406 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



ajjitated over the fact that they were making an effort to control 

 the sale of the products of their farms, and while 1 could not en- 

 dorse many things that I heard up there, it caused me to think very 

 carefully, and last season — the last two seasons — I have spent from 

 six to eight weeks in that State in the fruit business, and I have been 

 really glad to find that the farmers where 1 have been are looking 

 the matter very fairly in the face over there, and while, as I said, 1 

 could not endorse all that I heard, I do not suppose there are very 

 many of the Board present who could endorse everything they are 

 doing over there, but it looked to me as though it would be an in- 

 centive to us to turn our attention to the fact of marketing our pro- 

 ducts in such a way that it would not be necessary for us, and we 

 would not be driven to the necessity of organizing for the purpose of 

 controlling the sale of our products on the farms. 



I visited the markets in studying this question, not only in our 

 own but other states, and I want to say this, that in very few in- 

 stances, I found on over-production of articles grown upon our 

 farms. I did not find in a single market an article that was brought 

 into the market in good condition, well marketed, but what there 

 was a demand for it and they wanted more of it. This being the 

 case, I began to look around me, at my own way of marketing_, and 

 that of others, 



I want to say here, just to digress a moment, that I listened to a 

 paper that Brother Creasy read a few evenings ago in this hall in 

 reference to the question of quality. I was talking a few days ago 

 to the superintendent of one of the steel plants of my county. He 

 said it was a day of production and it was not a day of quality. I 

 was talking to one of the superintendents of one of our great bitu- 

 minous coal plants in Western Pennsylvania, and he said it was "an 

 age of production and not an age of quality. If we look around us, 

 it seems to be more of an age of production than quality; for this 

 reason it seems to me that it is time for us to stop and think what 

 we are doing. If we can overcome this, and make an effort to pro- 

 duce quality and not quantity, I think, my friends, we shall have 

 no need to organize in a state like Pennsylvania to control the mar- 

 keting of our products. 



I remember very well when it was my business on my father's 

 farm to grow wheat. We had a great wheat farm; it seemed to 

 be peculiarly adapted to it. My father, I believe, was one of the 

 most careful men I ever came across. He would not have anything 

 done but what was done right on the farm, and w^e had always a 

 good article and the question was, how shall we put this into the 

 market and get the most revenue from it? The wheat never went 

 into the market as it came from the machines; it was always cleaned 

 thoroughly. If there was any inferior grain in the wheat, it was 

 always separated from it. We didn't do as we are doing to-day, go 

 to market, and say, ''How much will you give us for wheat to-day?" 

 We didn't need to do that. They came and asked us when we would 

 be ready to haul our wheat to market. They wanted it because it 

 was a good article. We never had a particle of trouble in getting 

 this wheat into the market, and it was because of that one thing 

 that placed us in this condition — we had put this article in the market 

 in a proper condition. 



