The Carlisle independent., 1909-12-16
MONEY WASTED ON FARM
Farmers Losing Heavily Every Year Because They Won't See Wis
 dom of Cooperation.

| ly wasted on farms and country es- tates through lack of cooperation is something incomputably immense Each producer must have, or thinks he must, all the tools and machinery 1 needed for all his work, writes A. P. Hitchcock, in Country Life in Amer ica. He uses them a fraction of the time and pays interest and the cost of | depreciation the rest of the time I know a farm where six horses are kept the year round, because that number are needed for about two months each season. For the rest of the 12 months four of them stand idle, eating their heads off, and devouring the owners profits. He has two nov ing machines, two horse-rakes, a ted der, hay-loader, all of which he uses about four weeks of the 52. For the other AS they are packed under a shed to rust and rot He has a reap CT and binder which he uses about two weeks, and supports in idleness the other 50. And so on and so on. A score of his neighbors are, in just the same way, stocked with teams and tools only occasionally needed, because they insist upon being "inde- pendent" They are all throwing good money into the scrap-heap every year, because they can't or won't see the possibility and the wisdom of cooper tive labor
 Take the matter of stock breeding. It is hardly overstating the disgrace ful truth to say that half the cows of the country fail to paay for their keep and care. They don't return as much in milk or butter as they cost in food and labor. :.
 Most farmers raise their own COWS. or let them come up, rather, in hit or-miss wag. Their young stock are the offspring of such COWS as they have and any old "scrub" bull which has come to maturity because some neighbor was too busy to veal it when it was a four-weeks' calf
 About five years ago 20 farmers in one Minnesota township, mostly Danes and Swedes who knew what CO operation had done for their old homes, joined in community-owned bull. They simply bred up the stock trey had, and the results have been marked, not only in the increased earnings of their herds but in the inn provement in quality, which is so evi- dent that buyers of young stock are being attracted there and prices are constantly rising under the influence of increasing demand.
 In these and a thousand other ways, rural cooperation is possible right here in America. I know of one little farming town in New England where about score of country families have for three years been buying many of their domestic supplies in common thus securing them at wholesale prices. The result, after all expenses are paid, is a saving of about 15 to IS per cent. on the total outgo.
 Of course, in this as in all func- tions where men work together for a large common good, there must be concessions in minor details. When 20 men start to walk abreast, not all can have the middle of the road all the time When they set out for a lofty summit they must expect to climb some hills and go around some cliffs. When they are looking at a dollar six months hence, they mustn't allow the sight of cent close to their eyes to hide the bigger and more distant coin.
 Successful cooperation calls for a higher type of manhood than individ- ualism, just as successful democracy demands higher type in the mass than oligarchy or despotism.
 Horses and mules and some men can be ruled by others; it takes men with intelligence and foresight and self-denial and high aspirations to rule themselves. This is no more true of business administration than it is of government
 If we country-folks are fit to gov ern ourselves in matters of taxation and public expenditure and highways and post offices and police and war, we are capable of governing our in- dustrial economics, also.
 Just at present, we need to have that phase of the question kept prom inently before us; to have our lag gard steps hastened by constant prod ding, and our sleeping interest aroused by a persistent "dinging away"
 Fifty years hence a country of tried and triumphant cooperation will look back with wonder and some contempt at our dullness in failing to grasp the opportunities which stand at our doors begging us yainly to take them in.