Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 93 



in every community. In discussing this great educational 

 question I want to say to you that after a long struggle we feel 

 hopeful in Kansas that we have at last destroyed the infamous 

 schoolbook trust — the merciless book trust that has been load- 

 ing us up for years with inferior books at outrageous prices. We 

 have put a stop to this ever changing of books with a law- 

 providing for state publication of textbooks and distribution to 

 the people at actual cost. We believe this will supply better 

 books at almost half what we have heretofore paid. 



Third, we must develop the collective or co-operative method 

 of doing business on the farm. The co-operative plan is spread- 

 ing. It should not be entered upon hastily, but it promises to 

 render more help to the farmer than does perhaps any other one 

 thing. Heretofore the farmer has been only a hireling in his 

 own house; been the laborer who did the hard work, but received 

 only such profits as were left him by his industrial masters. 

 These masters were men from whom he bought his supplies, 

 men who converted his products into secondary form, men who 

 marketed his products, and men who loaned him money to carry 

 on his business and buy food from other farmers while he worked. 

 When the railroads and other commercial and industrial con- 

 cerns borrow money at much less rate and on security that is 

 bound to fluctuate more rapidly than land or live stock, or crop 

 values, it is time the farmer was financed on a more stable and 

 more just basis. 



The farm credit system of Europe may not meet our needs, 

 but what we have got to have in the future is more stable loan 

 values, lower rates and longer term, co-operative features by 

 which the interest is paid with the principal each time and the 

 loan wiped out by the time the term is ended. 



I hate demagoguery and would do nothing to stir up class 

 feeling, but the facts in this matter must not be blinked at. 

 It will require only a little thought to show that other interests 

 have prospered in a greater degree than has the farmer who is 

 the creator of the basic wealth. The merchant who sold the 

 farmer his supplies, the grain buyer and the corn buyer and the 

 cattle buyer, and the cold storage plants who have marketed his 

 products, the mills and packers who have converted his product 

 into more finished form, the money lenders on time mortgages 

 who have furnished him credit — all these have taken their tolls, 

 and in nearly every instance their profits have been larger than 

 those made by the farmer himself. It can be shown beyond any 



