94 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



question that in some lines of farming the farmer receives only 

 thirty-five cents on the dollar which the ultimate consumer pays 

 for the farmer's product. 



If the farmer is to take control of these profit-absorbing 

 phases of his own business and get his proper share of the final 

 consumer's dollar, to effect this result, it seems to me that our 

 farmers everywhere must definitely resolve upon five lines of 

 co-operation: Co-operation in big supplies for making farm 

 products; co-operation in raising farm products; co-operation 

 in finishing farm products; co-operation in standardizing and 

 marketing farm products, and co-operation in securing capital 

 for making and marketing farm products. You must do those 

 things for yourself. If you depend upon the people in other 

 walks of life to effect and carry on this work, it had better be 

 never undertaken. 



In every community lives some man or woman capable of 

 leadership who could start a movement of benefit to the whole 

 surrounding country, and the people know who to follow\ 

 Leadership is a gift of God. He will hold you accountable if 

 you are not giving your best in service. If our country is worth 

 living in and fighting for, let us love it so well that we shall be 

 glad to accept the charge of citizenship as a duty as well as a 

 privilege and care. It is a business. Give it businesslike 

 thought and consideration. It is such men as you who are most 

 deeply interested in every move for civic reform and good 

 government in the State of Missouri — men who go ahead with- 

 out regard to the applause or abuse of the crowd, men who have 

 the breadth of vision to see the right and the moral courage to 

 do the right, although the heavens fall, upon whom we must 

 depend for the solution of the many pressing problems in our 

 times. 



I am happy in the belief that the world grows better from 

 age to age. We are nearer the long sought brotherhood of man. 

 Ten years ago the United States was headed straight toward 

 plutocracy, corrupt and tyrannical; today the sun of free govern- 

 ment again shines in radiant promise, which seems almost too 

 good to be true. The Sermon on the Mount, the most brilliant 

 burst of oratory the world has ever known, commanded us to 

 love our neighbors and do good everywhere. The world now 

 at last is beginning to see what Christianity means, that it really 

 proposes to shape the whole of human society here and now, 

 according to its laws of good will and human fellowship. The 



