FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 555 



tea growers of China and Japan. By the time he has traded out the price of his 

 eggs he has come in business touch with nearly every man in the civilized 

 world. This applies not only to eggs but to all products of the farm. Man's 

 social relation as compared to his business relation is like comparing a grain of 

 sand to the Rocky Mountains. Nearly every question that agitates the world 

 today is a business question; settle these and little else will be left to settle. 

 The people are not particularly concerned about production; this important 

 question is giving us no serious trouble. The increasing crops of raw mate- 

 rial that we gather each year is enough for all our needs, while the output of 

 our factories grow better in quality and larger in quantity. The difficulty is 

 over the division of these goods. Some people who work hard, and produce 

 much, get barely enough to live, while others who produce little or nothing, 

 grow rich. What would be the result if farmers would conduct their busi- 

 ness as merchants do theirs? If farmers would adopt the same rule in sell- 

 ing raw goods that business men use in selling manufactured goods would 

 not both receive the same pay for labor and capital employed? Most cer- 

 tainly, for like methods produce like results. This would satisfy every 

 reasonable man, and one of the biggest problems that confronts the people 

 today would be in a fair way of being solved. But you answer, the present 

 method of selling grain has been in practice for thousands of years and never 

 will be changed, or if to be, it will be by a long and gradual growth. 

 Remember, we live in a rapidly progressive age where changes are taking 

 place so fast they excite little comment. 



To illustrate, we will uge the farmers who sit in this room. Go with me 

 down onto the streets of Emmetsburg and then look back over the past 

 twenty years. See yourselves as you drive to town with butter in tubs, butter 

 in jars and prints in pails. Some of you go to one store and some to another, 

 for every merchant was a butter buyer twenty years ago. Now, when it is 

 sold just invite yourselves up into this hall, and after you are seated suppose 

 one of you who are present today says, "Farmers, I have been watching 

 you as you sold your butter today, and I predict that in twenty years from 

 now this will all be changed, in twenty years you will not sell butter as you 

 do today; you will not even make the butter you spread on your bread, but 

 it will be done by a board of directors better than you can do it for your- 

 selves. Butter for the home will come from the factory and you will be paid 

 at the bank for your milk. What do you think of this prediction?" Don't 

 you know that more than half of you men would be on your feet in less than 

 a minute and denounce the speaker as a fool. You would say that butter 

 has been made in the home and sold in the stores for thousands of years, 

 and you can not make us believe that this will be changed in twenty years. 

 Now, every one of you men know that this change actually took place in the 

 space of about five years, and that during the past fifteen years your boys 

 and girls have grown to be men and women without seeing one single tub of 

 butter packed in your home. Now I will tell you what we can do in the next 

 five years. To illustrate, the farmers' elevator at Ruthven will save the 

 farmers in its vicinity enough on last year's crop to build a first-class elevator 

 in each one of the five nearest towns: Graettinger, Terril, Dickens, Ayrshire 

 and Emmetsburg, and give to each as much working capital as the Ruthven 

 company has ever had. Every town in the grain belt can build and save to 

 farmers from three to ten thousand dollars the first year, besides the cost of 



