COMMENCEMENT, JUNE, 1898. 647 



Is it any wonder that wealth, and glory and honor came to him from every 

 land? England mourns for Gladstone, America reverences the name of 

 Washington; Kussia, Peter the Great; Germany loves Bismark; but the 

 whole world owes a debt of gratitude to Henry Bessemer. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MARKETS. 



COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY D. J. HALE. 



America has astonished the world by her immense industrial develop- 

 ment during the last half century. A goodly share of the credit for 

 this success is due the farmer. To have peopled the board plains of the 

 west, to have conquered a vast wilderness, and to have caused stubborn 

 nature to yield the great staple food products in quantity sufficient to 

 feed the people of this nation and several nations besides, is, a very com- 

 monplace but a very substantial achievement of the American farmer. 

 Put nevertheless the farmer throughout the country begins to feel that 

 this is for him but a defeat in victory. For though he expends costly 

 energy of brain and brawn in raising immense crops, yet when he markets 

 those crops he receives in return scarcely a livelihood. He knows that 

 for some reason the markets are to blame, for those same products of his 

 are valuable, not only in foreign countries but in many parts of the United 

 States. 



One great reason for the farmers' low prices and lack of prosperity is 

 that the development of markets has not kept pace with increased pro- 

 duction. Our farming industry, leaving the rock-bound and sterile East, 

 for the fertile plains of the West, has become giant-like, while the East 

 has become instead a thickly populated manufacturing district, whose 

 hungry workmen demand the transportation of the Western food. For 

 each of our seventy million people 5| acres of land are tilled, while each 

 person can consume, at most, the product of but 2-1 acres. Then over half 

 of our country's produce must, as surplus, be transported to Europe and 

 marketed where food is scarce and high-priced. 



An extensive and efficient market is then one of the farmer's greatest 

 necessities. Its function is to first thoroughly distribute the farmer's 

 great crops in the United States. It must ascertain and supply the vary- 

 ing demands of different sections, placing most where most is needed. 

 Next, it should carefully study and supply the important foreign demand, 

 strengthening old markets, opening new. to receive our great surplus. 



In both these functions our middlemen, the boards of trade, commis- 

 sion merchants, and other organizations which manage our markets, fail. 

 This can be partly accounted for in three ways. 



First. They fail to accommodate production and consumption to each 

 other because both vary from natural and uncertain causes. Produc- 

 tion depends upon the number of acres of a crop planted and upon the 

 presence or absence of drought, flood, and frost. But the acreage of 

 crops has not yet heou controlled, and to foretell the weather for more 

 than 24 hours is beyond f he power even of the weather bureau. On the 

 other hand, consumption, not the desire but the power of the worker to 

 buy, fluctuates with every great commercial crisis or unfavorable polit- 

 ical measurer that closes the office, shop and factory. The plan and 



