Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 343 



We are supposed to work for ourselves, and that is true. 

 There is not much chance for farmers, alone and unaided, to get 

 together, so that if there is not some one to lead such movement or 

 you haven't a county school superintendent active or interested 

 enough to take charge, as they are doing in some counties, it will 

 not be done. I was in a county the other day where the superin- 

 tendent was a live wire. He was active and doing all he could. A 

 county that doesn't have that sort of spirit and doesn't have a com- 

 mercial club is going to be a long time getting ready to get a county 

 farm adviser ; so the commercial club is a mighty good thing. And 

 what has appeared to me as being almost incomprehensible in the 

 many years of work that I have been actively engaged in this busi- 

 ness, has been that the farmers have been so slow to take the ad- 

 vantage that the commercial club activity affords them. Now, I 

 have heard of a number of commercial clubs that have actively 

 interested the farmers in their organizations to the extent of secur- 

 ing considerable enrollment of them in the membership of their 

 organizations. I have been pretty busy since that information was 

 obtained and I have not had time to investigate it, but I will con- 

 fess to curiosity to know how to do it. I have been trying it in 

 our organization and have to confess we have not succeeded very 

 far. We haven't very many farmers in Pettis county who have 

 so far aligned themselves with the Boosters' Club of Sedalia. We 

 have a few and they are among the best and most dependable work- 

 ers. We are going to start now an active campaign in an effort to 

 get more of them. There is no reason why our Pettis county farm- 

 ers and the Sedalia business men should not be closely aligned, and 

 the commercial club is the instrument to enable them to gather 

 very successfully for the benefit of both. Up to the present time, 

 I am compelled to say, we have not had very much success in en- 

 rolling them. Why? They have stood aloof so long, as you might 

 comprehend. There is no excuse for them not being aligned with 

 each other. None whatever. But my observation compels me to 

 confess that there is a whole lot of antipathy between the people in 

 many of the towns and the people of the country surrounding them. 

 That is not true of the business man. The business man that has 

 got sense enough to come in out of the rain, if he feels that way, 

 will not let it be known. He wants to identify himself with the 

 interest of the patrons, the people of the country that patronize him. 

 If he does feel disposed to be snobbish, he will take care to conceal 

 it and not lose his patrons because of it. I am compelled, also, to 

 confess that there is a feeling among certain towns people who are 



