COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 291 



of people are used in great enterprises. A farmer usually 

 deals with people representing business interests larger than 

 his own. As a rule, in business enterprises he deals with 

 men who have the advantage, simply because the trans- 

 action means more to the farmer than to the other fellow 

 with his wider field. For example, a potato buyer in a 

 community may buy potatoes from two hundred farmers. 

 What is 100 per cent of the farmer's business in potatoes 

 represents one half of one per cent of the potato buyer's 

 business. Consequently, a deal that means 100 per cent 

 to the farmer means one half of one per cent to the potato 

 buyer, and because the deal means very little to the buyer 

 and very much to the farmer, the farmer is at a disadvan- 

 tage. Exactly the same condition prevails in purchasing 

 supplies. The farmer is handicapped on account of the 

 small amount of business he is doing. A farmer who can 

 use two dozen machines of one kind can purchase them 

 more cheaply than the man who uses but one. The farmer 

 who can sell many carloads of farm products of one class 

 can get a better price for his products than the one who has 

 only a wagonload or less to market. 



If the products of a community, such as grain, potatoes 

 and live stock, can be made uniform by co-operation among 

 the members of the community in production, and then 

 these larger quantities of uniform products can be sold by 

 one man, the same advantages that come to the large 

 farmer, or have come to the dairy industry, can be secured 

 in other enterprises on the farm. 



Co-operation. — A farmers' club is the logical forerunner 

 of co-operation. In the first place, it gets the people of a 

 community acquainted and increases the confidence of one 

 in another. This mutual confidence is absolutely essential 

 to successful co-operation. In the second place, it provides 

 a logical means for studying carefully any enterprise that, 

 it is proposed to undertake co-operatively, so that 

 impractical undertakings are hkely to be avoided. We be- 

 lieve the farmers' club is a vital factor in promoting co- 

 operation, because it is not organized to defeat any particular 

 class of people, but to study intelligently any problem that 

 may come up, and to execute it effectively. 



