108 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



quality, well suited to the growing of onions, potatoes, celery, cabbage, 

 tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, lettuce, sweet corn, beets, squashes, 

 pumpkins — in fact, nearly everything in the truck line can be grown in 

 abundance on these lands, provided one uses a little brains with it; and the 

 more brains the better. Instead of eternally growling and cursing every- 

 thing and everybody, the weather not excepted, we should put more thought 

 to preparing our land, attending our crops, exchanging ideas with others, 

 and formulating plans to better our condition. 



At the present price of labor we can grow potatoes for thirty cents per 

 bushel, one year with another; onions at forty cents, and other truck in 

 proportion. 



TRANSPORTATION THE CHIEF OBSTACLE. 



The great problem is the cost of transportation. If we send our truck 

 to Chicago on commission, it costs in some cases more than half to get it 

 to Chicago and have it sold. We pay twenty-five cents for a barrel. It 

 costs at least five cents to get the barrel to the. farm and packed, fifteen 

 cents to get it to the boat, twenty-five cents across the lake, five cents cart- 

 age, and fifteen cents commission (if potatoes are fifty cents per bushel), 

 making one dollar and fifty cents for a three-bushel barrel. Adding these 

 several items together, we have ninety cents for transportation and selling, 

 leaving sixty cents per barrel, or twenty cents per bushel. Fifty cents per 

 bushel is a good price for potatoes, and could we get our share of it, we 

 would be well paid for our labor. The question now arises, how shall we 

 remedy this evil? 



WHAT CO-OPERATION MIGHT DO. 



Let us see what there is in co-operation. Could the farmers unite and 

 build or lease a line of steamers capable of carrying cargoes worth from ten to 

 twenty thousand dollars, these cargoes would comprise everything grown 

 or raised along the lake shore, to be sold direct from the boat on the other 

 side. The whole transaction could be done for ten per cent, at the start, 

 and for less after the business was fully established. Sell direct to the 

 groceryman or any others wishing to buy. 



The same arrangement could be made with railways for winter traffic. 

 Have our own cars, large and commodious, built especially for the busi- 

 ness. With these arrangements, the Michigan lake shore would become a 

 veritable suburb of Chicago, so far as market gardening goes. By this 

 method we could give them pure milk and gilt-edge butter, and eggs and 

 poultry. This alone would become a grand feature of the scheme. 



Under our present regime, were it not for selling on track we should 

 find ourselves "in a hole" nearly every time. Under the new system here 

 proposed, we should handle our root crops in sacks, to be returned. Ten 

 cents per bushel would then cover the entire cost of taking to market and 

 selling. On the basis of fifty cents per bushel, as we before stated, this 

 would leave us forty cents per bushel at the farm, a fair compensation for 

 our potatoes, just double what we would receive under the present system. 



What we want is the local trade of Chicago, and we can get it if the 

 farmers will act in concert. There is just as much business capacity among 

 them as any other class of men. All it needs is proper development. 

 Nearly every other class of business is ruled by combinations, and the 



