No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 415 



tors of these phmts, with their simple needs .and products and their 

 coarse chemistry, are not more truly manufacturers than those who 

 nourish and care for God's green plants with their maniloid and 

 complex needs, their delicate, subtle chemistry, and their fruits that 

 make the heart glad. 



We are sometimes asked the apparently difficult (luestion: Why 

 does the same food given to different animals produce in one case 

 beef and in other cases energy, pork, milk, wool or eggs? The 

 answer is plain; it is because the animal machines differ. No one 

 asks why wood fed to one set of machines come out flooring and from 

 another shingles, boxes or paper, for it is manifest that the machines 

 differ. 



The farmer as a manufacturer, making milk, by passing through an 

 animal machine such materials as corn-silage, hay, oats and bran, 

 has gone further than most manufacturers, because he not only made 

 the raw materials but he has also made the machine that turns out 

 the furnished product, milk. He designed the machine, he furnished 

 the raw materials entering into its composition and he controlled and 

 guided the forces that erected it. 



1 have drawn this parallel between those who are commonly 

 known as manufacturers and farmers, for the sake of drawing an- 

 other to show wherein farmers and manufacturers differ in their 

 ways of disposing of the products they have produced. 



The makers of products of steam driven machines do not as a rule 

 wait for their customers to discover the merits of their wares and 

 come for them. They take good care that the advantages of their 

 products shall become known and they are brought to the attention 

 of consumers. This manufacturer creates the object and the interest 

 and the use that make a demand; then he proceeds to supply the de- 

 mand. Farmers do not often create a demand. Their customers 

 establish the demand and the price, and they meet them if they can. 

 The exceptions to this rule are in the highest grade products, as pure 

 bred animals, horses of exceptional qualities, seeds, special grades of 

 butter or fruit and certified milk; special things, sold with a name. 

 In respect to the bulk of farm products the rule holds and prices are 

 not controlled by the producers. 



Now^ it occurs to me that in respect to milk, this practice might 

 profitably be changed. The producer has here a food product of ex- 

 ceptional value that is used to a much smaller extent than its merits 

 justify and that is partly displaced in the market by more expensive 

 and less nutritious things. 



If a manufacturer is to push a product, he first informs himself 

 in respect to its merits and the place it is to occupy and then studies 

 the things he proposes to substitute it for. He also adapts himself. 



