Il6 AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. 



State presidents, when called upon to rule on questions upon which the 

 constitutional law was not very explicit ; and second, delegates to the 

 national frequently seem to think that the only way they have of offering 

 new and necessary regulations to the order is by modifying the constitu- 

 tion or offering a resolution. Now the facts are that resolutions should 

 be offered for nothing but as expressions of sentiment or advisory meas- 

 ures recommended to the order or others ; that the constitution should 

 contain nothing but the declaration of purposes of the order, an outline 

 of the different branches of government, an expressed limitation of the 

 powers of each branch and each officer, and such general provisions 

 governing the laws and usages as are of universal application, and will 

 be permanent and require no modification and change. Then, to pro- 

 vide rules for the conduct of the officers, and the carrying out of the 

 provisions of the constitution and render the workings of the order 

 effective and satisfactory, not resolutions, but laws should be passed, 

 the difference being that laws would prescribe certain things while reso- 

 lutions simply recommend them. Every bill should be refused consid- 

 eration unless it commence according to an established form, as, " Be it 

 hereby enacted by the Farmers and Laborers' Union of America," etc., 

 and each bill should have a caption and be numbered. If the laws of 

 the legislative body were expressed in this way, they would soon make a 

 valuable code of statutory laws for the order, that would save much of 

 the time now wasted in discussing resolutions that are simply a repeti- 

 tion of what may have been passed many times before, but is not in a 

 shape to be of record. This will also obviate the necessity for making 

 any changes or additions to the national constitution, which is very 

 desirable, as every possible means should be resorted to that will tend 

 to make the national organic law fixed and permanent ; let it be too 

 sacred to be modified except in cases of the plainest necessity. 



Observation of the workings of the order in the past leads me to 

 make the following suggestions : 



i. There should be an efficient and uniform method of securing 

 reports as to the strength, financial condition, - etc., from the entire 

 order. The national secretary cannot now send out a blank asking for 

 information and get a response that is satisfactory from half of the 

 States, because the blanks used by one State secretary are entirely 

 different from those used by another, and consequently the information 

 they have is of a different character. To make statistics of the order 

 valuable they should all be gathered in response to the same questions, 

 and it seems to me that the best way to secure that end would be for 

 this body to provide for a small but competent committee who should 



