s consumer.
But unless we are determined to eliminate the middleman in agriculture
we will fall to effect anything worth while attempting. I would lay
down certain fundamental propositions which, I think, should be accepted
without reserve as a basis of reform. First, that the farmers must be
organized to have complete control over all the business connected with
their industry. Dual control is intolerable. Agriculture will never be
in a satisfactory condition if the farmer is relegated to the position
of a manual worker on his land; if he is denied the right of a
manufacturer to buy the raw materials of his industry on trade terms; if
other people are to deal with his raw materials, his milk, cream,
fruit, vegetables, live stock, grain, and other produce; and if these
capitalist middle agencies are to manufacture the farmers' raw material
into butter, bacon, or whatever else are to do all the marketing and
export, paying farmers what they please on the one hand, and charging
the public as much as they can on the other hand. The existence of these
middle agencies is responsible for a large proportion of the increased
cost of living, which is the most acute domestic problem of modern
industrial communities. They have too much power over the farmer,
and are too expensive a luxury for the consumer. It would be very
unbusinesslike for any country to contemplate the permanence in national
life of a class whose personal interests are always leading them to
fleece both producer and consumer alike. So the first fundamental idea
for reformers to get into their minds is that farmers, through their own
co-operative organizations, must control the entire business connected
with agriculture. There will not be so much objection to co-operative
sale as to co-operative purchase by the farmers. But one is as necessary
as the other. We must bear in mind, what is too often forgotten, that
farmers are manufacturers, and as such are entitled to buy the raw
materials for their industry at wholesale prices. Every other kind
of manufacturer in the world gets trade terms when he buys. Those
who buy--not to consume, but to manufacture and sell again--get their
requirements at wholesale terms in every country in the world. If
a publisher of books is approached by a bookseller he gives that
bookseller trade terms, because he buys to sell again. If I, as a
private individual, want one of those books I must pay the full retail
price. Even the cobbler