No. 4.] STANDARDIZATION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 41 



transportation and selling. You will have your own brands 

 and carefully uphold them, and uphold every effort by the 

 State if you realize profit from them. 



Farming is business, and every business method must be used 

 to make it successful. No big business can exist to-day without 

 a brand, advertising and standards of production, and without 

 having a steady market. The telegraph and the telephone are 

 necessary, and some central intelligence. Overhead costs must 

 be estimated. Standardization is the basis for all this. By 

 standardization the products can be brought to the market in 

 sufficient quantities, at the time they are wanted, and to the 

 place where they are wanted. By standardization the small 

 farmer or the man on the moderately sized farm, — who, after 

 all, is to be the man in America, or, for that matter, in any 

 other country, upon whom the future of all agricultural in- 

 dustry must depend, — acquires the strength of the large 

 farmer. If we have large farms then we are going to go into 

 extensive cultivation, and, at the failure of that, into tenantry, 

 with all its evils. The only way to maintain the small farmer 

 is by standardization of his produce. He has got to produce 

 material like his neighbor, and he has got to work with his 

 neighbor in buying and selling. He has got to organize so that 

 the business end of it is concentrated and the bookkeeping end 

 of it is concentrated. I', shall not go into an analysis of the 

 standardization laws, but this I may say, that there is a 

 tremendous chaos coming at the present time. It is proposed to 

 fix standards by the national government. We have already 

 the Sulzer apple standard. Then different States are getting up 

 standards. Many of these standards go into detail, as your 

 law in Massachusetts does, as to size of apples, etc. A good 

 deal of this is dangerous and unreliable. Some of it is necessary 

 in legislation, but what is necessary and what is unreliable will 

 have to be worked out. Some essentials can be laid down in 

 the law. The rest can be given to a board of agriculture to 

 work out, as administrative rules to be carried out through 

 organizations. But in all cases there should be committees 

 composed of men who would use their actual knowledge of 

 business in determining these rules, so that the rules will not 

 be made theoretical; also, they should be changed from year to 



