ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 149 



Some Sensible Remarks by Secretary of Agriculture. 



THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT AND THE FARMER'S MARKET. 



"In his address before the Trans-Mississippi Congress, at Omaha, 

 February 28, 1919, Secretary Houston declared that 'livestock growers 

 do not believe there is an adequately free market.' 



"If the interest of the farmers and growers of livestock is analyzed 

 it will be found that it focuses on markets. 



"This is significant and it should give direction to the thinking at 

 Washington in respect to what the Agricultural Department of the gov- 

 ernment should attempt to do in behalf of agriculture. 



"That department expends annually many million dollars, ostensi- 

 bly for the benefit of the farm industry. Yet the farm industry is not 

 progressing in step with the other large industries of the United States . 



"If the farmer is asked as to what he wishes this great department 

 to do he will sum it up in marketing, not producing. The department 

 issues tons of pamphlets and documents instructing the farmer how to 

 raise wheat and corn, how to feed hogs and cattle, and the like. This 

 is a great part of what it does for the farmer. It supports agricultural 

 colleges, and these also tell the farmer how to produce and how to feed, 

 and the time will come, at the rate matters are going, when the agri- 

 cultural colleges will be the most aristocratic institutions in America, 

 because the time will come when only men of wealth can own land. 



"The average farmer throws too many of these documents in the 

 stove, saying : ' I know how to raise corn and wheat and how to feed 

 cattle and hogs. I can attend to that part of the business, if you will 

 look after my market. What is the use of my putting money, brains 

 and muscle into my work, when, after I have finished the job, the 

 bottom of my market drops out?' 



"There are those who have market knowledge, but they obtain this 

 invaluable thing for themselves, at their own expense, and it is ex- 

 clusive property. The packers, for example, receive data through their 

 own facilities from every part of the globe. This their experts assemble 

 and relate together aid classify, and from it they draw certain infer- 

 ences. From the data exclusively in their possession today they can 

 see the market for hogs or cattle in February, 1920. It may be that 

 the data gathered by them show that in February, 1920, the way 

 matters are going, there will be an increased supply of hogs to such a 

 degree that it will be excessive, in relation to their facilities to handle 

 it at maximum profit to themselves. 



"In such a case the packers do not wait for 1920. They drop the 

 price at once, to discourage the farmer, who does not know what has 

 happened to his industry. He has built his hogs on conditions in 1918 



