Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1916-02-04
CITY OFFICIAL PAPER
WHERE THE FARMER FALLS DOWN.

If the average merchant would run his bust
ness the way the average farmer in this county
runs his farm, that merchant would go broke in
less than sixty days. But the merchant has
learned something that the farmers as group
have yet to learn-he has learned what to put
before his customers, in other words what to pro-
duce; he has learned how to put it before them,
in other words in what form and grade, quality
and quantity; he has learned to compete with his
fellows and against them, in other words to push
his own wares forward in preference to those of
some other man; he has learned how to organize
his business so that he is producing something the
year round; he has learned how to organize his
business so as to get the maximum return at the
least expense, in other words to suit his possible
market, and he has learned what to sell and when
and how to sell it. He has not only produced
gathered together his wares-but he has learned
to market The average farmer stops with pro-
duction-and many of them do not do that right
This is what Mrs. A. E. Sheldon overlooked
when she wrote the letter that appeared in The
Washington Standard last week. It is the old
parable of the mote and the beam. The farmers
lot is hard one and throughout this section he
seems to have particular trouble in disposing of
his products-there is no disputing that-and
therefore the blame is all on "the other fellow"
It would seem evident that that is hardly the
proper way to approach solution of the trouble
we must see our own faults, admit them and
overcome them set ourselves Alright first, and then
tackle the rest of the problem.
We know that good many Of the farmers of
this county feel just exactly Mrs. Sheldon does
We do not for one minute want them to believe we
k1>nk~~
think they are entirely to blame for the situation
The truth is that both sides at fault, and when
Mrs. Sheldon says s4the interests of farmers and
business men are as Numerically opposed as the
poles and must always remain SO" she is putting
the greatest stumbling block imaginable in the
way of overcoming the present situation. Com
peting business men-and we all compete-have
just exactly the same problems to contend with as
farmers and business men, but the former do not
build up wall of enmity and hostility between
themselves; instead, they work all the harder to
overcome their troubles. The present situation of
which Mrs. Sheldon writes is an old, old story in
the world of business; farmers must work it out
just as competing business men are working it
out, by giving great, perhaps more, attention
to the distributing and marketing end of their
business as to the producing.
So again is Mrs Sheldon wrong when she says
that 'sthe county agent was secured here by bust
ness interests, not to increase the income of the
farmers of Thurston county, but to help increase
the products of the farm for business to receive
profit on for the handling" for Mrs. Sheldon,
along with Messrs. Rogers, West and Ferguson
and the others who downed that system, over
looked its chief object which to organize pro-
duction not to stimulate it-organize it as to
quality, kind, grade and form, so that the farmer
would have something the market wanted when
he offered it for sale, and then, that done, to
ganize the farmers into those cooperative groups
which would permit the marketing and distrbu-
ton of farm products to the best advantage, the
very thing Mrs. Sheldon says must be done before
the present situation be overcome. Given prop
er production production specifically planned
and handled according to the market--and the
market in which to dispose of it, and the time
would then come, perhaps when We might talk
about stimulating production, but to stimulate it
further than the market would absorb would of
course be folly. So we say, those who fought the
county agent plan those who feel as Mrs. Sheldon
does about it, lost themselves in that one idea
alone, the idea of stimulating production, when
that incidental and the last be-consid-
cred feature of it, when its chief feature was to
organize production properly and then to organize
marketing.
Those of us who know what the counties that
have farm agents are doing and what the state