24 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



higher and more successful type af business man. I do no: 

 wish to be understood as criticising the farmer over-severely 

 along these lines. He has unfortunately frequently dealt with 

 buyers who indulge in chicanery, so that he has come to the 

 conclusion that this is business and that such are the methods of 

 all business men, and he is merely attempting to protect himself 

 against similar sharp practices. 



Next to standards in importance, or perhaps even of greater 

 importance, is the necessity for genuine cooperative organiza- 

 tion in the handling of both producing and marketing problems. 

 Agriculture is the only industry of any importance in the 

 United States which does not have a considerable degree of 

 organization. Some industries are very completely and perfect- 

 ly organized ; others but loosely. Agriculture, in a large sense, is 

 unorganized. The individual producer cannot accomplish with 

 small unit quantities what the carefully organized association, 

 shipping and selling by car or even train lot, can accomplish. 

 1 do not wish to be understood' as saying that there are not 

 many organized producing, marketing and distributing organi- 

 zations. What I do mean is that considering the extent of our 

 agricultural industry, the organization of today is a mere begin- 

 ning. It has become quite the custom to hold up to the Ameri- 

 can farmer the perfection of organization and methods that 

 exist in Denmark, Ireland, Germany and Italy. I will venture 

 the guess, as there is no definite information on the subject, that 

 in the aggregate purely cooperative or semi-cooperative organi- 

 zations in the United States buy and sell a product exceeding 

 in value the total product cooperatively bought or sold in all of 

 the countries mentioned put together. The cooperative grain 

 elevators alone, which are not truly cooperative in large part in 

 a technical sense, handle through their selling and buying de- 

 partments crops and other materials having a value of probably 

 no less than $600,000,000 per annum. Add the millions of dol- 

 lars' worth of dairy products handled by the cooperative cream- 

 eries and cheese factories and the tens of millions of dollars' 

 worth of products sold by the cooperative citrus and deciduous 

 fruit associations and the truck growers' organizations, and it 

 will be readily seen that the total value of products handled by 

 organizations partaking in some degree of a cooperative nature 



