Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 91 



justice by co-operation, and organization is the watchword of 

 American advancement, and the farmer must come to it. 



The farmer buys of organized trusts and sells to organized 

 middlemen, and if the farmer is unorganized how can he hold 

 his own? Organized as effectively as the American Federation 

 of Labor, the farmers of the United States could dictate the 

 prices of foodstuffs, and, if they so desired, force the enactment 

 of laws that would place them in aflQuence and work a hardship 

 to nearly every other class of people. We do not want that, 

 but the country people should be made to realize that in union 

 there is strength and they should get together for their mutual 

 benefit. Why is it that the rural organizations are so rare a 

 thing that a man doing really effective work is regarded as 

 something very much out of the ordinary? Every city has its 

 commercial club, every village has its improvement association. 

 Is the farmer with his broad acres, his investment totaling many 

 thousands of dollars, and his operation sometimes running into 

 tens of thousands, less of a business man than the men who sell 

 a few dollars' worth of goods over a counter each year? It is 

 an easy matter to organize business men of the town and city 

 into one compact body, working together for a common good, 

 if you can show them organization means dollars. Co-operation 

 among the country people means not only that, but broader and 

 better social life and education at home for your children, and I 

 believe this leaven is working. 



Wherever you go today — all over Missouri, all over Kansas, 

 all over Nebraska and the other western states — the men and 

 women and children are talking clubs and associations, the end 

 and aim of which are to make life larger and more wholesome. 

 The forces of the countryside are gathering for a great forward 

 movement. Wherever men meet to talk alfalfa and corn and 

 live stock, wherever women sit down for an afternoon, wherever 

 girls and boys gather to contest their corn acres or their cooking 

 or stock raising, there is the comradeship that stirs one as the 

 blast of the trumpet. The future is full of promise of the time 

 when each shall work for the other and no man shall be glad of 

 his fellow's fall or mishap. So I say the fundamental task of 

 rural advance is local rural community building — the gradual 

 erection of strong communities founded on better farm practice, 

 securing a fair proht through better farm business, and growing 

 of mighty ambitions for better farm life. 



