1 10 AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. 



offered for acquiring this desirable state of affairs have been numerous, 

 and often very ingenious, sometimes wild and impracticable. Some 

 have held that organization would render farming profitable and pros- 

 perous by the benefits that would naturally flow from the more intimate 

 social exchange of ideas and courtesies at the meeting, where each 

 could learn the methods pursued in the detail of farm work by all the 

 others, and that the dissemination of such practical data would render 

 all more productive, and that, as a consequence, they would be stepping 

 into the ranks of those who have been eulogized for having been able 

 to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. It seems 

 to me that more importance and value have been attached to this senti- 

 ment than its merits entitle it to receive. A proof of this is found in 

 the fact that the cereal crops of the United States, in 1867, aggregated 

 about a billion and a quarter bushels, and brought about a billion and a 

 quarter dollars; and from that time the crop increased till, in 1885, it 

 reached the enormous sum of over three billion bushels, and the whole 

 crop sold for less than a billion and a quarter dollars. Others have 

 held that organization could render farming profitable by the introduc- 

 tion of better business methods, in which all would unite and co-operate 

 for the purpose of selling our products higher, and purchasing such 

 commodities as we are compelled to buy, cheaper. Those who have 

 made a special study of this feature of the effort realize that the purely 

 technical effort of improving our methods of farming, by which we may 

 possibly increase the amount of products we make in return for a given 

 amount of labor and expense, although it be praiseworthy, desirable, 

 and worthy of encouragement, is not a force or remedy nearly equal to 

 the emergency, and that the influences that tend to depress agriculture 

 and render the pursuit of that occupation unprofitable, have rapidly 

 gained the ascendency over and neutralized the beneficent effects that 

 should have followed the introduction of wise methods and new and 

 improved machinery in the past, whereby the results of productive effort 

 have been increased most wonderfully. It is deemed unwise to depend 

 entirely on a remedy that has proved ineffectual on every occasion. 

 They contend for something more efficient, by advocating a better 

 system of handling and disposing of what we produce, and a more care- 

 ful and economical method of purchasing supplies. This they expect 

 to accomplish by securing, as nearly as possible, a direct sale of our 

 products to those who consume them, thereby gaining the commissions 

 now paid to middlemen that do not appear to be necessary, and 

 increasing the price of the produce sold. They will reduce the price 

 of commodities purchased by encouraging cash transactions on a large 



