Missouri Country Life Conference. 263 



government inspects, stamps and guarantees the freshness and 

 quality of the butter, bacon and eggs shipped to England and 

 France and they thus top the market. The cost of brokerage is 

 put into the hands of the producer. Co-operation, not compe- 

 tition, has remade rural Denmark. New Zealand is another 

 illustration of the benefits of co-operation. The land was 

 appropriated by speculators at first, but now the government 

 prohibits absentee ownership of idle land by rich speculators and 

 turns the whole patrimony of nature over to the home maker. 

 The poor man goes into the clearing with money loaned by the 

 government and begins to create his own home out of nature's 

 raw gift to men. In Germany I saw many of the public markets 

 where the producer and consumer met face to face and shared 

 the profits of the broker and middleman. 



Let us take a few illustrations of the cost of our system of 

 distribution and see wherein thereis such a large waste of profit 

 between the farmer who tills the ground at one end and the man 

 who labors at forge and machine in the city at the other end. 

 President Yokum of the Frisco system found that the Texas 

 truck farmer often received only from one-tenth to one-fifth of 

 what the New York worker paid. For instance, he got six and 

 one-half cents for the peck of potatoes for which the New Yorker 

 paid 60 cents. It was the same on onions and even much worse 

 on watermelons. In the city of Rochester it was found that it 

 takes 356 men, 380 horses, 305 wagons and 3,509 miles of travel 

 daily to supply the city with milk. Less than one-fourth of the 

 number of men and wagons and of the amount of travel would 

 do it under a co-operative system, and it would be much easier 

 to maintain adequate inspection, thus insuring a pure food for 

 the babes. The grocers and middlemen do not always get rich. 

 There is scarcely a town that does not have twice as many 

 grocers as it needs. But competition gives every man a fight- 

 ing chance to make a living in delivei ing goods, and the greater 

 the number in the game the more every one of them must charge 

 to make a living. Thus many go bankrupt and most of them 

 play no necessary function in the work of distribution. We 

 doubtless need the element of competition, but we do not need to 

 let it run riot with our sense of economy. 



Scientific farming is the second means of rural progress 

 upon which I wish to speak. In Germany I saw everywhere 

 the women and children at work in the fields. Both there and 

 in France the home farm of tho peasant is small and the size of 



