182 



housekeepers' league or even a labor union should not take full carloads of 

 apples or potatoes or cabbages or beans arranged in standard packages, 

 unload them at the nearest siding and have them delivered direct to its 

 members within three or five hours. 



It is evident, of course, that such direct dealings of producers with 

 consumers would give better goods and better prices, and thus very materi- 

 ally reduce the cost of living. Naturally it can only come about as the 

 result of organization, organization for marketing, transportation, and dis- 

 tribution. But why should not one of our greatest activities be organized 

 rather than chaotic? What excuse has chaos to continue? It is chaos that 

 helps make the cost of living high. The managers of factories have dis- 

 covered that they must study and plan to use their machines and tools. The 

 farmer is discovering the same thing in his new movement for improved 

 farm management. Now the communities that are wailing about the cost 

 of living must discover that there is such a thing as community efficiency 

 and we have not got it yet. The tools which the community must use to 

 make itself efficient are all the institutions and groups of people among 

 us — the banks and bankers, currency, railroads, trolley lines, postal service, 

 state experiment stations, the school, the college, commission men, the 

 store, co-operative purchasing associations, co-operative selling associations. 

 All these industrial factors which have been working along independently 

 in a way that is about as orderly as a mob, must come to work 

 together in a new way, which has the correlation of the good baseball play 

 or the good football play. We must have organized activity and it will 

 be quite as valuable as the work of the man who made two blades of grass 

 grow where one grew before, because it will save us from wasting that second 

 blade of grass, which we are now wasting most riotously and uselessly. 



Study, reorganization and the elimination of waste motion and 

 wasted time have marked the efficiency movement in manufacture. They 

 must come to the elements of farm activity and to the elements of 

 community activity. 



Whose business is it to work out community efficiency? There's 

 the rub. As long as it stays everybody's business, it is liable to remain 

 nobody's business, and the groans about the cost of living \vill continue. 

 As a matter of fact, it must become the business of the intelligent end 

 of every community. I regard this conference being held under the 

 auspices of a bank and various public bodies as exceedingly auspicious, for 

 it will serve to call the attention of the people who know and have power 

 to the fact that this desirable thing, like practically every other desirable 

 thing, can only come as a result of, and live by the support of intelligent 

 public opinion. This intelligence can make itself felt through the action 

 of the national government, the state governments, county governments, 

 and numerous groups and associations of private individuals working 

 together to promote efficiency in the service of their members and the 

 community. 



