206 THE THIRD POWER 



of his products to the body of men he had never seen before 

 might be considered little short of insanity, it should be said 

 that in his present state of complete ignorance of modern 

 methods of marketing and lack of organization, he has no 

 other alternative, unless his crops are already sold in advance 

 to some mortgage holder. 



It must be pointed out, however, that this is not a lack of 

 knowledge or rather complete ignorance of the best methods 

 of marketing alone that puts the American farmer in such a 

 great disadvantage in the world market, where he must com- 

 pete with the farmers of all producing countries. There is 

 another yet most powerful factor, which, being coupled with 

 the said lack of knowledge, not only compels the average 

 farmer to sell to the first bidder, which appears after the 

 harvest, but even makes such selling imperative. The mod- 

 ern average farmer of the United States, being absolutely de- 

 pendent on the market, lives from day to day under a constant 

 and terrible pressure for cash, and, therefore, can not afford 

 to hold his products for a better market. He can do that no 

 more and even less than the American wage-worker can wait 

 for his wages. 



But here the modern farmer's troubles by no means end. 

 He may master perfectly all modern processes of agricultural 

 production, he may possess the knowledge of modern methods 

 of marketing, he may even own the land which he tills, he 

 may, year by year, raise the bountiful crops, but as long as 

 these are still on the farm, they are valueless. To make them 

 of any value he must transport them to the place where they 

 are wanted to satisfy human wants. Of course, he can not 

 transport them in the old way because, in the modern com- 

 petitive system of production, only the cheapest methods can 

 be used, where several methods are operating in the same 

 field. For this very reason, the old slow ox-team and hand- 

 carried bags have given place to the railroad, steamship and 

 elevator, with pneumatic transfer tubes that suck up a whole 

 ship-load in about the same time it took the farmer of olden 

 times to unload a wagon-box of wheat or corn with bags and 

 scoop shovel. But, while the ox-team belonged to him, the 

 railroad, the steamship and elevator belong to another party. 



