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8 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Sept., 



cal, to control afi'airs in the separate interest of the farmer; 

 yet one must express sympathy for the objects for which 

 certain powerful widespread organized movements are now 

 contending. Under the conditions now existing defensive or- 

 ganization is practically demanded of all "interests" as the 

 price of success. 



Agriculture may not have had the support which it should 

 have had, but it has not had organized opposition. As soon 

 as it begins to make collective demands, so soon will other 

 interests 1:)egin to oppose it. The results on our deni[ocracy 

 may be dangerous and far reaching. 



The incompetency of organization to accomplish in agri- 

 culture what it has been able to accomplish elsewhere may 

 be illustrated in the field of labor. Farm labor cannot be 

 organized on the basis of other labor, nor can the same 

 ideas dominate it; on the farm there is a natural day; the 

 plants and animals are governed by this day ; at any time the 

 weather may, change the whole situation ; moreover, most of 

 the farm labor is also capitalistic, for the owner and his fam- 

 ily are the operative organization. Hired labor is relatively 

 a minor part of all the labor; it is, or should be, resident 

 labor except such excess as mtiy be needed in certain kinds of 

 harvest. ]^Iuch of the hired labor is in the process of acquir- 

 ing ownership. The mass movements of organized labor can- 

 not apply to the rural situation ; or if they were forced into 

 the rural districts, the farmer will simply hire less labor and 

 set his business more completely into nature-farming. 



I am in sympathy with organization that is educational in 

 its basis and that endeavors to improve the individual farmer 

 and to aid him in the making and the handling of his prod- 

 ucts. Such organization as makes for uniformity of grading 

 and for the study of the market situation are com^mendable. 

 There is a clear distinction between these types of organiza- 

 tion and those that originate in mass movements ''to put 

 things over." 



This brings us to a statement of the two theories, or at 

 least the two practices, as to the place of agriculture in so- 

 ciety. On the one basis, the farmer comprises a substratum 

 of human beings whose necessity it is to provide subsistence 



