36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



on the "Marketing of Milk in New England." This was the 

 third conference of the organization and was attended by 

 delegates from forty-four States. The program was of especial 

 interest to all interested in the general subject of marketing 

 and farm credits, and while greatly overloaded with speakers, 

 many important points were brought out. 



Several features of the meeting impressed your secretary. 

 It was the almost unanimous opinion that all States should 

 have market bureaus, that the establishment of grades and 

 standards in farm crops, tools and packages should be national 

 in its scope, that all State laws passed relative to this question 

 should be elastic, so that the actual carrying out of a law could 

 be done by regulation of the department which had its enforce- 

 ment, that a closer co-operation between all agricultural 

 interests must come in this country before any great advance- 

 ment in marketing can be made, and that farmers should 

 control their own selling organizations. All agreed that no 

 better system of rural credits exists than the German Land- 

 schaft principle, and that the system of land rentals in this 

 country is dangerous to democracy. All sections of the country 

 heard from are going through the same trouble as is New 

 England with the milk question, and farmers are not making 

 anything out of their cows where whole milk is sold to supply 

 city trade. In sections where co-operative creameries and 

 cheese factories operate, however, dairying seems to be fairly 

 profitable. Notably, one section of Wisconsin makes over 

 7,000,000 pounds of cheese a year, and this in co-operative 

 cheese factories controlled by the farmers. 



Markets would tend to greater stability if in years of extra 

 large crops the surplus were manufactured into a keeping 

 product. Potatoes can be made into alcohol, potato meal, 

 flakes and flour; apples converted into alcohol, or dried, canned 

 or evaporated. Germany is now feeding her soldiers partly 

 on the 1911 potato crop. 



Among the speakers at the conference were Mr. David Lubin 

 of the International Institute of Agriculture, Hon. Myron T. 

 Herrick, Governor Ferguson of Texas, Mr. Charles McCarthy, 

 chief of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library, and 

 Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Carl S. Vrooman. 



