IN FOOD DISTRIBUTION 7 



outstripped those in methods for getting products into the 

 hands of consumers, just as in political and social life the 

 machinery sometimes seems inadequate for the tasks it is 

 supposed to perform. Thus far no one has come forward 

 with a comprehensive plan for remodelling the marketing 

 machinery, though of course practicable suggestions for 

 improving minor parts are from time to time offered. In- 

 deed it is highly improbable that the mechanism can be 

 completely reconstructed as long as producers prefer a 

 starved individualism to a well fed cooperation between 

 themselves and with marketing agencies, and as long as 

 consumers have an unreasoning terror of such combina- 

 tions and associations as are essential to efficiency in 

 marketing. 



So the problem is more than that of devising proper 

 mechanical methods for the economical distribution of food- 

 products. Men as well as things must be made to act in 

 a different manner, and to readjust men's habits is not a 

 trifling undertaking. If the course of civilization for five 

 thousand years has been unable to impress upon men's 

 minds the advantages of working together for the accom- 

 plishment of common ends there is little likelihood that the 

 exhortation of any social reformer will bring it about at 

 a momait's notice. Just at this point many otherwise ir- 

 reproachable schemes break down. They depend for their 

 success upon the contingency that men become rational or 

 loyal or unsuspicious or honest or upon some other hypo- 

 thetical condition. The "economic man" has fallen, and 

 plans of social amelioration that rest on the presupposition 

 that the individual recognizes and pursues his economic 

 interests to the exclusion of other considerations are des- 

 tined to remain unrealized. 



Until recently American farmers have been unconscious 

 of and unaffected by those socializing forces which have 



