82 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



MARKETING DAIRY PRODUCTS. 



I am either too well or too poorly informed to discuss this 

 matter to your satisfaction or for that matter to my own. Your 

 Commissioner desires to find some way of reaching the consum- 

 er at less cost for the exchange than now prevails or to put it in 

 the form now expressed, he wants to know how the producer 

 can get more of the dollar that the consumer is forced to pay 

 for the farmer's products, especially those of the dairy. The 

 milk that I am selling for 4 cents per quart, for the production 

 of which I have devoted a farm and all its capitalization for one 

 year — for we can get but one crop per year — representing wealth 

 that I have created, is sold the next day, merely being passed 

 from my hand to the consumer, for 9 cents and I get but 44 

 cents on the dollar of the sale. This problem of distribution or 

 exchange of wealth is as old as organized industries and has 

 vexed the earth for many centuries. It is as yet an unsolved 

 problem. This shows that the middleman, so-called, is a neces- 

 sity, or at least, a very great convenience. The producer cannot 

 very well distribute his goods over many and distant markets. 

 Exchange agents in some form and under some name, it matters 

 not what name, must aid in distribution of goods to the consum- 

 er. He may be our agent, or in other words, we may sell co- 

 operatively. Attempts at co-operation in all forms are hoary 

 with age. Why has not their success been universal? Because 

 indirect interest is never as effective as direct interest. The man 

 who acts on his own initiative directly for himself works more 

 tensely, buys more keenly, sells more prudently, takes care of 

 credits more sharply, sees that wastage is reduced to 

 the minimum and that all, to the very best of his 

 ability, is done at its best. Thus far in the world's 

 history the saving by agents of co-operative organiza- 

 tions has not as a whole been equal to the superior effi- 

 ciency of the man who has the closest personal interest, namely 

 the one who has his cash and his fate involved. Again, agents 

 lack the inherent quality of self reliant men who act for them- 

 selves. Too often they are indifferent. Those who are efficient 

 to a very high degree command more pay than cooperative asso- 

 ciations are vvilling to give. The very fact of higher reward 

 than the average is the one thing that cooperators desire to es- 



