The Fight for Conservation | Page 7

individuals. Take for example the merchants of a town, who have
established a Chamber of Commerce or Board of Trade. They have
three objects: first, sound and profitable business; second, organized
coöperation with each other to their mutual advantage, as in settling
disputes, securing satisfactory rates from railroads, and inducing new
industries to settle amongst them; and third, to make their town more
beautiful, more healthful, and generally a better place to live in. Take a
labor union as another example, and you will find the same three-fold
purpose. A good union admits only good workmen to membership in
its sound body; the members get from the Union the advantages of
organized coöperation in selling their labor to the best advantage; and
in addition they enjoy certain special advantages often of
overwhelming importance.
The practical value of organization and coöperation is obvious, and
they are being utilized very widely in nearly every branch of our
national life. But what is the case with the farmer? The farmers are the
only great body of our people who remain in large part substantially
unorganized. The merchants are organized, the wage-workers are
organized, the railroads are organized. The men with whom the farmer
competes are organized to get the best results for themselves in their

dealings with him. The farmer is engaged, usually without the
assistance of organization, in competing with these organizations of
other groups of citizens. Thus the farmer, the man on whose product we
all live, too often contends almost single-handed against his highly
organized competitors.
How have the agricultural schools and colleges and the Departments of
Agriculture of State and Nation met this situation? Largely by the
assertion, in word or in act, that there is only one thing to be done for
the farmer. So far as his personal education is concerned, they have
tried to give him a sound body, a trained mind, and a wise and valiant
spirit. But so far as his calling is concerned, they have stopped with the
body. They have said in effect: We will help the farmer to grow better
crops, but we will take no thought of how he can get the best returns for
the crops he grows, or of how he can utilize those returns so as to make
them yield him the best and happiest life.
It is not wise to stop the education of a boy or a girl with the body, and
to neglect the mind and the spirit. But we have done the equivalent of
that in dealing with farm life. Along the line of better crops we have
done more for the farmer, and have done it more effectively, than any
other Nation. Hut we have done little, and far less than many other
Nations, for better business and better living on the farm. Hereafter we
shall need in State and Nation not only the work of Departments of
Agriculture such as we have now, but we shall need to have added to
their functions such duties as will make them departments of rural
business and rural life as well. Our Departments of Agriculture should
cover the whole field of the farmer's life. It is not enough to touch only
one of the three great country problems, even though that is the first in
time and perhaps in importance.
Of course we all realize that the growing of crops is the great
foundation on which the well-being not only of the farmer but of the
whole Nation must depend. First of all we must have food. But after
that has been achieved, is there nothing more to be done? It seems to
me clear that farmers have as much to gain from good organization as
merchants, plumbers, carpenters, or any of the other trades and

businesses of the United States. After we have secured better crops, the
next logical and inevitable step is to secure better business organization
on the farm, so that each farmer shall get from what he grows the best
possible return.
Consider what has been accomplished in Ireland through agricultural
coöperation. The Irish have discovered that it is not good for the farmer
to work alone. Since 1894 they have been organizing agricultural
societies to give the farmer a chance to sell at the right time and at the
right price. The result is impressive. In Ireland the coöperative
creameries produce about half the butter exported. There are 40,000
farmers in the societies for coöperative selling, which, as we know in
this country, means better prices. There are about 300 agricultural
credit societies with a membership of 15,000 and a capital of more than
$200,000. In a word, in Ireland, which we have been apt to consider as
far behind us in all that relates to agriculture, there are nearly 1,000