l produce, and in
obtaining proper credit facilities. Whatever the cause--and I have set
down those which I regard as the chief among them--American farmers have
still to learn that they are subject to a law of modern business which
governs all their country's industrial activities--the law that each
body of workers engaged in supplying the modern market must combine, or
be worsted at every turn in competition with those who do.

I do not much fear that this general principle, overlooked, perhaps,
because it was too obvious to be worth enforcing, will be disputed. I
hope I may gain acceptance for my further contention that the inability
of American farmers to sustain an effective business organisation has
been due simply to the fact that the not obvious distinction between the
capitalistic and the cooperative basis of combination suitable to town
and country respectively was missed. For it will then be clear why, in
the working out of Mr. Roosevelt's formula, better business must precede
and form the basis of better farming and better living. The conviction
that in this general procedure lies the one hope of solving the problem
under review accounts for the otherwise disproportionate space given to
that aspect of rural life which is of the least interest to the general
reader.

I shall now attempt to determine the principles which must be applied to
the solution of our problem. Those who have followed the arguments up to
this point will have a pretty clear idea of the general drift of my
conclusions. The substitution in rural economy of the cooperative for
the competitive principle, which I have so far advocated as a matter of
business prudence, will be seen to have a wider import. This course will
be shown to have an important bearing upon the application of the new
knowledge to the oldest industry and also upon the building of a new
rural civilisation we must provide for the dwellers of the open country
a larger share of the intellectual and social pleasures for the want of
which those most needed in the country are too often drawn to the
town.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] I should expect the negroes in the Southern States to be very good
subjects for agricultural organisation. I have discussed this question
with the staff of the Hampton Institute in Virginia--a fine body of men,
doing noble work. The Principal, the Rev. H. B. Frissell, D.D., whose
judgment in this matter is probably the weightiest in the United States,
and