TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 463 



vate industrial and financial powers, but if this is all that is accomplished, 

 or that it is hoped to accomplish, the movement will not be a success. 

 For such actions as those are largely political and seek changes by polit- 

 ical means. But the disabilities from which American agriculture is suf- 

 fering are not political but industrial, and relief for them must be sought 

 not in political action but in industrial organization, 



I am well aware of the close relation that exists between politics and 

 government action — the legal state — and industry and finance — the eco- 

 nomic state in modern society, and of how action in bringing about 

 changes in the latter is dependent upon legislation in the former. But 

 I insist that legislative action and legal relief or assistance are much 

 the smaller and unimportant elements in the situation. For so long as 

 the modern state refrains from rather complete socialization of industry, 

 so long as production, distribution and consumption are left to be con- 

 trolled by private initiative and individual effort, just so long will cures 

 for industrial ills have to be sought in industrial action. And industrial 

 action that limits itself to seeking information, and expressing opinion, 

 and giving advice, and does not concern itself with seeking concrete rem- 

 edies for concrete situations in unified and controlled action, will never 

 get very far. 



Farmers must be organized by commodities and organized so effectively 

 that they can bring the necessary unified and controlled pressure to bear 

 on concrete situations as they present themselves. This kind of organ- 

 ization is what is involved in true cooperation. But how many farmers 

 are informed as to what true cooperation means, what it requires in indi- 

 vidual sacrifice and surrender, what it offers in collective benefits and 

 advantages. The primal need of the agrarian movement today is the 

 teaching and the preaching of this doctrine of true cooperation. Its 

 fundamentals should become commonplaces with the whole farming pop- 

 ulation. All farmers must be taught that the best interests of each are 

 to be secured in seeking the best interests of all, that in handling of each 

 commodity all should be for each and each for all; that to make this pos- 

 sible involves the fusing of the individual interest in the general interest; 

 that the sacrifice of the right to do what he would, as he would, when he 

 would, and the surrender of the absolute control over the disposition of 

 what he individually owns are a part of the price that the individual must 

 pay to secure this general good; but that in the long run in making pos- 

 sible the general good he is really contributing to his own individual self- 

 interest. This new doctrine that the equitable treatment of all is more 

 desirable than the special treatment of a few is a new ethics to most 

 farm consciences and as such it must not only be taught, but also 

 preached. And until this doctrine is generally understood, and accepted 

 and acted upon, the accomplishments of the agrarian organization move- 

 ment are going to fall far short of what they can and ought to be 

 (Applause.) 



