205 



cline in gross price consequent upon increased production the farmer^s 

 margin of profit may entirely vanish. In short, for present-day agricul- 

 ture, the problems of distribution are just as vital as those of production; 

 if the farmer would succeed, efficient salesmanship is just as essential as 

 the maintenance of soil fertility. Yet the farmer, alone among modern 

 producers, is prone to ignore this matter of selling; and in this age of highly 

 specialized and elaborate salesmanship in all other industries and of in- 

 creasingly scientific production, in his own, we still find him in many com- 

 munities pouring out his goods blindly into the hands of the commission 

 merchant or bargaining them off at random to some local speculator in 

 the same primitive manner that has come down to him from the days 

 when Joseph and his brethren bartered the surplus products of their crude 

 husbandry for the cloths and spices of the Egyptians. 



How then are these forces of aggressive salesmanship, based upon 

 a searching and enlightened knowledge of national market conditions, to be 

 made a part of the enterprise of the farmer? Individually he lacks the 

 time, the capital, the commercial experience, and in general the business 

 capacity necessary to provide them; and even were these requisites present, 

 he would be helpless acting alone among a multitude of fellow-producers 

 whose disposal of their products must restrict within narrow limits the 

 market value of his own. Obviously, then, the true solution lies in co- 

 operation — in the union in this matter of marketing of a great number of 

 small producers whose combined output will entitle them to take rank 

 with modern business enterprises in other fields of industry and whose 

 united strength will enable them to provide at a cost which falls lightly 

 upon the individual the necessary elements of expert salesmanship, capable 

 business management, constant market information, and vigorous culti- 

 vation of the available selling field. To the adoption of that plan there 

 has been one great obstacle : the stiff-necked individualism of the American 

 farmer. He doesn't take kindly to the restraints and sacrifices of co-opera- 

 tion. There is too much of Robinson Crusoe in his daily life. Having 

 been always captain of a very small enterprise, he has missed the training 

 of a worker in the ranks of one of the more complex industries; and he 

 chafes under the discipline which is indispensable to all co-operative effort. 

 Indeed, so strong is this original disinclination to pull together with his 

 fellows that ninety-five per cent of all efforts at co-operation among farmers 

 in this country are said to have failed. Yet this principle of co-operative 

 marketing is indisputably sound. The whole tendency of present-day 

 industry is in that direction; and, aside from all theory, the remarkable 

 success of certain farmers' co-operative selling associations that have 

 weathered the early storms and grown into a vigor that gives assurance 

 of stability — and no less, perhaps, the great number of new communities 

 that are now hastening to take them as models — demonstrate beyond 

 question the entire applicability and extreme value of the co-operative 

 principle in the marketing of farm products. 



