314 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



will need to scrutinize his operating costs as closely as does the manu- 

 facturer today, if he is to protect his margin of profit between outlay 

 and return in the competition which is sure to grow keener with the 

 passing of the years. 



Finally comes the question of the form of business association 

 under which the industry is carried on. In general economics we 

 commonly recognize five types of organization in which producers may 

 associate themselves together for the carrying on of their economic 

 ventures. These are known as individual enterprise, partnership, 

 corporation, co-operation, and government operation or socialism. 

 Each of them possesses certain weaknesses peculiar to itself, and each 

 has demonstrated certain strength or fitness which has caused it to 

 become established in some department of our economic life. Sec- 

 tion F attempts to set forth some significant aspects of the relation- 

 ship of the different forms of organization to the business of farming. 

 Certainly there is no thought that the family-farm is going to be 

 abolished; nor, on the other hand, should there be any thought that 

 the farm business is going to be immune to the more complex and more 

 efficient types of business organization which have evolved during 

 these latter days in industrial pursuits. The real question is whether 

 agricultural workers are going to develop a new hybrid form of busi- 

 ness association which shall retain the constitutional vigor of the 

 individual enterprise and yet add to it those specialized efficiencies 

 which characterize the larger productive units which have been 

 evolved in modern trade, transportation, and manufacturing enter- 

 prises. If we are to understand the true meaning and possibilities 

 of co-operation, we must analyze it in terms of ability to organize 

 land, labor, and capital effectively for economic production. 

 Appraisal of its social or political promise should rest upon this foun- 

 dation. It is the purpose of selection 120 at least to define some of 

 these underlying issues. 



A. The Meaning of Economic Organization 



99. THE FUNCTION OF THE ORGANIZER 1 

 BY FRANK A. FETTER 



Every separate thing that enters into the making of goods is 

 called an economic agent; as in agriculture, the seeds, plows, fields, 

 fences, barns, cattle, and labor; in manufacture, the buildings, 



'Adapted from Economic Principles, pp. 317, 327-42. (Copyright by the 

 Century Co.) 



