The Fight for Conservation | Page 7

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 co?peration 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 co?peration 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 co?peration. 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 co?perative creameries produce about half the butter exported. There are 40,000 farmers in the societies for co?perative 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 agricultural societies with a total membership of 100,000 persons. Since 1894 their total business has been more than $300,000,000.
But, after the farmer has begun to make use of his right to combine for his advantage in selling his products and buying his supplies, is there nothing else he can do? As well might we