211 



salesmanship. It gets out for business. It goes to the buyer, urges upon 

 him the merits of what it has to sell, and assures to the farmer for whom it 

 acts a real voice in the negotiations that determine the selling price of his 

 goods. The man who annoimced to the world that it takes two to make 

 a bargain never witnessed a transaction between a capable buyer of farm 

 products and a small farmer, helpless in his ignorance of general market 

 conditions and tied up by the necessity of selling promptly; and certainly 

 that sage never dreamed that whole communities of producers might 

 dump the fruits of their annual labors into the indifferent markets of 

 distant cities without regard to any relationship between supply and de- 

 mand, there to be sold for whatever they might chance to bring. More 

 than ninety per cent of the total output of the Exchange is sold f. o. b. 

 loading point, the exact price being a matter of contract before the cars 

 roll, and the small remainder which is consigned to its authorized selling 

 agents in near-by markets being mainly odd lots and goods of inferior 

 grade or doubtful keeping qualities which it is unwilling to put out to its 

 regular trade. In pushing the sale of its products, the association has been 

 constantly reaching out into new territory, until its market, which was at 

 first confined mainly to a few eastern cities, now includes a considerable 

 part of Canada and practically the entire United States east of the Pacific 

 slope. To provide a more direct and personal means of communication 

 with its trade, the Exchange has found it advantageous to station its own 

 men throughout the selling season in many of the leading market centers. 

 This year it sent out from its general office representatives to Boston, 

 Toronto, Buffalo, Detroit, Scranton, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Kansas City and 

 Davenport, Iowa, and next year Montreal and probably St. Louis will be 

 added. 



Again, the Exchange aims to substitute an intelligent singleness of con- 

 trol and unity of action in the marketing of the products of the peninsula 

 for unrestrained and often frantic competition among a great number of 

 small producers. It may be objected that this is monopolistic. It is. 

 But monopoly is not per se and under all circumstances a matter for just 

 condemnation; and the sort of monopoly that has made the term odious 

 has not been, and is not apt to be, a monopoly effected by small farmers 

 in a restricted agricultural section. Whenever in any industry the individ- 

 ual producers are so numerous, their separate output so small in volume, 

 their resources and facilities for utilizing potential market advantages 

 so scant, and their needs so pressing as to render unrestricted competition 

 between them disastrous to their industry and to destroy the incentive 

 of a normal degree of profitableness, then combination, and if you will 

 monopoly, between them is not only justifiable but demanded by the 

 best interests of the country at large. On the Eastern Shore, in the five 

 years preceding the organization of the Exchange, the marketing of farm 

 products was coming gradually into the hands of a class of men known as 

 ^' local buyers," of whom one or more could be found at every loading point. 



