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VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3
Agriculture
and
Related Subjects
QUARTERLY BULLETIN
OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
JULY, 1930
NATHAN MAYO
Commissioner of Agriculture
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA
Entered January 31, 1903, at Tallahassee, Florida, as second-class
matter under Act of Congress of June, 1900. "Acceptance for mailing
at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October
3, 1917, authorized September 11, 1918."
VOLUME 40
NUMBER 3
Florida
Grower
Press
Tampa
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I-Farming Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 5
II-Farm Lands in Hands of Tenants - - 18
Florida Statistics - -
III-Cooperative Marketing -
IV-Cooperation
V-Cotton Exchanges -
VI-Grain Exchanges - -
VII-Stock Exchanges - -
VIII-Commercial Agriculture
IX-Science and Agriculture
X-Corn History - -
XI-Jesus the Countryman
XII-Comparative Psychology
XIII-Woman at Work -
XIV-The Banking War - -
XV-Group vs. Branch Banking
- - - 23
- - - 26
- - - 39
- - - 49
- - - 55
- - - 67
- - - 67
- - - 73
- - - 77
- - - 83
- - - 97
- - - 111
- - - 121
XVI-How the Federal Reserve Board Functions 131
XVII-Life Expectation - - -- - 145
XVIII-Forces of Change - - - -- 152
XIX-American Democracy - - - 168
Agriculture and Related
Subjects
CHAPTER I
FARMING, YESTERDAY, TODAY AND
TOMORROW
By NATHAN MAYO, COmmissioner of Agriculture
Yesterday? From 100 years ago on back. The im-
plements used on the farm, the power used in farming, the
methods of cultivation, the homes and outbuildings, the
methods of marketing, the means of transportation, the
school facilities, are all different now from what they
were yesterday.
Judged by present standards farming yesterday was
indeed crude, uninteresting, unprofitable, uninviting.
It was drugery of the worst sort with few compensating
features.
Mass production, mass transportation, mass marketing
and mass distribution were unknown in the farming
world. It was individual production, individual trans-
portation, individual marketing, individual distribution.
It was largely locally produced, locally transported, lo-
cally sold, locally marketed and locally consumed. There
were some few exceptions-such as cotton and wheat.
Life was necessarily restricted to the activities of the
community. The world was not at one's call as it is today.
Farmers grew what they had to have in the way of food
and also produced the raw materials for their raiment,
spun, wove and tailored it at home. Country homes were
built of logs, as lumber and brick cost considerably more.
The horse power was with horses, mules, or oxen. The
vehicles were wagons, buggies, or oxcarts. The use of
railways had not come. The making of timber into
building materials was a slow and laborious process.
The steam engine turning a circular saw was just begun.
The steam engine was invented in 1784 but the first en-
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
gine for drawing loads along a track was not till 1828.
Artificial fertilizer was not discovered until 1840.
One horse pulling a bull-tongued plow through a
new clearing full of stumps and roots was a common
scene. World markets were unknown and pioneer life
was the rule and not the exception.
Land was plentiful. The wasteful farmer would clear
land, cultivate it a few years, call the land "worn out"
and clear up more and do it the same way. He wasted
millions of dollars worth of valuable timber because it
had no market value. Roads were poor; in the winter
they were often impassable. Trading was largely barter,
as money was scarce and hard to get. Paying debts
by checks was hardly known.
People had not learned to want so many things which
must come from distant lands. They were content with
less expensive clothes, home equipment and the cost of
living was a mere fraction of what it is now. Recreation
was of a kind that would be considered a bore now.
Muster days gave a great kick to men just before the
civil war. Neighborhood cooperation in log rolling, house-
raising, hunting and fishing, husking bees, etc. furnished
men social recreation combined with work. Quiltings,
singing, dancing, weddings and camp meetings furnished
such diversion as came to the women. Social life had
fewer requirements, fewer allurements, and less thrills
than are now demanded. Life was freer and easier, and
carried with it a modicum of satisfaction. There were
those who had a larger portion of this world's goods,
were educated and ambitious and who lived in a different
atmosphere from the masses. But they were not farmers
even though they owned lands and stores. They were
proprietors, not real tillers of the soil.
This age of farming had its compensations, largely
due to the fact that what was in store just out in the future
was unguessed, and therefore did not arouse their desire
for a share in the wonderful things to be. Content is
comparative. We measure all others by what we see
and not with the past or the future.
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
FARMING TODAY
Farming in the United States today represents the
most advanced agriculture ever developed from the stand-
point of efficiency and man power. In no other country
and at no other period of history has there ever been so
much produced and so widely distributed to consumers.
The standard of living is higher, with the more pros-
perous farmers, than at any other time or in any other
country. More people are fed by one farm laborer than
ever before. All this by way of generalization.
Once it was thought that a man who could do noth-
ing else could farm. This is no longer the case. It takes
more intelligence to operate a farm successfully than it
does to operate many other kinds of business. The incom-
petent is being driven to the rear in the competition going
on. The tiller of poor land is being crowded to the wall.
The individualistic minded are hard hit. Cooperative
effort is distasteful to millions of people on the farm and
off the farm. Marketing efficiently is impossible, if crops
must be shipped, when done on a small scale. Collective
bargaining by trained salesmen is just as necessary in
selling farm crops as in selling the output of factories.
Modern machinery pulled by gas engines, vehicles
drawn by internal combustion engines, the world for a
market, artificial fertilizer, governmental aid in financ-
ing, all these are ours, and yet as a vocation farming is
not prospering. The transition period is grinding exceed-
ingly fine the less capable. There is no mercy, clemency
or sympathy in the operation of the inexorable law of
economics. Its only command is "Keep step with the pro-
cession or perish." Under this edict thousands are going
down. It is the same in the commercial, industrial and
financial worlds. Farming is no exception. Periods of
acute transition always work that way. Farm relief will
tide over the rougher places, but it will not change the
general course of determination. It will accentuate cer-
tain tendencies and hasten results.
It has been suggested that the federal government
should make an agricultural survey and upon the finding
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
of same appraise and purchase all lands now being
farmed and not yielding a profit, retiring same perma-
nently for forestry or grazing purposes. This would
release a large population for more fertile regions or
for other occupations. It would relieve the market from
crops produced on lands that can only yield a miserable
existence to the worker but adds a mite to world supply.
In the aggregate it amounts to a large sum. Millions of
acres would come in this classification of farm lands. It
would be a much easier process of elimination than that
of slow starvation. Reckless farming has butchered
hundreds of millions of acres of land that was once fer-
tile.
Farming "as is" presents a system of world-wide com-
petition, cruel, devastating, wasteful, uneconomic and
drastic in its demands. The glory of its spectacular
achievements is shot through with black ruin and hope-
less despair.
Triumphant agriculture is as safe as human life-the
race depends upon it. But the process of change carries
with it the stress and pains of strident transition.
FARMING TOMORROW
Present conditions cast their shadows ahead. When
all factors are considered and each give its proportion
of importance, future events can be fairly accurately
judged. But it is no easy matter to give to each factor
its due weight in the equation.
If we take it for granted that improvements in farm
machinery will continue to be made, that advancement
in scientific agriculture will advance, that power produc-
tion will increase, that greater efficiency in marketing
will be worked out, that farm operations will become
better systematized, then it follows that there will be
a successful agriculture, as there is no escaping the depen-
dence of the human family on crops.
The next thing to consider is, who will finance agri-
culture; if financed by the farmers then agriculture
should be prosperous and if financed by others the
chances are that he who finances will reap the profits.
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
How is the farmer financed now? Many ways. He is
in debt $11,000,000,000. He owes a small part of this
amount to the buyers of Federal Farm Loan bonds, which
draw a low rate of interest. The remainder is owed to
creditors of various kinds who charge a higher rate of
interest than agriculture yields. This does not mean that
the debt can never be paid as the debt is not large enough
for the interest to consume all the net income of the far-
mer. However, there are hundreds of thousands of in-
stances where the debt is large enough for the interest
to consume all the income and therefore render the pay-
ment of principal and interest impossible. This process
of liquidation and bankruptcy is going on-cruel-
relentless. This condition is responsible for a great part
of exodus from country to city. There is no more excuse
for operating a sub-marginal farm than for maintaining
an unprofitable business of any other kind. The farmer
will never be able to shift his enormous debt to securities
furnished and approved by governmental agencies, as in
the case of the Federal Farm Loan Banks and the Inter-
mediate Credit Banks. Five hundred thousand farmers
have borrowed $1,500,000,000 at 5.4 per cent. These
have eased the financial troubles of the farmer but not
cured his ills. The old question of the survival of the
most efficient holds sway. The process will be slow, but
persistent.
Some have thought that the turning-point is nearing
and will hinge on the submerging of the individual into
the aggregate. By organized effort all things will be
operated by organized authority.
This is easier said than done. Efforts to reach
this goal in marketing farm crops have been under way
for almost half a century, beginning with sporadic efforts
by the Grange and later with conspicuous effects with
the California citrus growers. At present not more than
eighteen per cent of the crops of farmers is handled by
associations. It will be much harder to bring the produc-
tion end of farming under any cooperative plan.
