The patron of husbandry. (Columbus, Miss.) 1875-1883, 1879-11-01
Observation-Disclosures
| CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERA

CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERA
| TON
The intelligent Patron is directly inter
ested in the multiplication of means; that
| all resources shall be made available; that
| production shall be increased; that there
shall be no waste; and that industry and
| thrift shall take the place of carelessness,
| and want.
The Patron, imbued with the spirit of
cooperation, very clearly sees that the ar
tlcles which he consumes, from the great
est to the least, necessity or ofluXury-ev-
erything he eats, wears or in any way uses
costs him double, and in some instances
quadruple, what it costs to produce it, al
| lowing the most liberal reward to the pro-
| Queer. The reason of this is that every arti-
Gle has to pass through many hands before
| it reaches the consumer. Every CONNER
| cial go-between does his best to paddle it
| into his channel that he may have a hand
| in forwarding it and levying toll upon it;
and every pettyItrader, from the wholesale
| importer and monopolist down through
all the little retail ramifcations, demands
his tax from both producer and consumer.
Thus, to say nothing of his individual suf-
| tering, or that of thou sands who must buy
| with him, what a sacrifice of the whole
| worlds economy to the interests of this
| army of speculation, nom producing,
scrambling middlemen called merchants!
| What perversion of human energies and
| productive power! Instead of adding to
| the actual increase of wealth, this large
class speculate, and impose a tax of i'm
mense magnitude in the aggregate on
what is already produced Sbeculatine-
there is the mischief. Not fulfilling a
| IL :. Il
earth's products; not simply taking for
| their business the needed mediation be-
tween producer and consumer, but crowd
ing the work with all the hosts of compe-
| tition, each eager for his share Of the''loaveS
and fishes; xaggerating, OVERRIDING, mys
| tifying the mediation; tamper;ng with the
natural equilibrium of supply and de-
mand, thwarting instead of facilitating the
| distribution, where It is for their interest,
by the common tricks of forced monopoly
and artificial scarcity; the whole force be
ing too much for the work necessary to
be done, sustaining itself by artificial cap
ital and bloated credit; thousands falling
in the excited lottery chance of getting
more than a fair share of the business and
the profits; and every single one of us suf-
fering in his bread and butter, and in his
| fuel, and in his cloth, that this most waste
full, unproductive, fatal scramble may 90
on whereby a few may come out rich
while all the rest are impoverished. See
ing these things are so, is it strange that
the Patron asks in all earnestness, ARE there
not too many tradesmen, great and small,
gambling in merchandise, gambling in
stocks? Are we not devoured by them as
by a swarm of locusts? Would it not be
better for the farmer, and for society al
large, that this work of interchanging val
ues and commodities were left to Just the
requisite number of accredited agents, and
that the superf1uous swarms now dignifieC
by the commercial name should quit spec
ulation and Join the useful ranks of genu
inc producers? Could not the globe much
better afford to recruit its agricultural anC
industrial armies from these hosts of com
mercial parasites than to whirl on this in
coherent, wasteful, destructive way tina
occasions such immense loss?
But tits said ''there may be oyerpro
duction as well as overtrading; an over
crowded market is calamity" The force
of this declaration will not make much i'm
, preston so long as rags, nakedness ane
, poverty are so common throughout the
5 civilized world. The earth, no doubt, ha:
, Yielded enough to make its present pop
ulation comfortable could the shirts pllee
up to rot in warehouses only be brough
to cover the shirtless backs. But whose
r fault is it that on the one hand there ar
r glutted markets, goods and provisions rot
S ting, or purposely destroyed, while on tn
t other there are millions starving, million
: seeking work and finding none? 1t is tn
= fault of this same boosted commercis
t economy of the nineteenth century; 1t
/ the fault of incoherent, individual, compe
] titive system of industry throughout tn
t world; it is the fault of artificial and III
i triguirg commerce. There is no unity c
r plan, no CO. operation of numbers, eithe
in producing or distributing the world
e wealth; there is no organization of indus
try, no correlation of its different branche
a no conference of parts Everything IS lie
n to individual scrambling, to blind, mere
n less, ruinous competition. The land
0 parceled out by the accidents of conttic
It ing cupidity, by the arbitrament of til
r sword, by the greed of capital, without
thought of any unity or harmony betwee
e the parts or the needs of society. Fac
S individual seizes, uses or abuses with ma
row, selfish view to his own interes
v alone He strips the forest from the hill
J. which he calls his, though it de1ange tt
e climate for leagues around; he dries up tt
:, streams, which in natures economy ha
d some connection with lands and growth
It beyond the boundaries of his own estat
l. he exhausts his acres in hot haste to rea
l. ize the utmost from them in the preser
} without regard to the future. Thus n
=, lures garden is shorn of all its beautif
l. proportions, put to use indiscriminate
d and shamefully, divided into miserab
is patchwork, and her productive energi
@ abused at one point and neglected at a
n other until the seeds of good which &c
r sowed in her lap for all humanity a
D. mission well nigh defeated.
o This shameful WRONG results from b