1314 New York State Agricultural Society 



it well ; we have agencies enough. The department has organiz- 

 ing men now in the cow testing association work to do that verv 

 thing - — to make it produce more economically. Do not let ns 

 get maudlin in this thing and waste sympathy. I am in favor 

 of doing anything to help the farmer, hut I am not in favor of 

 asking for appropriation after appropriation to dissipate our 

 energies when we have agencies enough workins: alreadv. 



Mr. Tuttle : I am going to give you two or three concrete 

 illustrations to show our helplessness. " Ezra Tuttle and his lima 

 beans " has gone all over this country because of an illustration 

 I happened to give at the conference in Xew York in December 

 on this subject of cooperation. It has gone into all the papers 

 and has not been treated with ridicule but has been treated as 

 pointing to a fact. I said that our lima beans were selling at 

 forty cents a bushel and just at that same time I went into the 

 Washington Market and priced lima beans, and at every stall 

 they were selling them at fifteen cents a quart, or $4.80 a bushel. 

 Now, how could I help myself. The trouble of this thing is that 

 we do not look at it directly and closely enough. I had thirteen 

 acres of lima l)eans and I was tempted to make a demonstration, 

 to sell those beans from a cart or a van in Xew York City, but T 

 knew that the dealers would concentrate against mo. I should 

 have had to take out a license with that system. We want a 

 system radically different from the present system and we can 

 only get that by organization. A neighl3or of mine this year 

 sent 100 barrels of cauliflower and seven bags of lima beans to 

 New York and received a chock for $15.00, just enough to pay for 

 100 second-hand slat barrels from Virginia. Another neighbor 

 told me h(^ sent seven barrels of cauliflower and received a return 

 from his commission man that they did not bring enough to pay 

 charges and asking him to send $1.62 to balance. I am within 

 seventy miles of the market; but were I within seven feet of it 

 I could not help myself. You cannot get to the individual, you 

 have to go through this ahominable system of middlemen. What 

 we need is organization all along the line. Tf we producers and 

 consumers had a distributing agency to handle our own business 

 we could be master of our own business. Do not look at it as 

 some far off and tremendous problem. This is something that 



