but during this time he had also started to branch out into operations for himself. In 1937 he worked on the side for a year as senior editor for the Rural Electrification Administration of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, and from 1938 to 1942 published their Rural Electrification Guide.
In 1939, he purchased an agricultural trade magazine, Cooperative Digest and Farm Power, directed to leaders of the state’s farm cooperatives, and also published it on the side. This magazine, which he eventually took with him to Ithaca and published until 1966, as well as his successful promotions with Carolina Cotton, earned him a reputation that brought him to the attention of the head of what became known as Agway in New York State.
In fact, Cooperative Digest became so widely read among farm people that once, when it printed a story on farm co-ops that had run in the Reader’s Digest and the Saturday Evening Post, its author received more mail from its readers than he had received from readers of both general-circulation magazines.
The author of that article was H.E. Babcock, in 1921 Cornell’s first professor of farm marketing, who had resigned to raise the initial capital for, and to manage, the Grange League Federation. Known as the GLF, the organization became one of the largest farm producer and consumer cooperatives in the world. Ed Babcock also served for many years on the Cornell Board of Trustees, becoming chairman during the 1940s, including the World War II years. My father liked the one-man-one-vote philosophy of farm co-ops and was attracted to Babcock’s dynamic leadership, writing skills, and his lifelong dedication to the welfare of the American farm family.
Babcock looked up my father during a farm co-op meeting in Atlanta and tried to hire him. My father told Babcock that if he left Raleigh, it could be only to run his own business. Babcock said, “Well, maybe you just bought your own business. We have an in-house advertising and research agency. You can buy it and have your own business.”
My father told Babcock that he didn’t know if he had enough money to buy it, and Babcock said, “I think you have. I’ll lend it to you. In fact, I’ll practically give it to you.” And he did, through the arrangement of a friendly loan. H.E. Babcock was a hard man to say no to my father told me.