MARKET PROBLEMS 



195 



I think we fare about as well as the producer in most cities, 

 and why shouldn't we be well taken care of, for no city in 

 the United States is surrounded on all sides by more fertile 

 soil and better adapted gardening facilities than Rochester, 

 New York. Gentlemen, we did not see the need of coopera- 

 tion until we were crowded to the wall. You men who are 

 here from different localities, if you do not have a local or- 

 ganization in your section, when you go home arouse your 

 neighbor gardeners and form one right away. Without co- 

 operation nothing can be gained. With strong cooperation 

 nothing is absolutely impossible. 'The law of business suc- 

 cess is cooperation." 



I guess I have taken up enough of your valuable time tell- 

 ing you about our petty troubles in Rochester, but I wanted 

 to emphasize what some of the conditions are that the grower 

 has to contend with after toiling to grow his goods and how 

 we can overcome these difficulties if we only stick together. 



Cooperation among the producers instead of competition, 

 that the producer may receive the whole of the consumer's 

 dollar instead of thirty-five or forty per cent, of it for his 

 goods, as is now the case, is the aim of a bill introduced into 

 the Senate in Washington last month "to create an agricul- 

 ture capitol or clearing house" to be run by the farmers un- 

 der government charter. I am not sure whether this would 

 be a good thing, but it would bear investigation. 



The bill would furnish machinery for scientific marketing 

 and standardizing of farm products, to be directed by a na- 

 tional or country-wide organization of producers tvithout be- 

 ing under government control. 



I believe the time is coming when it will be necessary to 

 standardize our goods. We are altogether too careless about 

 grading and packing. We are apt to feel that to dispose of 

 our goods and get our money is all that is necessary. But, 

 gentlemen, I believe the m ost essential thing is the satisfaction 

 that our goods please the other fellow. 



Until recently we gardeners have felt as though we were 

 not getting a square deal from either the national or state 

 government. Experimental stations have been studying the 

 diseases for the farmer and the fruit grower and results have 



