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If only the Farmers' Institute force, which sends five speakers to nearly 

 every village and town in each state to talk on technical agriculture, 

 would advertise one demonstration meeting for each of these villages 

 showing how to prepare chickens for market, how to pack apples, etc., 

 farmers would attend these meetings and the state's funds would not be 

 wasted in holding large numbers of meetings which are but poorly 

 attended. It is no longer a problem of the first importance how to make 

 two blades of grass grow where one grows now; the problem is where and 

 how to market what the farmer has already grown. 



If a prosperous and contented class is desirable on our farms and if 

 a reasonable priced food supply is essential to city dwellers, some closer 

 touch and clearer knowledge must be brought about. At present there 

 is a strong belief on the part of the consumer and producer that a sinister 

 and malign influence is at work in hidden ways to rob both parties. 

 Public knowledge of the subject will undoubtedly show that the devil is 

 not as black as he is painted. Ignorance raises barriers which knowledge 

 might level. The expense of transportation and handling the farmer's 

 product is large. But at present it is made out to be so large that neither 

 the man who grew it nor the man who eats it is considered. After an 

 investigation of five hundred dairy farms in western New York, Dr. John 

 R. Williams, of Rochester, discovered that the average investment 

 required for operating a dairy farm in western New York producing 

 160 quarts of milk daily was $9,000. One dealer in the city can easily 

 deliver the milk of three such farms. His total investment rarely exceeds 

 $2,500. Thus three farmers in the country with an average investment 

 of $27,000 receive no more for their product than one distributor in the 

 city with not more than one-tenth the investment, and the risks and 

 labor of the farmer are really much greater. 



The Farmer as a Buyer. 

 In the country districts where the farmer is a wholesale buyer he is 

 treated as if he were a retail buyer. He buys thousands of pounds of 

 wire fencing, horse shoes, hardware of all sorts, feeds and fertilizers by 

 the hundred tons and agricultural implements of expensive sorts. But 

 his local dealers treat him as if he were the housewife who is buying a 

 pound of sugar or a quarter pound of tea. He gets very little more 

 consideration for a big order than for a small one. As a result, when he 

 has cash he is buying of the mail-order houses rather than deal with his 

 local merchant, and his local merchant when he has no cash and wants 

 credit sells him a poor article at a high price. A state of anger and resent- 

 ment exists between himself and the local merchants. This summer we 

 had occasion to buy fifty windoAv-sash for a dairy barn. We got an esti- 

 mate from three local planing mills for this work. Their price was $1.75 

 per window. We asked them if they could not consider some reduction 

 on account of the size of the order. They said it was impossible. We 