Systems of credit for construction, home-building and
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
financing by those who furnish the material has come
into vogue that meet the requirements for individual ini-
tiative and for privacy, which are highly prized, and this
plan may yet be extended to productive use. The terms
on the financing of home-building are 6 per cent and
fifteen years.
It goes without saying that this plan takes the burden
of financing away from local banks and turns the mind
to other sources for trade in home requirements-more
concentration. Those who have the best standing in the
community have the best chance for securing the accom-
odations suited to farm conditions--more elimination.
Everything looks good for the super-farmer and vice
versa.
The future of farming is assured; there is no escaping
this if the race is to be perpetuated, but the question is
always uppermost, how about the farmer? Is he going
to prosper, is he going to get justice in the economic race
for existence? In the future I think he will, more than
ever in the past. He is going to have to be intelligent or be
crowded to the wall. Intelligence will find a way to pro-
tect itself. Intelligence is power.
Here is a comment by a very astute European who
visited this country recently:
"The mentality of the American agriculturist is indus-
trial. He uses much modern machinery; he is intimately
dependent upon the railway and the telephone; he is
very conscious of the distant markets to which his pro-
ducts are sent; he is in fact a capitalist who might just
as well be in some other business. A peasant, as he
exists in Europe and Asia, is practically unknown in the
United States. This is an immense boon to America, and
perhaps its most important superiority as compared to
the Old World." (Dr. Bertrand Russell in the February
Outlook.)
This is true, but will it remain true? If farming is to
be industrialized as were small industries will the farmer
become peasant minded, or industrial minded?
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
L. J. Tabor writes in a recent issue of The Country
Home on this subject, and among other things says:
"Chain merchandizing has made its appearance.
Mass buying, efficiency in production, standardization,
elimination of excess costs, reduction of overhead, have
in many places driven out the independent local mer-
chant.
"There come chain methods in financing, and here we
see a tendency to unify in half a dozen systems the finan-
cial control of the nation. Even the government of the
United States considers merging of railroads and the elim-
ination of destructive and wasteful competition, to the
end that freight and passenger traffic can be moved with
the greatest efficiency at the minimum cost.
"All of this naturally suggests to casual observers
a new solution to the farm problem. Their answer is that
all that is necessary is to get improved managerial effi-
ciency, superior merchandising experience and better
financial management.
"Instead of one hundred competing farms, have the
Johnstown or the Bluefield County Agricultural Corpora-
tion. Then we will have the farm man that specializes
in dairying, the best recommended young man in the
university. The marketing end will be supplied by a
high-powered, brainy man who has had experience in big
things. He may draw a big salary, but the theory is that
he will be worth it. The financial adviser or the treasurer
of the corporation will have broad financial knowledge
from his training in large banking institutions. The adver-
tising man with his newspaper experience and his eye for
publicity could bring the products of the corporation to
the attention of the food-and-fiber-consuming public.
The purchasing agent will know how to drive a hard bar-
gain. He will buy farm supplies by the carload at large
savings.
"We go a step farther and the dreamer visualizes a
farm reorganization. There will be no independent and
scattered farm homes as at present. A skilled engineer
and a landscape gardener will tear down or move all the
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
farm buildings. A rural community will be erected in the
center, with its laundry, its bakery, its church, its school,
its theatre, a village where all the people will live and the
farms will be tilled by gangs of workmen who are worked
at high speed with modern machinery and the latest
in equipment.
"And just as this story becomes interesting and the
dream looks real we come to earth with a dull thud, like
the morning after. We at once realize that the analogy
between agriculture and industry exists only on paper
and that the possibility of corporation farming as a solu-
tion of the farm problem does not exist.
"Let us first begin with the rural village idea, with the
farmers going to work in the fields in groups from a cen-
tral territory. We rub our eyes, for this is a strangely
familiar sight, and when the mists have cleared away,
we recognize that this is not anything new, but something
old. It is a European custom through which America
passed to create the America that we have. Were it
physically and economically possible to raze the barns
and the buildings and reorganize the homesteads along
the village line, would it work?
"Let us see how the corporation would work out.
Would Jones and Brown and Smith, who used to drive
their own tractors, operate their own milking machines
and run their own farms in their own way, ever make
good hired men under Mr. Sharp, the high-powered effi-
ciency engineer imported from Henry Ford's plant?
"Then, again, who is going to overcome the natural
jealously that exists because, with bigger tractors and
bigger combines, we only need one tractor driver out of
the dozen tractor operators in the group?
"Who is going to tell the boys to pick up the fork and
the hoe? Who is going to provide that some men shall
milk cows on a twelve-hour basis and that others shall
gather fruit on an eight-hour day? And who is going to
be the fellow to keep the books and have the white-collar
job?
"Who is going to blow the whistle and ring the bell?
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
Who is to be cashier? It is beautiful on paper, but it
just doesn't work with red-blooded he-farmers or their
sons in this land of ours.
"No one denies the advantages of standardization.
We know that a lot of farmers buy farm machinery by
the color of the paint. Some want one brand of twine and
some may want another.
"But the advocates of corporation farming have for-
gotten the big place where standardization falls down.
You can't standardize the weather.
"You set your farm in high gear. The engineer
figures it will take thirty days to harvest; horses have
gone, and in their place, fine efficient machines appear,
and then standardization breaks down, because standar-
dized, systematized, efficient machinery just won't work
in inefficient weather.
"Your high-powered salesman will help out, but when
the weather man damages your alfalfa hay or rots the
strawberries he may not be able to earn his salary.
"Corporations go broke. They are sold on the auction
block, and our efficiency engineers have forgotten what
is going to happen when the Bluefield County Corpora-
tion is sold to the highest bidder. It is foreclosed, its
machinery, its chattels, its homes. The dream started on
pure cooperation. Men put in their farms and their
homes and their Jersey cattle. The boy on the farm,
with big tears running down his cheeks, turned in his
calf-club heifer for a share of stock in the corporation,
but the Jewish syndicate at the courthouse took over
the corporation for twenty cents on the dollar. The
exodus sets in. The better group of farmers move on.
European peasants take their places on the payroll. Mex-
ican and colored laborers come into the village, and your
Utopian dream disintegrates into another Gastonia.
"Labor problems appear. Men refuse to work sixteen
hours a day in the fields. The boys refuse to labor at the
wages offered. The police are called out to prevent the
burning of barns. There is the crack of rifles. There
is bloodshed. Where once reigned independence, peace
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
and plenty, troops patrol Bluefield village, and peace may
be restored by force.
"You say this is overdrawn. Not a particle more over-
drawn than the statements of many who believe that
corporation methods can supplant American indepen-
dence and efficiency.
"Purposely we have left out the overwhelming and
compelling argument that makes corporation farming im-
possible in America; namely, the place of women and
youth in American farm life. The proudest page in Amer-
ican history from an agricultural standpoint is that glori-
ous page written by the women and children of American
farms. During the World War President Wilson and
Food Director Herbert Hoover told us that food would
win the war. Almost a million of the sons and daughters
of the soil were drawn from the farms by the military
and industrial draft.
"Boys sprang to tractor Wheels and women to the
twine binder. Hours were lengthened, speed was in-
creased, so that, in spite of the loss in man power, more
food came from our farms than ever before. The starving
millions across the sea were fed. Food supplies were nev-
er diminished, and agriculture did its part because the
women and children met the situation with patriotism
and bravery.
"This is mentioned to emphasize the fact that we do
not appreciate the part of women and children in our
American agriculture. No one believes that either
woman or child labor should be called upon to make
agriculture pay; but take the farmer's wife out as an
adviser, as a helper and as a managing force, and the
agriculture picture will fade. Take our farm boys and
girls out of the gardens, away from the berries and the
cherries, away from the calf clubs, away from the poultry,
and you have not only destroyed a succession of standard
bearers but you have destroyed a factor of incalculable
value.
"Who supposes that the boys of a corporation will
leave the baseball teams for the hayfield, just because
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
there has been some wet weather, unless they are paid
for it? Who can imagine that the women of the corpor-
ation will be concerned about the poultry, will worry
about the cow with the milk fever or get up at night to
doctor the sick calf? This will be the job for the high-
powered veterinarian, who is drawing a better salary
than her husband. No, indeed, she will stay in bed.
"The greatest loss of all, however, is that the family
as a unit will have surrendered its last stronghold. Coun-
cils of the farm family will go, because the family will
not even be a cog in the wheel of the corporation. Dad
may have seven votes, or he may have seventy, in the
corporation. His sense of ownership is gone. His sense
of independence is gone, and there comes that complete
loss of appreciation of the value of permanent improve-
ments.
"One day in Switzerland, through an interpreter, I
talked to a peasant who thrilled with pride at a certain
permanent improvement he had made upon his mountain
home. This property had been in possession of the family
for more than two centuries. His great-grandfather had
built a stone barn for their five brown Swiss cows. His
grandfather had made a little improvement. His father
had added a little, and he himself had put in some con-
crete improvements with his initials and the date of his
contribution to the family pride and the future. This
becomes impossible under corporation methods of opera-
tion.
