Norwich bulletin., 1909-12-25

(Written Specially for The Bulletin)
 Some years ago a neighbor of mine had an Illuminating experience. That season his King" apples had been rather better than usual-big, smooth and well colored. It was an "off" year tn the apple market; big crops had knocked prices down so that ordinary Greetings and Baldwins were hardly worth picking. q kept mine, that win ter, till March, rather than sell at 50 cents a barrel, which was all anyone offered-and then sold 'em at S5 centsD But my neighbours Kings. being rather fancy, brought him $1.25 a barrel. Whereat he exulted somewhat. Which shows how little it takes to please the childreni
 We'll, some time after that, happen ing to be in the oity to which his Kings had been shipped, he saw on fruit stand a tempting display of apples which looked exactly like his. Of course he could not be sure that they were the identical apples he picked oft his big-branched trees on the north orchard lot, but they were Kings, they were of similar size, similar smooth ness and similar coloring. They were as good but no better or bigger than those he had sold for $1.25 per barrel. He picked one up. Three cents" said the fruit seller; three cents apiece or two for five" My neighbor took two. Then, as he went on about his business, he did a little "fggerin'.' .'
 Noting the unusual size of the apples as he was picking them, he had count ed several half bushel baskets and had found that the average was about SO apples to the basket, 1. G., about 120 to the bushel, or about 345 to the barrel of two bushels and seven-eighths. Now he had been paid $1.25 per barrel. As- suming that the speculative buyer made 20 per cent. profit, this would have added 25 cents, making sl;5o. The freight from his station to the city where the apples were sold was 20 cents per barrel. (The speculator didn't pay that, for he shipped by car load at lower rates. But assume that he paid 20 cents freight.) This makes the cost of the barrel, in the city B1.70. Now give the commission man who received them another profit of 10 per cent. and you've got $1.S7 as the final cost of the s45 apples which the fruit seller was retailing to customers at two for five cents, or $8.62.
 Pretty fair profit somewhere, eh?
 Of course, nobody knows exactly what profit the speculator took. It Hay IldNG DccIl I1lOIo IIldn ~ per CeIll. Nor what profit the commission man took. It may have been more than 10 per cent. Nor can we know how many of the 345 apples in that barrel spoiled before they were sold, or had to be re- 1ected for one reason or another. AL lowing that just half os the barrel was waste-and that's a simply ridiculous assumption, in view of the evenness with which the apples were sorted and harreled-there still remains $431 as the cost of the barrel to consumers as against $1.25 paid the producer
 One of two things is perfectly self evident: Either the consumer paid twice as much for his apples as they were worth, or the producer didn't get half as much for them aS they were worth.
 This general truth applies to many ether country products. Today the came milk which the dairyman of Or ange county, N, Y., gets less than three cents quart for sells in Manhattan, hundred miles away, for nine cents . quart. The mere statement of that fact is convincing. It needs no argu- nent to show that either the dairyman is being underpaid or the milk buyer overcharged.
 But what are we going to do about Hf you dSk. HOW can we StOD this admitted wrong?" Well, the only way in which 1t has been stopped, here and there. and the only way in which there seems any promise of stopping it ev- anywhere. is by cooperation in buying and selling, on the part of farmers Small farmers like you and I cannot make individual shipments of our dozen or two eggs, our eight or ten pounds of butter. our few barrels of apples to individual consumers. Nor can we buy our fertilizers and our cat tle feeds and our house supplies by the carload lots and at wholesale prices. But we can do both these things if we will combine our separate buying and selling into a cooperative buying and selling, wherein several scores or hundreds of us shall buy and sell together. The thing is not im- practicable. It has been done; it is now being done: it can be done any where. where men are sufficiently Christianized to subordinate private gain to common good; or where they gre intelligent enough to see that mere greed h poor business"
 Cooperation has failed In many