112 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



est power will be as she goes away from the crowded city, out into 

 the prairies, into the valleys, into the little hamlets, where now and 

 then God's people meet, out yonder in the open where is still the 

 vision of God and His purpose and His power. 



CO-OPERATION AMONG FARMERS. 



(H. J. Waters, President Kansas State Agricultural College.) 



"United to relieve, not combined to injure." (The Motto of the Arlington Co- 

 operative Association.) 



A man, a few girls and a cash register, serving meals to a 

 thousand people a day, is the city man's idea of eliminating waste. 

 Allowing someone else to take 55 cents out of every dollar that 

 his products bring while he is content to accept 45 cents is the 

 farmer's idea of business efficiency. 



The cost of getting goods from the factory to the consumer 

 has been greatly reduced in recent years by improved business 

 methods. The cost of getting the products from the farm to the 

 consumer has been increased through lack of modern business 

 methods. 



High cost of living is not so much due to the high price the 

 farmer receives for his products as it is to the high cost of getting 

 these products from the farm to the consumer. There is no single 

 remedy for the high cost of living any more than there is a sole 

 cause for it. A remedy, however, that will bring large and im- 

 mediate relief, and one that is simple to apply, is for the producer 

 and consumer to establish direct business relations. 



Farm products in general are not too high at the farmer's 

 railroad siding or in the wholesale market. Some products are not 

 high enough. The present scarcity of meats, for example, is due 

 to the fact that live stock prices have been too low to encourage 

 the farmer to raise meat animals. This at once imposes upon our 

 farmers a type of agriculture that wastes the soil. 



The value of farm land in the United States has doubled in 

 the last ten years. This is as much increase in land values as 

 had occurred in this country from the time Columbus discovered 

 America until the year nineteen hundred. 



At the present price of land and labor, it takes more than 

 average business management in farming to pay a reasonable in- 