"Someone says, 'It is not necessarily the corporation
plan. Try your joint stock or cooperative method.' The
reply to this is, when farmers surrender their right to
their own land, when they pool interests with others,
that ownership ceases in land and homes and ownership
commences in intangibles as safety-box property. Such
a change would infallibly be disastrous to our agriculture
and to our national life.
"That there is inexcusable inefficiency on the part of
many farmers, that there is lack of vision and lack of initi-
ative, no one will deny. But let us be fair."
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Every objection to industrialized farming advanced
by Mr. Tabor cound have been urged just as truly against
mass production methods now in vogue at the beginning
of the destruction of the small shops and the introduction
of the large plants. Human nature, custom and social
prejudice were against it. The independent small shop
man was no more willing to abandon his independence
and allow the other fellow to have the white collar job
and blow the whistle than is the farmer. Even the battle
with guns which he mentions has happened, but in spite
of it all industrialization is here, and here to stay. It has
been found that men from the farm are not only willing
but anxious to give up their independence for a job at a
decent wage and come under clock-punching regulations.
If all this means that we are to have a peasant-minded
rural population, I say most emphatically that it is the
worst turn that has come to the civilization of modern
times.
The following is from "Business Week" of September
1928:
Mr. Campbell is America's leading exponent of indus-
trialized agriculture. He operates a 95,000-acre farm in
Montana, employing only one hundred men at a minimum
wage of $5 a day. Machines do the work; the men work
the machines. Everything is systematized; long trains
of wagons are hauled by tractors back and forth across
his enormous acreage on time-tables as closely followed
as are those of the railroads.
As agricultural adviser to the Russian government, Mr.
Campbell recently entertained J. Kalmanovitch, head of
the Soviet grain trust, who spent several weeks inspecting
American farms. Mr. Campbell went to Russia last year,
and upon his advice the Soviet government has announced
that it will buy $400,000,000 of farm machinery and
$100,000,000 of roadmaking machinery, chiefly in Amer-
ica. Government projects aggregating 30,000,000 acres
are planned, to be operated in 100,000-acre units. Mr.
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
Campbell believes that Russian wheat production this
year will compare favorably with America's.
The same publication of April 23, 1930 had this to
say:
The Business Week's questionnaire, mailed to 120
picked large-scale farmers and professional farm mana-
gers in 15 states of the Middle West, Northwest and
South, brought 71 returns from men who farm a million
acres.
Large-scaled farm management is furthest advanced
in the Northwest, notably in Montana where topography
particularly favors big machine operations. A "North-
west Farm Managers Association," "an organization am-
bitious to place agriculture on a business basis," is now
in its twenty-first year, headquarters at Fargo. Its pres-
ident, Frank W. Reinoehl, goes to Canada June 1 to be-
come North America's largest farmer, 840,000 acres.
Five years ago Rockfeller money was loaned to Fair-
way Farms Corporation, Bozeman, Mont., to finance what
is as yet the only life-size experimental and research
project in large-scale farming, 8 farms totaling 16,000
acres. E. A. Starch is in charge. M. L. Wilson is guide
and advisor.
THE COMPOSITE OPINION
Mr. Starch's answer, it so happens, is the composite
of the 71 opinions.
"Changes have come like a cyclone," he comments.
"In no other 50-year period have they been as rapid or
complete as in the last five. A 15-year-old boy now
speaks of the old-fashioned days of six years ago in the
same spirit of reminiscence as his 70-year-old grandfather
speaks of the covered wagon."
Montana figures of machinery sales, the cause of the
transformation, confirm this:
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Year Tractors sold Combines sold
1924 400 28
1925 1,160 112
1926 1,749 220
1927 3,607 960
1928 5,251 1,687
1929 4,520 2,300
More optimism than The Business Week had looked
for is revealed. Though some of the 71 are skeptical or
pessimistic, faith in scientific agriculture and its future is
widespread. Most big farmers are intent on their job,
working systematically and scientifically to increase effi-
ciency and cut costs of production. Their hearts are in
their work.
One thing is sure-they are paying practically no
attention to political farm relief. Although comment
accompanies most questionnaires, in some cases running
to a thousand words, the Farm Board is mentioned just
once.
Excellent opportunity was offered for anyone who real-
ly believes that government can maintain prices to say so.
Not one of the 71 does.
Question 1 was: "At current prices for land, machin-
ery and labor can capital in well-managed farm enter-
prises in your part of the country earn a return compar-
able with that of capital in industry?"
Returns: 38 yes; 29 no; 3 in between; 1 refusal. Two
answers which state that returns up to 5 per cent can be
earned were classified as no; 6 per cent or better as yes.
"Yes, if-" is the typical answer. Likewise, many of
the negative answers are "No, but-." Concensus of
opinion is that the key word in the question is "well-man-
aged."
CHAPTER II
HALF OF FARM LANDS SAID TO BE IN
HANDS OF TENANT FARMERS
Control of Farms by Capable Agriculture Proprietors
Discussed; Difficulties Described
U. S. Daily, March, 1930
The operation of chain farms and their relation to
modern agriculture are discussed in a statement pre-
pared by H. R. Tolley, assistant chief, and C. L. Holmes,
in charge division of farm management and costs, and
made public on Mar. 13 by the Bureau of Agricultural
Economics, Department of Agriculture. This statement
was published in part in the United States Daily on Mar.
13, 14, 15 and 17. It is concluded as follows:
CAPITAL SUPPLY LIMITED
When we recall that almost 50 per cent of our farm
land is now in the hands of tenants, and that on a consid-
erable proportion of these rented farms the managerial
function is performed by men who have only a limited
managerial ability, one can get a glimpse of a vision of
what it might mean to American agriculture to have our
rented land under the control of really capable agricul-
tural proprietors.
The difficulty in the way of realization of these aims
lies largely in the lack of centralization under a single
ownership of sufficient land to afford an opportunity
for the superior manager. If all of the land owned by a
large land owner were concentrated within the limits of
a given township, one of the great barriers to this adjust-
ment would be removed. Another difficulty lies in the
inertia of the owners of rented land. They are slow to
realize the advantages that would accrue to them from
the employment of such a man.
SKEPTICAL OF GAINS
They are skeptical of the real gains that might come
to them from the employment of better farming methods.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Many of them, it is true, are strictly limited in their supply
of capital, and would find it very difficult to finance the
conversion of the farming on their lands to an improved
system which would involve considerable investment in
improvements and equipment. However, it seems to the
writers that this particular phase of large-scale farming
is of special significance in these days of rapidly changing
agricultural conditions.
Closely related to the "chain" farm organization is
the work of the so-called managerial or agricultural
service business, several important examples of which
have appeared in the last few years. Men of manager-
ial training and experience have undertaken to sell this
sort of service to owners of farm land.
The type of control that is provided by these services
differs with the different establishments and with dif-
ferent farm owners. Farming on this system may be
organized on the basis of foreman and hired labor work-
ing under the general direction of the managerial service
itself. Or, the managerial service may handle the client's
land under a leasing system.
ADVANTAGES DESCRIBED
Under either method the owner of the land usually
surrenders the right to deal directly with the tenant or
laborer, leaving the responsibility to the service.
The service stands in the place of the landlord in
determining the improvements to be made, the farming
program to be carried on, adjustments to be made with
the tenant including the marketing and division of the
product, and the service the tenant will render in main-
taining soil fertility and other considerations connected
with the land.
This sort of organization presents many advantages,
such as collective buying of supplies and collective mar-
keting of products. To a limited extent it makes possible
a farm-to-farm division of functions, as for example the
production of feed crops on certain farms especially suit-
able for that purpose, and the raising of livestock for the
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
consumption of the feed upon other farms more suitable
to livestock enterprises.
Several successful developments of this sort have
come to our attention. Many inquiries are being received
from prospective organizers of such services. It is pro-
bably through this type of organization that the most
can be done for the present tenancy system. It has the
advantage of obviating the necessity of concentrated
ownership and avoids the difficulties due to the wide
geographic scattering of the farms owned by a single
individual agency. It offers probably the only means
through which the vast number of small-scale landlords
-people owning from one to several farms-can acquire
the service of expert agricultural and managerial talent.
FAILURES PREDICTED
Undoubtedly, many attempts to develop and promote
this sort of service will prove failures because those at-
tempting to function in the managerial capactiy will be
lacking either in knowledge of the essentials of the
farming they are undertaking or in the appreciation of
the economic forces and conditions with which they must
cope. Many more will fail merely from the lack of busi-
ness acumen necessary to the success of such a venture.
Higher efficiency in the use of agricultural resources:
In all of the several aspects of large-scale farm operations
here discussed the important element looking toward bet-
ter farming is the availability of a higher type of mana-
gerial talent which such consolidation of agricultural
resources may make possible. If such organizations are
really to become an important factor in the future agri-
culture of this country, this type of managership must
win its place in competition with the less skilled and pre-
sumably less effective management of numerous small
holders.
In the long run there seems to be only one basis of
successful competition for the large-scale farm; that is,
a superior efficiency in the use of agricultural resources
which this type of organization may make possible.
