The Nevada County picayune., 1922-01-19

ana graQerS), to eliminate underpay- ing, overcharging, and unfair grading, and to facilitate the utilization of the stored products as the basis of credit
 Third: a certainty of credit sufficient to enable the marketing of products In an orderly manner.
 Fourth: the Department of Agricul- ture should collect, tabulate. summa- rize, and regularly and frequently pub llsh and distribute to the farmers, full information from all the markets of the world, so that they shall be as well | informed of their selling position as buyers now are of their buying posi- ton.
 Fifth: freedom to integrate the busi- ness of agriculture by means of con- solidated selling agencies, co-ordlnat- ing and cooperating In such way as to nut the farmer on an equal footing with the large buyers of his products, and with commercial relations In other industries.
 When a business requires specialized talent, 1t has to buy 1t. So will the farmers and perhaps the best way for them to get 1t would be to utilize some of the present machinery of the larg- est established agencies dealing in farm products Of course, If he wishes, the farmer may go further and engage in hour-milling and other manufactures of food products. In my opinion, however, he would be wise to stop short of that. Public interest may be opposed to all great integrations but in justice, should they be forbidden to the farmer and permitted to others? The corporate form of association can not now be wholly adapted to his ob- jects and conditions. The looser CO., operative form seems more generally suitable Therefore, he wishes to be free, if he finds 1t desirable and feas- ible, to resort to cooperation with his fellows and neighborS, without run ming afnul of the law. To urge that the farmers should have the same lib- erty to consolidate and coordinate their peculiar economic functions, which other industries in their fields enjoy, Is not, however, to concede that any business integration should have legislative sanction to exercise monop- oistlc power The American people are as firmly opposed to industrial as to political antocracy, whether at tempted by rural or by urban industry
 For lack of united effort the farmers as a whole are still marketing their crops by antiquated methods. or by no methods at all. but they are surrounded by business world that has been mOdernized to the last minute and Is tlrelessly striving for efficiency. This efficiency Is due in large measure to biz business. to united business, to in- tegrated business. The farmers now seek the benefits of such largeness, un- ion and integration.
 The American farmer Is a modern of the moderns in the use of labor saving machinery, and he has made vast strides In recent years In scientific tillage and efficient farm management. but as a business in contact with other businesses agriculture Is a "one horse shay" in competition with high power automobiles. The American farmer is the greatest and most intractable of individualists. While industrial pro ductlon and all phases of the huge com mercial mechanism and Its myriad ac- cessories have articulated and co-ordi- mated themselves all the way from nat ural raw materials to retail sales, the business of agriculture has gone on In much the one man fashion of the back woods of the first part of the nine teenth century, when the farmer was sell sufficient and did not depend upon, or carei very much what the great world was doing. The result Is that the agricultural group Is almost as much at q disadvantage in dealing with other economic groups as the jay farm CT of the funny pages in the hands of sleek urban confidence men, who sell him acreage i'll Central Park or the Chicago city hall. The leaders of the farmers thoroughly understand this, and they are ntelligently striving to ntegrate their industry so that It will be on an equal footing with other busi- nesses
 As an example of integratlon take the steel industry, In which the model Is the United States Steel Corporation, with its iron mines, it's coal mines, It's lake and rail transportation, its ocean vessels, its by-product coke ovens, its blast furnaces, its open hearth and Bessemer furnaces, its rolling mills, it's tuha mills and other manufacturing