No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 19 



be many years until Pennsylvania will stand where she should stand 

 to-day in the animal industi}^, especially the dairying branch of the 

 industry. 



CO-OPERATION 



In previous reports I have referred to the co-operative movement, 

 and I am glad to report that this movement has taken definite shape 

 in a number of counties in the State, especially in Lancaster and 

 York counties. The farmers are beginning to see that they are the 

 victims of a commercial system that is so organized as to buy from 

 them all theyi have to sell and sell to them all they must buy, and 

 collect tribute for a service that never adds any value to their own 

 products, or to the commodities they buy. They recognize still 

 more than this, that the manufacturer organizes his own sales agencies 

 and makes the consumer pay for this service whether he uses it or 

 not. The farmer Avho drives to the factory and loads up a machine 

 pays as much for it as the farmer who buys the same machine from 

 an agent five hundred miles away; the one enjoys the advantages 

 of the agency, the other does not but pays as much as if he did. 

 Another thing the farmer has learned is, that no matter what make 

 of machine he buys, whether, if a harvesting machine, it be the Deer- 

 ing, Champion, McCormick, Johnston, or any other make of binder, 

 the price is the same because all are made by the same combination. 

 But while these machines are made by the same combination, there 

 are still Deering Agents, Champion Agents, McCormick Agents, 

 Johnston Agents, etc., each one making a regular propaganda in the 

 same territory for his machine, for all of which the farmer pays, 

 but when the time comes for the farmer to do as the harvester manu- 

 facturer does, add the extra price that it costs to sell his products 

 to the price of his wheat, oats and corn, when he puts them into 

 market another agent of this merchandising system appears, who 

 makes the prices, regardless of what the products cost and regardless 

 of what he paid the agent for selling him the harvesting machine. 



The farmer is beginning to see that if it pays the manufacturer of 

 harvesting machines to keep up a propaganda, such as I have de- 

 scribed, to sell his machines directly to the consumer it would also 

 pay the farmer, the producer of the necessities of life, to sell his pro- 

 ducts by means of his own sales agency to the consumers and charge 

 them only what the agency costs him. This would encourage the 

 formation of consumers co-operative purchasing agencies and would 

 facilitate selling directlj- to the consumers through these inexpensive 

 agencies kept up by the producer. This is the healthiest indication 

 along agricultural lines to-day, because it will take out of the hands 

 of men who have shown themselves the most unscrupulous, the hand- 

 ling of the necessities of life, and will hand it over to those who 

 produce and consume them, thus preventing the destruction, by 

 unscrupulous dealers, of these necessities of life, to keep up prices 

 as well as create a market for produce that now frequently perishes 

 in the hands of the farmers because there is no local demand for 

 it, because the farmer under i^'esent conditions is not connected 

 with the consumer who would be glad to purchase his products. If 

 therefore it is the duty of this Department to instruct the farmer 

 how to increase the yield of the acre it is also its duty, after the 



