MARKET METHODS AND PROBLEMS 563 



of the counties of the state in the various states of the Union. The 

 national, state, county, and township organizations, when confeder- 

 ated, would consist of several million units. 



The collective organizations would properly be designated the 

 "national marketing organization." Such an organization would be 

 to industry and agriculture what the chambers of commerce, boards 

 of trade, mercantile agencies, and clearance houses are to commerce 

 and finance. Remove all these from commerce and finance and you 

 will soon produce decay, failure, and revolution. All these are absent 

 so far as the industry of agriculture is concerned. The proposed 

 national marketing organization would supply them. 



Once put the national marketing organization in operation and 

 there will be no need to grope in the dark or to guess where to sell 

 and when to sell and how to sell. 



Toward this end the working bureaus could bring into play all the 

 modern means of up-to-date business facilities. They could employ 

 the telephone, the night-letter telegram, and card-indexing system. 

 The communications could be regulated to come from the township 

 to the county organization, from the county organization to the state 

 organization, from the state organization to the national organization. 

 The national organization could be in touch with the local markets, 

 with the markets throughout the states, and with the market centers 

 of the world. Each producer would thus be enabled to see, not merely 

 with his own eyes, as at present, but with the help of four or five 

 millions of his fellow-workers' eyes. Where now there is commercial 

 ignorance and darkness, there would then be commercial knowledge 

 and light. At the present time each producer's lack of knowledge 

 causes him to grope around in a limited territory full of cul-de-sacs, 

 but under the proposed national marketing organization the farmers 

 everywhere would have the same light and intelligence in the 

 commercial end of agriculture as merchants and financiers have in 

 the business of commerce and finance. 



MR. SMITH: It might be contended that this system would create 

 an organization so powerful as to become a dangerous political factor. 



MR. LUBIN: You would be quite right if the contemplated organi- 

 zation were a government institution, but this should not be. 



MR. SMITH: You would have the proposed organization to be 

 free from any governmental action ? 



MR. LUBIN: No; not that, either. If this were a governmental 

 institution it would lead to political centralization, when, presently, 