Against the incidental advantages of large-scale buying
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
and selling secured by a large business must be set the
greater personal interest that the owner-laborer of a
small farm manifests.
More important perhaps from a competitive point
of view is the ability of the small proprietor, since he em-
ploys mostly his own labor, to compete through taking
less for his services. This amounts to being able to secure
a labor supply at lower cost per unit than is possible
for the large-scale organization. Therefore if the larger
agricultural business unit survives and makes a place for
itself, it must be primarily of a higher degree of efficiency
in the use of farm resources.
COMPETITION ON NEW LEVEL
What will be the effect of this higher utilization?
The immediate effect might be expected to be a still fur-
ther expansion in the total agricultural output and hence
a still lower level of agricultural prices as compared with
those of other commodities.
The question is, in other words, will this sort of devel-
opment tend to aggravate the problem of the so-called
agricultural surplus? The development of only a few
thousand such farms in our total agricultural history
is not likely to have a serious effect in this direction
because such units would still be responsible for only
a very minor fraction of our total agricultural produc-
tion. But if the development should go still farther, so
that 20 to 50 per cent of our output would come from
these large units, an entirely different chain of conse-
quences is likely to develop.
In the first place, it would seem that such a change
would place the competition existing between the pro-
ducers of a given product on an entirely different level.
It would have so great an effect upon the total supply
as to reduce prices and tend to crowd out of business
the less efficient small producers and the less productive
agricultural land.
It would seem that such a development might tend to
hasten the time when our necessary supply of agricul-
tural products would be produced on the land best suited
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS 23
and most favorably situated for its production, while the
poorer lands would be crowded off into less important
uses.
Incidentally, if the dream of controlling the agricul-
tural output with a view of stabilizing the prices of vari-
ous agricultural products is ever realized, it would seem
that it may come through the medium of larger farm
units in the control of fewer producers who may the
more easily work together in the direction of controlling
the volume of production and the flow of the product
to the market.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
FLORIDA STATISTICS
FLORIDA HAS IN ROUND NUMBERS
Total area .........................
W ater area ..........-------
In prairie .........- ..
In actual cultivation ....
In population ...................-
Assessed valuation -..........
Income from crops .........
Income from manufacturing
Income from minerals ......
Income from fish .......
Exports .............................
Im ports ............................
Railroad mileage .......
Hard-surfaced highways ....
Tonnage hauled by Railroads
Tonnage hauled by ships ....
37,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
2,400,000
1,500,000
$613,700,000
$135,000,000
$250,000,000
$20,000,000
$19,000,000
$50,000,000
$30,000,000
8,200
7,500
18,000,000
10,000,000
Florida leads in the production of-
Grapefruit
Celery
and the following winter-grown crops-
Tomatoes Cucumbers
Soy beans Peppers
Eggplants Irish potatoes
It leads in the production of-
Fullers earth, 84 per cent of total U. S.
Phosphate, 84 per cent of total U. S.
The fruit and truck crops on 300,000 acres average
in value per acre $285 which is 10 per cent of the total
amount of these crops of the United States in carlot
shipments.
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
CITRUS FRUIT CROPS OF
Season
1884-85
1885-86
1886-87
1887-88
1888-89
1889-90
1890-91
1891-92
1892-93
1893-94
1894-95
1895-96
1896-97
1897-98
1898-99
1899-00
1900-01
1901-02
1902-03
1903-04
1904-05
1905-06
1906-07
1907-08
1908-09
1909-10
1910-11
1911-12
1912-13
1913-14
1914-15
1915-16
1916-17
1917-18
1918-19
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
------------ -------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
-----------------
--------------------------
-----------------
-----------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
----------------------- --
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
FLORIDA
Total Boxes
600,000
900,000
1,260,000
1,450,000
1,950,000
2,150,000
2,450,000
2,713,180
3,450,000
5,055,367
2,808,187
147,000
218,379
358,966
252,000
274,000
352,000
974,033
1,465,306
1,950,823
2,961,195
3,793,126
3,800,000
3,250,000
4,634,587
6,130,798
4,360,497
4,708,350
8,125,465
7,651,514
9,573,011
8,205,434
6,960,000
5,581,309
8,946,204
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Season
1919-20 .........................
1920-21 ..........................
1921-22 ......................
Season
1922-23
1923-24
1924-25
1925-26
1926-27
1927-28
1928-29
Total Boxes
12,495,925
13,195,398
13,331,949
Total Boxes
16,886,701
19,200,000
19,171,440
14,694,120
16,588,800
13,635,360
23,239,645
Farm Value
$63,310,000
64,940,000
64,950,000
48,658,032
42,887,340
51,424,099
49,035,794
------------------
------------------
------------------
------------------
------------------
------------------
------------------
CHAPTER III
COOPERATIVE MARKETING
By L. M. RHODES, State Marketing Commissioner
Marketing is one or more systems of exchanging com-
modities possessed by the seller, to the buyer, at prices
fixed by conditions, regulated in a large measure by sup-
ply and demand.
Cooperative marketing as it applies to American
agriculture is a system of selling farm products through
grower-owned and grower-controlled organizations or
associations made up of producers of commodities.
The personnel of agriculture is 27,500,000 people
living on approximately six and one third million farms.
These 6 1-3 million farms or productive units are man-
aged as a rule by different individuals, who produce raw
products with a total value of $12,000,000,000 in round
numbers, adding $1,000,000,00 per month to the nation's
wealth.
These 6 1-3 million productive units, compete in the
marketing of this gigantic volume of farm produce, not
only with some 70 foreign nations, but with themselves.
This creates a tremendous complicated, complex, eco-
nomic problem, or a number of economic problems.
But these farm problems are not solely economic; they
are as moral as human justice, as national as the future
of our country, and if they remained unsolved they will
last as long as patriotism and ideals of equal opportunity
inspire the hearts of American citizens.
The nation's highest interests being involved in the
solutions of the economic problems of the farm, various
remedies have been offered, among them-cooperative
marketing.
Since 1810 cooperative marketing in one form or
another has been going through the experimental stage.
But not until 1915 when a survey by the U. S. Department
of Agriculture revealed the fact that nearly 5,500 asso-
ciations in the U. S. were transacting business amounting
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
to $636,000,000, did cooperative marketing play an im-
portant part in our agricultural operations.
Recent surveys show that the number of cooperative
associations are now more than 12,000, with more than
2,000,000 producer members, with a total volume of bus-
iness amounting to more than $2,500,000,000.
This means that practically 80 per cent of our farm
commodities, are not controlled and sold by cooperative
associations.
And as a tribute to the gigantic failure of the market-
ing system controlling 80 per cent of our agricultural
business, we only have to use the following facts:
During the six years from 1921 to 1927, agriculture
lost by decrease in its property value, $15,000,000,000.
During the same period the property value of organized
corporations increased $35,000,000,000.
During 1929, 200 large scale associations did 331/2
per cent of all the cooperative business.
GRAIN COOPERATIVES
Approximately 4,000 grain cooperatives with 450,000
stockholders,- owning more than $50,000,000 worth of
stock and an equipment investment amounting to $65,-
000,000 marketed grain valued at $680,000,000.
DAIRY COOPERATIVES
During 1929, 2,480 dairy associations with a member-
ship of 600,000, marketed more than $640,000,000 worth
of dairy products, which was an increase of more than
500 per cent over the amount marketed by cooperative
associations in 1915.
LIVESTOCK COOPERATIVES
There were in 1929, 4,500 cooperative livestock ship-
ping associations in the U. S. handling from a few cars
to more than 1,000 carloads each turning out $400,000,-
000 worth of business and according to report of U. S.
Department of Agriculture, net savings were made
amounting to from 20 cents to 75 cents or an average of
471/2 cents per hundred pounds, which would have
amounted on the 20,600,000,000 pounds of live stock
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
sold last year if it had all been handled by cooperative
associations, to a net profit of $97,850,000. Is it any won-
der that the Federal Farm Board recommends cooperative
marketing to the farmers of the Nation?
FRUIT AND VEGETABLE COOPERATIVES
There are a total of 1,270 associations with 200,000
members handling almost every kind of fruit and vege-
tables, turning out sales amounting to $300,000,000. The
first one of these associations which has a definite record
was organized in 1867. The largest one is the California
Fruit Growers Exchange handling 44,500 carloads of
citrus fruits with f. o. b. returns amounting to $96,500,000.
COTTON MARKETING
In 1929 cooperative marketing associations sold 1,114-
354 bales of cotton and turned out $97,000,000 worth of
business. The total membership of cotton cooperatives
was not much short of 300,000.
POULTRY AND EGG COOPERATIVES
During 1929, 139 cooperative poultry marketing asso-
ciations sold $50,000,000 worth of poultry and eggs. This
volume has increased from $10,000,000 worth of poultry
products in 1920 or 500 per cent increase in 9 years.
80 per cent of this is sold by 7 associations, the largest
handling produce valued at $13,000,000.
TOBACCO AND WOOL COOPERATIVES
Cooperative associations handled tobacco valued at
$22,000,000 and wool valued at $7,000,000 in 1929.
