26 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



everything they want to use. It is proposed that no attention 

 shall be paid to the commercial world nor to commercial values, 

 but simply to the wants of the farmers and their families. 

 Every kind of agricultural product which may be desired for 

 use by the members of this corporation is to be produced by 

 them. Wool is to be produced and converted into clothing, 

 beef is to be produced for home use, and the hides of the animals 

 converted into shoes for home use. Thus to avoid unjust 

 treatment it is proposed to throw away many of the advantages 

 of the commercial system and revert the old self-sufficing system 

 in agricultural production. 1 



L. H. Kerrick, who lived at Bloomington, Illinois, and who 

 was in his lifetime a leading and successful farmer of that state, 

 delivered an address at the Iowa Agricultural College, Ames, 

 Iowa, a few years ago, in which he said in part : 



"The farmer has, in my region certainly, become too much im- 

 bued with the spirit of commercialism. He has gone too far, I 

 think, in the way of producing things to 'sell.' He raises big crops 

 of corn and oats to sell, or feeds many cattle and hogs for the market. 

 He sells these at the other fellow's prices. Then he turns about 

 and buys, at the other fellow's prices, supplies of various kinds that 

 he might easily have produced on his own farm. By this practice 

 he puts himself twice in the enemy's hands once when he sells, 

 and again when he buys. This is not the highest and best idea of 

 living by farming. The first thing a farmer should do is to surround 

 himself in his farm home with everything he can make or produce 

 that will promote the health, comfort, safety, and pleasure of him- 

 self and family. This is what the farm is for, first. And how few 

 good and needful things there be that may not be produced and 

 provided on a good farm and in and about a real farm home ! I do 

 not attempt to name the innumerable good things of his own garden 

 and orchard and field all prime, fresh, and exactly to his liking, 

 which the provident farmer may have if he can only get that idea of 

 raising things to sell out of his head or at least modified, and get 

 that other idea of producing things on his own farm for his own 

 use. If farmers everywhere would think first and work first to pro- 

 vide for their wants on their own farms, then they might be able to 

 set the price on the surplus they have to sell. Then the surplus 

 1 Wilber Aldrich, Farming Corporations, p. 169. 



