252 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



is the acre, aiul to the buyer, the pound, tliat men's minds do not meet. 

 The great service that a Market Oliice then can do, is to assist the pro- 

 ducer to aggregate Avitli lliose of his class, and ])rovide the best informa- 

 tion that is obtainabk; as to supply and demand, and the cost of unit to 

 be sold. This is in short, to place agriculture upon the same plane with 

 the buyer, in the interpretation of supply and demand in terms of price. 

 The ambiguity of the more usual terms of agriculture, such as increased 

 efficienc}', reducing the cost, cooperation, standardization, etc., are not 

 possibilities for meeting points for men's minds. The statutes of the 

 United States against trade restraints center around the psychological 

 fact of a common understanding of values. The commerce of the world 

 is expressed in money, the common denominator of exchange values. Agri- 

 culture as an organic industry, has rarely used the measure of value 

 upon its own output. The proclaiming of agricultural cooperation with- 

 out a common meeting point of men's minds engaged in the industry, 

 has made this work an unstable guide, and deprived of leadership. Uu- 

 cooperating units of agriculture were impotent to deal with buyers who 

 possessed the knowledge of the factors that determined values. 



This was then, the condition of the marketing of beans in Michigan 

 prior to organization of the growers. It is not the purpose of the Mar- 

 kets Office to fix prices or promulgate values. It is however, the duty 

 of this office to supply the advices that informs of the factors which 

 men's minds demand, to act intelligently. The reforms in and advices 

 for the marketing of Michigan's bean crop in 191G, placed between two 

 and three million more of money into the hands of the bean growers, 

 than would have otherwise been done, is the opinion expressed by lead- 

 ing elevator ojierators in this state. This service was not confined to 

 state lines, but the State Market Director of Idaho advises that this 

 same information from Michigan raised the price on one hundred and 

 fifty carloads of beans in that state, two cents per pound in twenty-four 

 hours. New York, Colorado, Idaho and Ontario have planned their 

 marketing of beans in the future, in the manner set by Michigan. It was 

 the satisfaction of the marketing of the Michigan bean crop of 1916 that 

 made it easy for the bean growers to vastly increase the acreage for 

 1917, when the nation's needs Avere never greater. The cooperation of 

 bean growers and buyers in deliberations as to the growing and handling 

 of the crop, is one of the most hopeful commercial conditions. Coopera- 

 tion confined to a class, is narrow, and tends to hostility rather than to 

 mutual service. The authorization of the investigation and improve- 

 ment of the marketing of beans in this state, by the State Board of Agri- 

 culture in advance of any legislation, was an advanced step in coordi- 

 nating production Avith distribution. 



The Michigan Milk Producers' Association was organized at the Agri- 

 cultural College, and has united an industry as no other agricultural 

 body in the state, in the sense of maintaining a paid field agent and the 

 expenses of campaigns for improvement of prices and products. The 

 rapid advances in feedstuffs made the price schedules that seemed ade- 

 quate for milk, entirely inadequate a month later. In many places their 

 schedules of prices were advanced to meet at least in part, increased 

 cost of milk production. Measured in money, the work of the Milk Pro- 

 ducers' Association is reckoned by R. C. Reed, the efficient field secre- 

 tary, as increasing the yearly earnings of every man whose daily output 

 of milk is 250 pounds, oyer |400. It was the leadership of the Michigan 