Cooperative associations market miscellaneous crops
valued at $150,000,000 and buy farm and marketing sup-
plies valued at $300,000,000.
The grand total of the business transacted by coop-
eratives in 1929 was $2,646,000,000 which shows that
cooperatives have been very active and have rapidly
increased.
But there is also a rapid trend toward cooperation
among cooperatives. Today 46 of the largest coopera-
tives handling dairy products are linked together in the
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
National Cooperative Milk Producers Federation. 12 of
the livestock cooperative terminal sales agencies are
working together in the National Livestock Producers
Associations.
A number of the leading wool cooperatives have
formed the National Wool Marketing Council.
13 state wide cotton cooperative associations are
working together through the American Cotton Growers
Exchange.
The tendency of the age is toward centralized effort
and that is as it should be.
In this the farmers are the last to adopt group action.
Agriculture has been for decades, and is now, doing
business at the counter and desk of organized business.
This is an age of organized business and organized
industry.
Even the retail merchandizing of the everyday neces-
sities of life is being done through gigantic mergers.
There are at present 5,000 chains of stores with 120,000
stores, one for each 100 people, doing a total volume of
business amounting to $10,000,000,000 or $93 per capital
for our entire population.
The big question now with all business, including agri-
culture, is to find two satisfied customers where only one
existed before.
Therefore cooperation among farmers is no longer
sentiment, it is an economic necessity.
The remarkable advance of commerce and industry
in the United States in the last half century has been due
in a great measure to their discovery of efficient methods
of large scale production and marketing.
These gigantic operations are the outstanding char-
acteristics of modern business, and they stand in as
marked contrast as mountains and mole-hills, to the small
scale methods of 50 years ago.
For example, I mention again the chain stores hand-
ling 40 per cent of the retail grocery business-a very
typical change. Another striking example is seen in the
manufacturing of farm machinery which was done by
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
the blacksmith or small foundry only a few decades ago.
The shoe cobbler has been replaced by immense fac-
tories. The mining company has taken the place of'the
individual. All operations of commerce and industry
have changed from individual failure to collective suc-
cess.
Agriculture remains as the only important industry
characterized by small scale operations, with over 6,000,-
000 small producing units.
Agriculture in this unorganized condition is placed
at a great disadvantage. It cannot adjust acreage or
regulate its produce to trade demands; it can not effi-
ciently assemble, grade or pack its products, or do any-
thing else, with the maximum efficiency.
Farming, therefore, must take its lesson from busi-
ness, and develop methods of large scale operating.
Either these principles must be applied to production
or marketing, perhaps, both.
If agriculture's lesson from business history is large
scale operation applied to marketing, how can it be
brought about except through cooperative marketing?
If cooperative effort or group action is the solution,
who has any right to object to farmers organizing to
market products which they produce, own and control?
And why do we see cooperation fought so bitterly,
criticized so severely, and unfavorable rumors going
around calling the managers and directors of coopera-
tives everything from "ignorant visionaries," to "unscrup-
ulous scoundrels," and sarcastic remarks from the lips of
the critical saying, "Farmers never will pull together,"
this or that movement "will die a natural death," etc.
The answer is this! If farmers unite for marketing
purposes, and especially if they organize into regional
or state-wide groups, their activities may take some busi-
ness away from some old line dealers.
Who will even doubt that if industry had a multitude
of producing plants, with a production too large for mar-
ket demands, and annual surpluses so great that prices
were depressed, that they would solve these problems
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
by merger combinations, consolidations or organizations?
There is nothing economically sound in producing
crops that must sell at a price below the cost of producing
them. Profit, not production, must determine the farm
standard of living and agriculture alone bares its breast
to the deadly darts of individual competition.
The only way farmers can reduce this competition
in their own industry and keep pace with the social,
economic and industrial changes that are going on all
around them, is by strong organizations federated for
friendly and mutual cooperative effort.
Products could then be standardized, controlled and
distributed properly; waste, duplication, and inefficiency
decreased; production could be brought closer to the
limits of demand, financial assistance secured, necessary
market information obtained.
Farmers would then be in the same position as indus-
try. They would control their industry, make their calling
more independent and take their place in the economic
equality of the nation's business affairs.
The challenge to solve these gigantic, complex and
difficult economic farm problems, rings clear to us. They
are not only agricultural, they are national. To fail to
solve them takes the soul out of farm life, and to elimi-
nate the soul from farm life seriously weakens the na-
tion's moral and spiritual stamina.
Lest we forget! Agriculture has furnished its per-
centage of national leaders, since Abraham managed a
ranch, Moses kept a flock, and Ruth, progenitor of Christ,
gleaned in the fields for her daily bread.
Nine-tenths of our presidents and governors, one-half
of our railroad presidents and two-thirds of our bank
presidents, congressmen and senators, were sons or grand-
sons of the soil.
During the twenty-five years that I plowed, sowed,
planted, cultivated, gathered, reaped and marketed,
from the age of eight to thirty-three, the desire to render
service to agriculture and help to find solutions to its
problems grew stronger and stronger. In early manhood
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS 33
I decided that no human activity furnished so wide an
opportunity for usefulness and unselfish leadership as
does agriculture, and now that I am in sight of the border-
land of old age, I have not changed my mind. Many and
varied have been my opportunities to plead the cause of
agriculture. I have constantly pleaded for justice equi-
tably extended. I have never asked for more, and I never
will be content with less.
CHAPTER IV
COOPERATION
Commercial, Industrial, Agricultural and Social
By T. J. BROOKS, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture
1*-Commercial
1-Historical sketch
2-Biography of Robt. Owen
3-Rochdale Pioneers: History of Cooperative
Wholesalers
4-Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society
5-Cuthbert's Cooperative Society
6-Copartnership at Guise, France
7-Read and comment on "Mutual Aid" by Kro-
potkin
8-Work of the Right Relationship League
9-Cooperative financing in U. S.
2*-Industrial
1-Historical sketch of Labor Unions
1-Knights of Labor
2-American Federation of Labor
3-Miners' Unions
4-Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers
5-Cooperative Industrials of France
(see Ency. Brit.)
6-Cooperative Industrials in Italy
(see Under 10 F)
7-Cooperative Industries in U. S.
3*-Agricultural
1-Social and Educational
1-Grange
2-Farmers' Alliance
3-Farmers' Union
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
2-Commercial
1-Exchanges
1-Cal. Fruit Growers' Exchange
2--Cal. Walnut Growers' Exchange
3-Hood River Apple Growers' Exchange
4-Col. Apple Growers' Exchange
5-East Shore of Virginia Produce
Exchange
6-Live Stock Exchanges
7-Poultry Exchanges
2-Storing plants
1-Grain Elevators
2-Cotton Warehouses
3-Refrigerators
3-Factories
1-Bacon factories
2-Creameries
3-Cheese factories
3-Productive
Sugar-beet raising
Cooperative renting, buying and cultivating
land in northern Italy
4-Legal status of cooperative corporations
5-Business forms used by farmers' exchanges
GUARANTEES OF SUCCESSFUL COOPERATIVES
Essentials of Success
1-Favorable conditions
1-Supply standardized
2-Transportation
3-Demand-local and extended
2-Volume of business based on contracts if an exchange
3-Interest centered in patronage instead of dividends
4-Sound business principles
Essential Characteristics
1-One man one vote
2-Limited dividends to stockholders to interest rate
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
3-Control of transfer of stock
4-Division of profits to customers in proportion
to patronage-to shipper if an exchange, to the
retail purchaser in case of a store
5-Cash dealing only
5-Efficient management
OUTLINE OF
BENEFITS TO THE PUBLIC OF REQUIRING
CORPORATIONS TO BE COOPERATIVE
1*-Def. of Corporation: A chartered body, granted cer-
tain privileges, empowered to conduct certain busi-
ness and regulate the relations of its members and
of the the body to the public.
2*-Explication
1**--Kinds
1***-Commercial
1****-Ordinary joint stock
2****-Copartnership or profit-sharing
3****-Cooperative
2***-Fraternal
1****-Masons
2****-Odd-Fellows, Etc.
3***-Educational
4* **-Philanthropic
5***-Religious
2**-Purpose
1***-Material
2***-Social
3**-Results of each
1***-Commercial
1****-Ordinary joint- stock
Aggregates capital in hands of
few
Breeds plutocracy
38 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
2****-Copartnership
Ameliorates the condition of the
wage-earner but does not reach
the masses of producers and con-
sumers not employed by these
concerns.
3****-Cooperative
Establishes equity among all
classes
Preserves the economic advan-
tages of big business
CHAPTER V
COTTON EXCHANGES
By T. J. BROOKS, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture
Cotton exchanges are incorporated institutions com-
posed of brokers who elect their own members, make their
own rules, limit their membership and do not report the
volume of their business to the public. The present num-
ber is 450, and the value of memberships is from $27,000
to $40,000 each. The chief function of the cotton ex-
change is supposed to be to furnish a place and the means
by which buyers and sellers come together and carry on
their business; but the chief function of the exchanges,
as now operated, as defined by Herbert Knox Smith, in
his exhaustive report while Commissioner of Corpora-
tions, is to furnish uniform quotations and a place to
hedge.
