No. 4.] ORGANIZED EFFORT. 29 



hiivc grown the fruit ; and the fanner gets his share of the 

 returns, according to the amount and quality of his contribu- 

 tion. These returns are immensely increased not only by the 

 fact that the final market is developed as no individual could 

 aiford to develop it, and as few would have the skill to develop 

 it, but by the further fact that from the moment the car leaves 

 the track at Riverside, for example, until it is delivered in 

 Pittsburg or Boston, it is in the hands of the agent of the ex- 

 change, who controls its icing in transit, knows where it is 

 every day, and, furthermore, may change its destination while 

 en route, as market conditions fluctuate. 



Three points are involved in a business so established : 

 first, it increases the net returns for any given year, making 

 enormously profitable a business that under the individual 

 basis brought only loss and eternaL vexation of spirit; second, 

 such an organization, with its established reputation and set- 

 tled business methods, constitutes a kind of permanent asset 

 or perpetual annuity to every member ; third, the existence of 

 such an organization in any locality insures to every new man 

 seeking to engage in fruit production a market and an assured 

 profit from the first, — all of which is an additional asset to 

 the community and a substantial addition to land values, for 

 who would not pay a higher price either for a bearing orchard 

 or for raw land in a neighborhood where such an exchange is 

 established, than in one where none exists ? It is not strange 

 that in certain localities, therefore, orchards sell for $1,000, 

 $1,500 and even $2,000 per acre, where without the exchange 

 and its methods they would be an expensive luxury as a gift. 



I have taken this as a convenient illustration of a general 

 principle that should be made to figure more largely in our 

 affairs. Each of us begins his farm life de novo, and works 

 alone, putting his products upon the open market, organized, 

 if it is organized at all, in the interest of parties other than 

 the producer. It is as if the maker of shoes should put them 

 up at auction, or dump them upon the market for what they 

 would bring. Do they do this ? No. How long would they 

 be in the business, if they did ? Instead, they exhaust human 

 ingenuity in inventing new and attractive styles, and they 



