HERMAN N. MORSE
Though little that was new on the subjects under discussion was brought forward, the First National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, through the papers presented and the official resolutions adopted, called attention to certain highly important facts. The conference agreed that a number of conditions detrimental both to the farmers and the general public are prevalent, and that certain constructive remedial policies are necessary. One proposition to which there was general agreement was that the margin between the price which the producer receives for his product and that which the consumer pays for it is too great. The farmer receives too little and the consumer pays too much. The market for farm products is too unstable and the fluctuations and variations in price are too great and too uncertain. Competition has failed adequately to control and regulate prices.
The present marketing facilities, it was stated, are utterly inadequate to bring the supply and the demand together. Quantities of farm produce rot in the fields because they cannot be gotten to those markets in which there is an active demand for them. This is partly because of the lack of properly distributed shipping facilities; partly because the producers are not sufficiently in touch with the markets; partly because storage firms, commission men’s associations, etc. interfere with the normal operation of the markets; and partly because certain kinds of products are not provided to the mass of consumers at prices which they can afford to pay, though that price would give the producer an ample profit if exorbitant middleman’s profits were eliminated.
B. F. Yoakum estimated that every year fruit and vegetables worth $35,000,000 rot on the ground from the lack of shipping and storage facilities and of knowledge of receptive markets. The annual loss from corn stalks, rice, flax and other grain straw which is now burned he estimated at $250,000,000. The additional amount which the farmers could receive for their products, if by co-operation they knew when and where to sell their products, he placed at $1,500,000,000 per year, making a total loss of $1,785,000,000. In the judgment of the conference this was not an over-statement of the facts.
The delegates to the conference also agreed that the average farmer has a total income disproportionate to his importance in the national economy. W. J. Spillman, chief of the Bureau of Farm Management of the federal Department of Agriculture, estimated that the average farm income in this country is about $655 a year; of this amount about $1 a day is the entire return for labor. This labor income, he asserted, holds throughout the states. After computing the interest on his investment, the farmer averages $1 for every day he works. In states such as Illinois, he said, where the investment is greater, the farm family has a larger sum to use without impairing the capital than in a state like New York. The difference, however, is in the interest on invested capital not in labor income.
Even in sections where the farmers generally are satisfied with the return which they get for their labor, they are unable to get products to the consumers at a reasonable price. This works a great and unnecessary hardship upon the poor.
Farmers generally, and especially small farmers, it was agreed, are at present unable to secure for sufficient time and at a reasonable rate, the capital with which to purchase land or proper equipment and materials for the most effective and economical operation of farm property. In this connection the European methods of rural credit were discussed at some length.
In considering the remedies for these conditions, certain general principles, it was decided, should control whatever policies were advocated.
It was urged that farm products ought to be generally standardized as commercial products are. There should also be organization among farmers for the raising of particular standardized products in different communities or in different parts of the same community to which they are especially adapted. Scientific farming and soil conservation were assumed.
The key-word emphasized by the speakers for all efforts to improve agricultural conditions was co-operation. This co-operation, they declared, must have the dual purpose of giving the producer a fair and consistent profit and of giving products to the consumer at the lowest possible price. The producer and the consumer must be taken into complete partnership. Combination must never be on the principle of the industrial combinations or trusts. This will require some little revision of our present anti-trust laws to permit combinations except “in so far as they are detrimental to the interests of the people.”