The cotton manufacturer of cotton wants to know
what price to ask for his goods to be delivered several
months ahead. He has not bought the raw cotton from
which he is to make the cloth. He does not know what
it will cost him. So how is he to price his goods to his
customer? A cotton merchant comes to the manufacturer
and offers to furnish the cotton at a specified time and
price. The trade is made. The manufacturer knows
what to ask for goods to be made from this cotton, as the
price it is to cost him is established so far as he is con-
cerned. But how is the cotton merchant to know but that
he will have to pay more for the cotton he has sold than
he got for it, or is to get for it? He does not know. It is up
to him to throw the risk on some one else. He goes to
the exchange and buys an equal amount of cotton to be
delivered at the same time of his delivery to the manufac-
turer. His buying on the exchange consists in putting up
a margin to cover the probable fluctuation between the
date of purchase and date of delivery, which is usually
$2 a bale. This transaction on the exchange is called
a hedge. If the rise and fall of spots and futures remain
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
relatively the same he will neither make nor lose by the
change in price. If cotton advances in price, and futures
advance at the same ratio, he will make as much on his
future deal as he loses on his spot deal.
Then, where does he get any profit out of the two
deals taken together?
This cotton merchant looks up the market before
he makes an offer to the manufacturer, and makes a
price at so many points above present price so as to
leave a margin of profit. It is then up to the cotton mer-
chant to get his cotton as cheap as possible, and make the
difference between the market quotation and the price
he is to get for it.
When a cotton merchant bought his hedge, from
whom did he buy it? He brought it through his broker
on the exchange from some one who is willing to take
the risk in price fluctuations. It might possibly be some
*one who was selling a hedge on the exchange to cover
a purchase in spots, but more likely it was some one who
had no cotton, did not expect to have any and could not
get it if he were to try. He is apt to be simply a specula-
tor who is selling short in the belief that cotton will go
down before the date specified for delivery. The buyer
and the seller stake their margins with their respective
brokers and await results, the same as in any other game
of chance. The only investment is the amount of the
commission paid the brokers; the hedge is simply a
"stake."
Suppose that in the instance above related the price of
spot cotton goes down and the price of futures goes up,
what would be the result? The cotton merchant would
make on both. On the other hand, if the price of cotton
goes up and the price of futures goes down, the merchant
loses on both transactions.
The spinner or manufacturer may do his own hedging,
and then buy his cotton in the open market as he needs it.
A hedge is not always a protection. It frequently acts
as a boomerang to the hedger. But it offers sufficient
guarantee under ordinary circumstances to induce a great
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
number of cotton buyers to use it when they are carrying
cotton which they have not sold, or when preparing to
fill orders which they have sold.
A wide market furnished hedgers by the exchange is
made possible by customers of the exchange who have
nothing involved but their margins. So one of the main
functions of the exchange as now operated is to furnish
speculators a place to win or lose in a game of chance of
marginal risks. To all intents and purposes the interest
of this class of exchange patrons is the same as the in-
terest of the patrons of the "bucket shop" or a lottery.
A bucket shop is an office set up by one who takes
the quotations of the exchanges as a basis and operates
by taking the bets of all customers whether they are on
the bull or bear side of the market. Nothing is contem-
plated being delivered or called for delivery. It is purely
a gamble on the fluctuations of the market. The bucket
shop manager takes chances on there being as many losers
as winners among his customers. The operator's accounts
might balance, but his commission would yield a profit.
Margins are staked by the bucket shop patron the same
as when dealing on the exchange. Nothing is affected in
price by the bucket shop, as it has no connection whatever
with dealing in any commodity, except to use future quo-
tations as a basis for betting. Bucket shops have been
outlawed in recent years throughout the country. The
exchanges favored this legislation, as the customer of
the bucket shop was a potential patron of the exchange.
Each contract bought or sold on the cotton exchange
calls for the delivery of the cotton, and can be enforced.
The contracts are held to be valid. This would give the
buyers a chance to put the short sellers in a hole were
it not for the rules governing exchange deliveries. When
cotton is contracted for on the exchange it is simply
cotton-grade has nothing to do with it. A buyer cannot
contract for a specific grade or quality of cotton. Con-
tracts are all based on "middling." You buy, say, one hun-
dred bales, basis middling, to be delivered at a specified
date at a specified price. The seller does not have to
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
deliver middling or any specific grade. He has the option
of selecting any grade or grades he chooses within the
limit of ten, as per act of March 4, 1919, and tender it
on the contract. If he does not want to deliver at all he
is certain to select such cotton as cannot be used by the
purchaser to an advantage, and thereby avoids being
called on for the spot cotton. Formerly on the New York
Exchange the differences in value between the various
grades were fixed by a board which met at stated inter-
vals. The New Orleans Cotton Exchange settled the dif-
ferences on the commercial basis i, e., on the commercial
value of each grade at the time of delivery. The New
York plan also gave the seller a still greater advantage
when called on to deliver, as he could pick out the grade
least in demand and of least relative value at the time of
delivery. Under act of February 26, 1927, the relative
values of the various grades are to be determined as fol-
lows: sectionn 6. That for the purposes of section 5 of
this Act the differences above or below the contract price
which the receiver shall pay for cotton of grades above
or below the basis grade in the settlement of a contract
of sale for the future delivery of cotton shall be determ-
ined by the actual commercial differences in value thereof
upon the sixth business day prior to the day fixed, in
accordance with the sixth subdivision of section 5, for
the delivery of cotton on the contract, established by the
sale of spot cotton in the spot markets of not less than
five places designated for the purpose from time to time
by the Secretary of Agriculture, as such values were
established by the sales of spot cotton, in such designated
five or more markets: Provided, that for the purpose
of this section such values in the said spot markets
be based upon the standards for grades of cotton estab-
Isihed by the Secretary of Agriculture: And provided
further, that whenever the value of one grade is to
be determined from the sale or sales of spot cotton
of another grade or grades, such value shall be fixed
in accordance with rules and regulations which shall
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
be prescribed for the .purpose by the Secretary of, Agri-
culture."
All of which means that an exchange is not primarily
a spot cotton market. In fact it is conceded that not
ten per cent of the sales are not ever delivered.
The practice of giving through bills of lading has also
operated to eliminate the cotton exchanges as spot cotton
markets. It is no longer necessary that there be a mid-
way station where buyer and seller meet to see the cotton
and do their trading. Hundreds of millions of dollars'
worth of cotton are bought by foreign mills without the
purchaser ever seeing the seller or ever seeing the cotton
till it arrives at the purchaser's warehouse. It is bought
on grade, staple and spinning qualities, the seller guar-
anteeing it to come true to contract.
Often there is a battle royal on the exchange between
the bulls and the bears, when millions of dollars are
involved, and whichever way the tide turns means an enor-
mous profit or loss to the contending parties. We read
in the market reports of "bear raids" and "bull cam-
paigns." A few times it has happened that men with
enormous capital at their command have quietly "cor-
nered" both the future and spot markets, and then pro-
ceeded to make demand for spot delivery on their ex-
change contracts. The bull campaigners were prepared
for this emergency and accepted all that was tendered.
When this supply-kept in New York for the purpose-
was exhausted, good cotton had to be secured by the sel-
lers to fill their contracts. So the sellers of exchange
contracts had to go to the very ones to whom they were
bound to deliver and first buy the spot cotton and deliver
it right back to them on the exchange contracts. Under
this pressure cotton has been bought in Europe and
brought back to New York to tender on "short" contracts.
When the top is reached, and reaction sets in, the only
way the bulls can save themselves is to turn bears and
hammer the future market as low as possible while they
pocket margin profits as the price slips downward notch
by notch.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Suppose the short sellers cannot get the cotton at all;
how can they be forced to deliver? That is cared for by
the broker "covering," i.e., forfeiting so much of the
margin as is covered by the change in price and closing
the contract for his client before the margin is exhausted.
This process lessens the number carrying the load, but it
is the only way of keeping solvency of operators.
"Scalpers" go in and out of the market the same day.
If a broker gets an order from a customer and takes
it himself, instead of offering it across the pit, he is said
to "bucket" the order, because he thus assumes the same
attitude toward his customer that the keeper of a bucket
shop does. This is forbidden by the rules of the exchange,
and should a broker be found guilty of practicing it, he
would be expelled from the exchange.
The expenses of the exchanges of the country are
not definitely known. A conservative estimate of the
commission charges on the transactions of the New York
Cotton Exchange places the amount at $10,000,000 a year.
The commissions are $15 a hundred bales to those who are
not members of the exchange-$7.50 to get in and $7.50
to get out. The commissions of members are half that of
non-members.
But to offset this it is shown that not all the sales on
the exchanges are bona-fide transactions, yielding these
regular commissions. There are what is called "matched
sales" and "washed sales," and a process that is called
"wringing out," all of which yield no commissions except
what is paid the floor broker for his wage service.
