Farmers' Week in Agricultural Colhyc. 101 



tiition oT whit'li Gladstone said of its writing that "the finger of God 

 was tliere, " and of whie-h Napoleon said it was the greatest document 

 ever penned by man; but it does depend upon the intelligence and the 

 sobriety of the great mass of the people. I want to say further that our 

 greatest interest does not lie in these great and glorious institutions like 

 you have in Columbia so much as in these rural schools where the great 

 mass of people graduate, 1)ut where you will find neglect. Here is where 

 you want to concentrate you interests. Here lie the hopes of America's 

 future. Not that I do not believe in these great institutions for higher 

 education. I do believe in them. I believe, like Emerson, that we should 

 hitch our wagons to the stars. We should have something to make our 

 young people ambitious, some guiding stars and some light houses. AV(" 

 must first improve the district schools so that life in the country will 

 afford more advantages to the young. This can l)e brought aliout by 

 farmers working together and voting together for a single aim. 



I want to allude now to some co-operative schemes. Those with 

 which I am most familiar were not brought out by our heads, ])ut by 

 our necessities. We are engaged largely in growing fruit and we have 

 gone in to growing strawberries on a large scale. AVhen this industry 

 was in its infancy the farmer took his berries to town and sold them to 

 a dealer or shipped them by express to some city. As the industry de- 

 veloped the nearby cities had more than they could handle and we were 

 compelled to organize and load these berries into refrigerator cars, so 

 that in the place of being confined to two or three local markets the 

 whole United States was open to us. Our cars of berries today go east 

 to Buffalo, north to Canada, west to Denver. Now, because we raise this 

 commodity on so large a scale we buy our crates together in car lots, 

 have our shipping shed and selling organization. When the berries are 

 ripe the grower takes them to the manager of the association, gets his 

 receipt for them and goes home. The manager loacLs the l)erries into 

 cars and sells them or consigns them to points throughout the country. 

 As this industry developed in various towns in our section, we found 

 that two or three towns were trying to sell or to consign to the same 

 market, and then was organized what is known as the Ozark Fruit 

 Growers' Association. That organization sells for the various local 

 associations in Southwest JMissouri and Northwest Arkansas, so that the 

 local association is now simply an organization for buying crates and 

 for packing, grading and loading the fruit. Now, what has this co- 

 operation done ? It has developed that industry perhaps 50 fold until it 

 is now file greatest in our coinninnity ; it has also estnl)lished a better 



