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method, either by doing it ourselves or by getting them to try it. So 

 what I am going to speak of this afternoon particularly will be the 

 co-operative organization that we have started at Ithaca, in connection 

 with the New York State College of Agriculture, by means of which we 

 have to some extent shown farmers better methods of marketing their 

 products, and we have hoped not only to show them that, but also to 

 show them how to produce better products than they were producing, 

 and the results have been phenomenal. 



We have been talking to the farmers around Ithaca for a long, long 

 time — sent speakers out to them, and they have not changed much. 

 Then we started this organization and attempted to handle the products 

 for the farmers, and showed them that we could get more money for their 

 fresh eggs than we could for their stale eggs. Previously we had told 

 them that fresh eggs were worth more than stale eggs, but that did not 

 make any difference when they could get as much for a stale egg as they 

 could for a fresh egg; but when we took their eggs and returned to them 

 a check at the rate of sixty cents a dozen for their fresh eggs and only 

 forty cents for eggs which they had held over from the week before, then 

 the next week nearly every egg received was fresh. That is the way to 

 get them interested and that is what we have been endeavoring to do 

 around Ithaca. 



I will pass on, first, with another method of attack, and then return 

 more definitely to this co-operative association. After improving the 

 method of the production of the products, we have then to deal with the 

 method of the distribution of these products, or carrying of the products, 

 just as we find them, from the farmer to the consumer. I will be able to 

 take this up a little better with the lantern slides, but I might say that 

 the closer we can get the consumer to the producer, the better off they 

 both are. When we have the producer over here and the consumer away 

 over there, we are not going to improve the quality of these eggs and this 

 produce by carrying them from this producer over to the consumer. 

 The farther off the consumer is, the poorer the quality will be by the time 

 the produce reaches him. We also know that we are not going to carry 

 this produce over there for nothing. We have got to charge something 

 for that work. The farther off a consumer is the more it is going to cost 

 to get the produce to him. If we can get the consumer closer to the 

 producer in any possible way, the better will be the quality of the pro- 

 duce which the consumer will receive and the lower will be the price that 

 he will have to pay for it. That, on the face of it, seems like cutting out 

 the middleman. We have heard a lot about that, but I do not intend to 

 infer that we should in any way cut out all the middlemen. We think, 

 in a good many cases, there are more middlemen than are desirable, but 

 under most conditions the middleman is necessary. If the producers try 

 to send their products to the consumers by parcel post or by any other 

 direct means, they would get into a very compHcated proposition. Every 