"Matched sales" or "washed sales" are those that a
member of the exchange, or. a combination of them,
have a private understanding, and go to one set of brokers
and order them to sell a certain amount of cotton, at
a given price, and then go to another set of brokers and
order them to buy the same quantity of cotton at the
same price. The purpose to be served in a plot like this
would be to make a "bear raid." Suppose a coterie of
men find out on a certain day that they are badly over-
sold, say, a million bales; and that if they can make a
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
decline on that of a cent a pound they can clean up $5,-
000,000! They get together and agree to break the market
on the morrow, say one-quarter cent. They divide up,
and each gets a broker to sell ten thousand futures five
points down to each lot, 2,000 at a time. Say 200,000 are
thus to be offered. These same manipulators get anoth-
er lot of brokers and instruct them to go on the floor and
buy in like lots and prices. The two sets of brokers do
not know anything about the scheme. They are con-
cerned only in obeying the orders of their customers.
They have their orders and proceed to carry them out,
and the quotations decline a quarter of a cent. Not a
cent is made or lost by these transactions per se, but the
decline means over a million rakeoff for the manipula-
tors, less the wages of the brokers.
The rules of the exchange do not allow this-but to
prove that it is done-there is the rub.
"Wringing out" describes the condition where a pur-
chase goes from one to another any number of times,
and returns to the original seller; when accounts are
compared after the day's transactions it is found that
this contract will "wring out," and the intermediary men
are eliminated, and thus a useless transfer of contracts
is avoided. It is doubtful that the exchanges raise or
lower the price of cotton on the average during a long
series of years.
Quite a lot of legislating has been done against future
dealing in the States. Every Southern state except two
has outlawed it. Many Northern states have done the
same. Several attempts have been made to get national
legislation against it, but without success. The lower
house of Congress passed a bill prohibiting dealing in
cotton futures in 1910, and again in 1912, but neither
got through the Senate. The Federal government could
prevent it, as it did the Louisiana Lottery, by denying the
use of any means of interstate communication of future
dealing transactions where there was no intention to de-
liver or receive that upon which the contract was based.
The result that would follow an abolition of future
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
dealing is problematical. It would depend on the con-
duct of the farmers themselves. If they would assume
the carrying function, and feed the markets of the world
ever gradually with their products, future dealing would
fall into disuse automatically. There would be an addi-
tional cause for them to do this if the future dealing
were prohibited. Local cotton buyers would be less will-
ing to assume the risk of buying in the fall and finding
sale at an advanced price, if they could not carry a hedge
to cover possible losses.
The utility of this local cotton market is doubtful.
The thing that is the most convenient is not always the
best. It is far more expensive than a system need be
to transfer adequately the crop from the cotton pens to
the looms. There is little competition among local buyers.
They parcel out the territory and do little interfering
with each other. When a competitor "butts in" on an
established buyer he is usually put out by unfair compe-
tition. The one that is established, and able to stand the
strain, will proceed to overbid the newcomer till the in-
truder is compelled to leave the field. Cotton is in the
meantime lowered a fraction at various other points it
order to make up for the loss sustained at the one poin.
while overbidding the competitor. After competition
is eliminated it often happens that one left as master
of the field abuses his power till another tries the game
of competition again.
The only substitute the farmers have for the exchang-
es is the consolidated warehouse system, with a central
office to sell and guarantee sales to come to contract.
In short, to do as the big concerns all do; organize a sales
system, own it, control it, sell through it, and refuse to
sell any other way.
The local buyer does not make a market for cotton;
the big cotton merchants do not make a market for cot-
ton; the exchanges do not make a market for cotton;
the manufacturers do not make a market for cotton;
the wholesale nor retail merchants who sell cotton goods
do not make a market for cotton. Then who does? The
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS 47
1,800,000,000 people who inhabit the earth and use cot-
ton goods in a thousand different ways make the market
for cotton. This demand is constant and permanent.
This demand created by the consumer goes to the retailer,
then to the wholesaler, then to the jobbers or to the mills,
then from the mills to anyone who has the cotton and
will deliver it to suit the convenience of the mills. If the
farmer refused to sell except through his own warehouse
agencies he would be master of the situation the same
as other captains of industry who so largely master the
commercial affairs of the world.
CHAPTER VI
THE GRAIN EXCHANGES
By T. J. BROOKS, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture
The Chicago Board of Trade consisted in 1913 of 1,
642 members. A seat was worth $2,500. There are now
1,586 members, and the last membership was sold at a
price of $20,000 on November 15, 1929. There was
another for sale at $23,000.
This exchange has a large building at the head of
La Salle Street. On the main floor are three grain pits-
wheat, corn, and oats. The exchange per se neither buys
nor sells anything. It is a place where traders, who
have bought the privilege and subscribed to its rules,
meet to buy and sell grain and deal in grain contracts.
As to how much grain is bought and sold and how
much is involved in the contracts that are bought and
sold no one knows, as it is the deliberate policy of the
exchanges not to allow the public to know-there is a
reason. Each transaction is an individual and private
affair, so far as the record is concerned; no one knows at
the end of a day's transactions how much anyone has
traded, other than himself. When changes are made in
price, the last price is telegraphed at once and becomes
a quotation. It may last all day or it may last five min-
utes. About 150 telegraphers are kept at the keys
all the time answering the calls of brokers and their cus-
tomers and communicating with them by signs and mes-
sages.
This exchange transacts as much business as any other
five of the largest grain exchanges in the world. Not
infrequently, there are 10,000,000 bushels of wheat in
Chicago. They buy and sell grain anywhere but usually
that located in the Chicago zone. The reason there are
more grain than cotton exchanges is because the parity
of prices of grain does not maintain over as large a terri-
tory as witn cotton, and spots and futures respond to each
other in a smaller range or markets. This is due to the
fact that certain zones of supply influence prices because
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
of freight rates and because the centers of consumption
differ materially from that or the Southern product.
The following rates of commissions were in force
April 1929 in the Chicago Board of Trade: Where a
member acts as commission merchant for another
member, the minimum rates of commission shall be as
follows:
(a) With respect to any of the transactions men-
tioned in Rule 231, except those mentioned in
subdivision (b) thereof, one-half of the non-mem-
bers' commission.
(b) With respect to the transactions mentioned in
Rule 232, three-fourths of the non-members'
commission, except as to provisions where the
rate shall be one-half of the non-members' com-
mission.
(c) With respect to any of the transactions men-
tioned in Rule 236, one-half of the non-members'
commission.
The brokerage in such cases, if any, shall be paid by
the member acting as commission merchant.
(d) With respect to any of the transactions men-
tioned in Rule 236, one-quarter of the non-mem-
bers' commission, when the member makes his
own trades or on the floor gives his orders to
a broker and pays the brokerage and such trades
are exclusively for the personal account of the
member and are not closed the same day.
(e) When a member acts as commission merchant
for a non-clearing member, and the non-clearing
member makes his own trades or on the floor gives
his orders to a broker and pays the brokerage,
and such trades are exclusively for the personal
account of the non-clearing member, and are not
closed the same day but are closed within five
days, the minimum commission rates shall be
25 cents per 1,000 bushels of grain; 5 cents per
1,000 pounds of dry salted short ribs, dry salted
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
extra short clears, dry salt clear bellies, or lard;
and 75 cents per 50 bales of cotton.
(f) When the transactions mentioned in Section
(e) of this Rule are not closed within five days
but are closed within 10 days, the minimum com-
mission rates shall be 50 cents per 1,000 bushels
of grain ; 10 cents per 1,000 pounds of dry salted
ribs, dry salted short clears, dry salted clear
bellies, or lard; and $1.50 per 50 bales of cotton.
(g) When the transactions mentioned in Section
(e) of this Rule are not closed within ten days, the
non-members' commission, and brokerage in
such cases, if any, shall be paid by the mem-
in such cases, if any, shall be paid by the mem-
ber acting as commission merchant.
Members engaged in business in Chicago who sell
cash grain for non-resident members are not brokers, but
commission merchants, and must charge members' rates
of commission.
It is those agencies that have grown up in these ex-
changes whereby prices are artificially affected that the
farmer and consumer object to, and toward which they
are waging a warfare of extermination of the future deal-
ing features of these exchanges.
When asked, "What would be the result of prohibit-
ing future dealing?" the usual reply is, "It would throw
the handling of grain into the hands of a few millionaire
dealers and millers." The same plea is made by the
cotton broker. There is no use in dodging the question;
if the farmer is determined to sell as soon as he harvests
his grain or picks his cotton, it will throw the crops into
the hands of speculators, just the same after future deal-
ings are prohibited as it does now. Hedging is not al-
ways a protection against a decline of spots, but it is
frequently enough protection to cause most dealers to
resort to it. Now, if this hedging is prohibited, there is
likely to be an inclination to require a wider margin
between the current and future price when the delivery
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
is to be finally made. Great quantities of grain and cotton
can only be handled by a great quantity of money, when
they are actually bought and stored for future use.
If it cannot be hedged banks are less willing to loan
use. If it cannot be hedged banks are less willing to loan
within close margin of market value. As to how much
the risk incident to fluctuation would be mitigated or
augmented by a prohibition of future dealing on margin
is a mooted question.
