Of course we all realize that the growing of crops is the great foundation on which the well-being not only of the farmer but of the whole Nation must depend.  First of all we must have food.  But after that has been achieved, is there nothing more to be done?  It seems to me clear that farmers have as much to gain from good organization as merchants, plumbers, carpenters, or any of the other trades and businesses of the United States.  After we have secured better crops, the next logical and inevitable step is to secure better business organization on the farm, so that each farmer shall get from what he grows the best possible return.

Consider what has been accomplished in Ireland through agricultural cooeperation.  The Irish have discovered that it is not good for the farmer to work alone.  Since 1894 they have been organizing agricultural societies to give the farmer a chance to sell at the right time and at the right price.  The result is impressive.  In Ireland the cooeperative creameries produce about half the butter exported.  There are 40,000 farmers in the societies for cooeperative selling, which, as we know in this country, means better prices.  There are about 300 agricultural credit societies with a membership of 15,000 and a capital of more than $200,000.  In a word, in Ireland, which we have been apt to consider as far behind us in all that relates to agriculture, there are nearly 1,000 agricultural societies with a total membership of 100,000 persons.  Since 1894 their total business has been more than $300,000,000.

But, after the farmer has begun to make use of his right to combine for his advantage in selling his products and buying his supplies, is there nothing else he can do?  As well might we say that, after the body and the mind of a boy have been trained, he should be deprived of all those associations with his fellows which make life worth living, and to which every child has an inborn right.  Life is something more than a matter of business.  No man can make his life what it ought to be by living it merely on a business basis.  There are things higher than business.  What is the reason for the enormous movement from the farms into the cities?  Not simply that the business advantages in the city are better, but that the city has more conveniences, more excitement, and more facility for contact with friends and neighbors:  in a word, more life.  There ought then to be attractiveness in country life such as will make the country boy or girl want to live and work in the country, such that the farmer will understand that there is no more dignified calling than his own, none that makes life better worth living.  The social or community life of the country should be put by the farmer—­for no one but himself can do it for him—­on the same basis as social life in the city, through the country churches and societies, through better roads, country telephones, rural free delivery, parcels post, and whatever else will help.  The problem is not merely to get better crops, not merely to dispose of crops better, but in the last analysis to have happier and richer lives of men and women on the farm.