Changes in Industrial Methods 7 



that has been general. As Professor Bailey says in "The 

 State and the Farmer," good farmers are better off to-day 

 than they ever were before. The prosperity has not 

 always been uniformly distributed, either geographically 

 or among the farming industries, but on the whole Ameri- 

 can agriculture has moved steadily forward, helped to a 

 better understanding of its problems by the state and 

 federal governments, protected by laws that give the 

 farmer a fairer chance in dealing with organized capital, 

 and stimulated by a variety of forces that have been work- 

 ing on the whole group of questions, agricultural, eco- 

 nomic, political, social, and moral, which have come to be 

 known as the rural problem. Under these conditions* 

 the effective organization of farming or of agricultural 

 industries has been well-nigh impossible. To persist, 

 an agricultural organization must be the child of necessity 

 and must crystallize around a vital economic question. 

 It must be primarily an organization for industrial pur- 

 poses, not a society of altruistic idealists formed solely 

 on the principles of universal brotherhood. Its reasons 

 for being must be deep-rooted in the necessity of improv- 

 ing and cheapening cultural methods, of developing better 

 business, of improving the systems of handling, distributing, 

 and of selling the products of the farm, and of strengthen- 

 ing its relationships with society as a whole. The desir- 

 able ideals of mutual helpfulness are more quickly reached, 

 even if indirectly, during the development of the practical 

 business organization. They have a vital force behind 

 them and an influence on rural development such as is 

 seldom attained in farmers' organizations formed for 

 other purposes. 



