ORGANIZATION AMONG FARMERS. 29 



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these things at great expense a thousand or two miles away, to be worked 

 together into cloth, when it could be done exactly as well right here among 

 us as anywhere else? If an individual farmer were to load all these things 

 into his wagon, and at great labor and expense draw them even 200 or 300 

 miles, there to combine them into cloth and then load the cloth into his wagon 

 and draw it home again, when he could just as well have made the combina- 

 tion on his own farm, we should certainly all cry out "What folly !" But is 

 not this just what we do when we pay transportation companies for carrying 

 our wool, wheat, pork, beef, potatoes, etc., to New England, to be there put 

 through the various processes by which they are converted into cloth, and 

 then pay them for transporting the cloth back again to us, to be Avorn perhaps 

 on the very farm where the materials out of which it was made, or some of 

 them, were produced ? But even this does not make the full statement of the 

 case. For our wool, before it can be used in the manufacture of cloth, has to be 

 cleansed, by which nearly one-half its weight is carried off in waste, so that we 

 have to transport nearly two pounds of stuff to get one pound of real wool, 

 and we have to transport sixty j^ounds of wheat to get forty of flour, which is 

 the real article wanted, and in many cases instead of sending the pork, beef, 

 and mutton, we send the animals in a lean condition and follow them up with 

 the corn and sometimes even the liaij by which they are converted into pork, 

 beef, and mutton. How much better for us to reduce these articles at home 

 as nearly as possible to the condition in which they are required for consump- 

 tion in the markets of the world, and thus save the cost of transporting so 

 great an amount of useless matter. 



I have lately seen a statement that the ten States north of the Ohio river, 

 commonly known as the Northwestern States, produced for export in 1873 

 somewhat over one hundred and twenty-five millions of bushels of wheat. 

 Part of this wheat was exported in the crude state of wheat, and part after it 

 had been manufactured into flour. If it had all been thus manufactured and 

 sold at the rates prevailing in Chicago in November and December of that year, 

 it would have brought one hundred and eighty-seven and one-half millions of 

 dollars. Whereas, if it had all been sold as wheat at the rates prevailing at the 

 same place and time, it would have brought only one hundred and forty- 

 three and three-fourths millions of dollars, showing a difference in favor 

 of the manufactured article of almost forty-four millions of dollars. 

 Further, at the then prevailing rates of freight the flour could have 

 been put in Eastern ports for twenty-seven millions oi' dollars, while 

 the freight on the wheat would have been nearly forty-two millions of 

 dollars, thus showing to those \qw States a saving on a single crop of 

 nearly sixty millions of dollars, by simply reducing their product to 

 the state in which it is needed for consumption. And that, too, without taking 

 into account the million and a quarter tons of valuable feed saved in the 

 process, which may be fairly estimated to be worth ten millions of dollars 

 more, thus making the saving to the Northwest, in one single year, on one of 

 its great products, seventy millions of dollars. My time was limited for the 

 reading of this paper. 



But I have thus briefly, and, no doubt, with much imperfection, attempted 

 to point ont a few of the many great advantages which might accrue from a 

 thorough and systematic organization among farmers, by means of which they 

 might be brought together, and by the collection and dissemination of statis- 

 tics and information, and by the thorough discussion and investigation of 



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