farmers" state congress. 415 



mechanical ingenuity and get new ideas not found in books. The artist 

 and architect will see a superb picture of beauty and harmony. The 

 citizen who delights in foreign travel can see more strange sights and 

 people in a ten days' visit to St. Louis next summer thap can be seen in 

 a trip around the world. The farmer will find object lessons showing the 

 possibilities in his calling that will inspire him to improved methods, with 

 the assurance of richer rewards, and the young and old on pleasure bent 

 will have more kinds of entertainment at this World's Fair than they 

 ever dreamed of, and can count on the best time of their lives. The 

 economical and calculating can rejoice over the best bargain ever made 

 by seeing a fifty-million-dollar show for fifty cents. 



PRACTICAL CO-OPERATION BY FARMERS. 



J. A. EVERITT, INDIANAPOLIS. 



Mr. President and Members of the Farmers' Congress — I have not 

 prepared a speech for this occasion. I want to talk to you a few minutes, 

 then I want you to ask me any questions that may occur to you about co- 

 operation by farmers, and any and all troubles that you have on the farm, 

 and I will tell you how they can be cured on the plan of the American 

 Society of Equity. 



I need not tell you that farmers can organize, because they have 

 organized before. They were the first people to organize and try co-opera- 

 tion on a large scale. That they did not have a perfect plan is not to be 

 wondered at. It would have been surprising if the first attempt of any 

 large class to co-operate for mutual benefit had been successful. Since 

 then, however, we have seen every important industry and profession and 

 labor organize and co-operate successfully. At the beginning of the twen- 

 tieth century we find the extraordinary condition that the farmers are 

 really the only people in the country who are not organized and agriculture 

 the only industry that a set of self-appointed people who produce nothing 

 attend to the most vital part of the business, viz.. price the products. 



It is a fact that can not be successfully disputed that there is not a 

 crop raised on the farms that the farmers independently put the value on 

 it. True, in some localities the price secured is above the city prices, or 

 a few farmers raise superior goods and can demand an extra price, but 

 even these are limited and tempered by prices made in the cities by boards 

 of trade, food trusts, packers' combines, cotton factors, commission men, 

 cold storage companies, etc. Manufacturers, merchants, laborers, and 

 even professional men spend some money to secure a market for their 

 goods. Oftentimes manufacturers expend as much to market their prod- 



