380 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



Organization for a purpose, or organization for its own sake. 

 It is extremely unlikely that any effective or permanent organ- 

 ization of rural interests can ever be brought about without some 

 pretty definite object to be accomplished. Organization for or- 

 ganization's sake is a poor program. Again, it is extremely un- 

 likely that any single object, or group of objects, can be made 

 the basis of a national organization. Our agricultural interests 

 are too diverse for that. All attempts to form a general homo- 

 geneous organization of the farmers of the country will prob- 

 ably fail, as they have hitherto. This points unmistakably to 

 the organization of local interests for definite purposes. When 

 several farmers in a certain locality have a clear and definite 

 purpose to accomplish, they have no difficulty in organizing for 

 that purpose. One of the best examples of this is the California 

 Fruit Growers Exchange. A large number of fruit growers, 

 seeing that they must organize their marketing arrangements 

 or become bankrupt, had a sufficient motive. The question of 

 leadership solves itself under such conditions. The man who 

 knows how to do what everybody wants done is a leader by the 

 only kind of divine right, namely, natural fitness. An illus- 

 tration of the same principle on a smaller scale is furnished by 

 the farmers of a certain New Hampshire township, who needed 

 a market. They organized and opened a store in Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts, to which they sent their produce. In this case 

 the leader was a country pastor. A multitude of other examples, 

 large and small, could be named, all illustrating the same prin- 

 ciple, namely, that the organization must be local to begin with, 

 and that it must have a clear and definite object to accomplish. 



The organization of rural interests need not, however, remain 

 local and scattered. They may be federated. Those who are 

 interested in rural organization may well take lessons from 

 the organizers of the labor movement. The attempt to form 

 a general, homogeneous organization of all laboring men had a 