THE CARRYING FUNCTION
The only safe business proposition for the farmer is
for him to assume the carrying function, and sell only to
mills as they need his wheat or his cotton throughout the
year. This is the doctrine of the Farmer's Union, and
much effort has been put forth in this direction in an en-
deavor to carry out this plan. The Federal Farm Board is
the last agency set up to help farmers finance the carry-
ing of the large staple crops.
The cost of the exchanges must be taxed on to what-
ever they handle and passed on to the consumer. In
like manner it is up to the farmer himself, in assuming
the carrying function, to tack on this carrying cost and
pass it on to the consumer. If the farmer is unwilling
to assume the risk and expense of carrying his products
till the consuming world wants them, why should he ob-
ject to others, who do assume the risk, making all out of
it they can? It is up to the farmer to do this himself or
take the consequence of not doing so. All the resolutions
he may pass, and all the impolite language he may use,
will not keep the speculator from doing business at the
same old stand. The farmer is making a fool of himself to
keep up this fight unless he gets down to business and
does for himself what others have been doing for him
and making him foot the bill.
The farmers of this country could destroy every fu-
ture-dealing exchange in the world in one year if they
were a unit, and were to try, without there being a single
law passed, by any state, by the national government or
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
by any foreign nation. It could be done this way: Do
the carrying and distributing.
The Chicago Board of Trade voted, in June, 1911, to
change their rules so that when a corner is made a com-
mittee can say what price the settlement is to be made,
and those caught short will not have to settle at the
inflated price. But it would be very difficult to comply
with these rules because of the inability to decide at just
what price the settlement should be made. Besides, it
spoils the game and takes away the incentive that keeps
the excitement going on the exchange. If the farmer
would assume the carrying function, and exchanges were
supervised by government officials in the interest of the
people and no future dealings on margins allowed, it
would go far toward economizing our commercial system,
and eliminating useless waste and expense, as well as pre-
venting gambling in future contracts, where no delivery
is made or contemplated. It would place trading on a
legitimate spot basis, and give the normal operation of
the law of supply and demand full swing. An exchange
abrogates the law of legitimate business risk. It should
not, and would not, if run as a spot exchange under pro-
per control, and all sales reported and published, with
date, amount, and parties in the contract.
The farmer has no more competition in the producing
business than he ought to have to supply the demand.
This part of the problem has solved itself without any
conscious effort on his part. What he now needs to do is
to eliminate competition in the marketing of his crops.
He can readily do so by patronizing the selling agencies
he has established in the various states, and when a mis-
take is made and the sales do not pan out as expected,
right the wrong and stick to it instead of flying off the
handle and taking to the woods as so many have done.
Men with money and brains do not cut such stunts as that
in handling the things that are consumed every hour of
the year. When the ship springs a leak it should be
mended or a new ship secured-do not jump overboard
and refuse the lifeline.
54 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
When the farmer comes to his own it will be a great
day for this country, for America, and for the world.
When good roads extend in every direction, when he no
longer destroys the soil, but conserves it; when he has
the conveniences that city life affords, without the disad-
vantages that the city must of necessity have; when he can
dash in his auto to town and back in an hour, or to
the city, fifty miles away, and return in half a day; whe
he can read his daily papers, talk across the continent
before breakfast, and listen to the radio at night; when
he has access to fine schools; when he draws the whip of
lightning across the back of glittering steel and turns
the stubborn glebe; when he shall own his home; when he
shall be master of science of marketing; when he shall
plow with the legislative plow with the same facility that
he does the steel plow-then will the farmer come to
his own.
CHAPTER VII
STOCK EXCHANGES
By T. J. BROOKS, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture
A stock exchange is a place where stocks, bonds,
and other securities are bought and sold. Paris, Berlin,
London and New York have the world's greatest ex-
changes. In Paris the business can be traced back for
about five hundred years, but it was not until 1726 that
the Bourse was legally recognized. Previous to 1773 the
London stockbrokers conducted their business in and
about the Royal Exchange, but in that year they formed
themselves into a separate organization under the desig-
nation of Stock Exchange. Settlements on the Bourse
are made monthly and semi-monthly. The Bourse is
under government control and any one may act as broker.
The settlement occupies three days and is monthly. The
first organization of brokers in New York dates from
about 1820. It was not till 1871 that a permanent or-
ganization was formed, when two dozen brokers banded
together and fixed a unifor commission of one-fourth
of one per cent, since then reduced to one-eighth of one
per cent. The New York Stock Exchange-elect their own
members and had in 1913 eleven hundred. The hours
are from ten to three. The mode of conducting business
in Wall Street differs in some respects from both English
and Continental procedure. Treansactions of one day
are settled the next. The curb exchange is one held in
the street. The business transacted is insignificant as
compared to the other exchanges.
Prior to February, 1929, there were 1100 memberships
on the New York Stock Exchange. At that time 275 addi-
tional memberships were authorized and 224 have since
been purchased or contracted for. The sale of a member-
ship in the Exchange in 1929 was at $360,000. A few were
offered later at $360,000 to $400,000. Sale of a seat
on the New York Stock Exchange was reported November
21, 1930 and the price was $350,000. The last previous
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
sale was made at $494,000. The price of Exchange seats
was evidently weakened somewhat in sympathy with
the drastic break in the stock market and the prospect
for less active stock market business. There was also
a transfer of membership on the New York Curb at a
price of $150,000, a decrease of $100,000 from the pre-
vious sale made at $250,000.
Stock exchanges are distinguished from cotton and
grain exchanges in the character of securities or com-
modities bought and sold. The value of shares in the
great corporations of the country is affected by the stock
exchanges, and only incidentally and indirectly do they
affect the price of the common necessities of life. The
volume of business of the exchanges is in excess of any
other kind of trading. The facilities which they offer
for heavy trading makes exchange dealing a favorite
form of commercial exchange.
The principal securities handled on the stock
exchanges are: railroads, industrials, public utilities, and
kindred securities. They are not limited to American
securities, but the trade is international. They do not
publish the volume of business transacted.
The condition of the stock market is taken as a criter-
ion as. indicating the general prosperity of the country.
The business world is very materially affected by the fluc-
tuations of the stock market. The great bulk of the cor-
porate wealth of the country is represented in the stocks
dealt in on the exchanges.
Corporations, except national banks, were not the
creatures of Federal enactment, until the enactment of
the Federal Warehouse Act, but of State charters. This
gives rise to quite a diversity of corporation laws and
regulations. No state limits the amount of capital stock
for which a corporation may be chartered. This means
that there is no limit to the amount of stock that can be
issued by a corporation whether there is one cen of tangi-
ble assets to back the stocks so issued or not.
If the required number of men, usually five, are a
mind to pay the charter fees and taxes they can organize
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
a company, have it chartered, issue to themselves all the
stock they care to, sell the remainder to the investing
public and operate on the money thus secured and pay
if the dividends are made, they draw the dividends on
their "watered" stocks the same as those stockholders
who paid cash for their shares.
The fact that the value of shares in a company or
corporation is not determined by the amount of real,
tangible assets behind them, but is determined almost
solely by the earning power of the shares, based on the
cost of said shares, has tended to lend a respectability to
this species of stock jobbing that otherwise would not
adhere. The fact that some corporations with very mea-
ger assets have enormous earning power has helped to
intensify the speculative mania. The stock exchange
offers the visual point of manifestation and greatly aug-
ments the possibilities of speculation. It also offers a
ready market for trading in the best and the worst of the
larger securities of almost every variety of shares.
New companies whose stocks are of doubtful value
are shy of having their stocks quoted on the exchange.
A company starts out by having an arbitrary price at
which its stocks are sold. If they are quoted on an ex-
change at a lower price this would prevent the stock
solicitors from being able to market shares for more than
they are quoted on the exchange. The fact that stocks
are quoted on an exchange does not necessarily mean
that they are being sold. So a firm may have stocks of
a rivel quoted on the exchange at under value for the
purpose of bringing it into disrepute and preventing the
investing public from purchasing its stock. Be it remem-
bered that one does not have to own stock to offer it
for sale on an exchange. If a buyer is found it is easy
to say that none of them are available just then. In order
to prevent this unfair practice it is now provided that
the stockholders of a company may escrow their stock-
i.e., sign an agreement that the stock is not for sale at all
until a certain date. When this is done it is unlawful
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
for the stock to be quoted on an exchange-the ones so
doing are subject to prosecution.
Firms rent private wires from the exchange to various
parts of the country so as to keep in constant touch with
the local as well as the exchange markets and with cus-
tomers. Heavy dealers in grain and cotton practice this
periodically even more than do stock dealers.
The different exchanges are in constant communi-
cation with others of like nature.
A member of the stock exchange will fit up an office
for customers who wish to take advantage of the privilege
of trading close to the "ticker." Some traders prefer
to follow the market through frequent telephone or tele-
graph advices. The mailing department issues daily mar-
ket letters, placing before customers the status of the
market. A statistical department furnishes detailed in-
formation and once a week a financial indicator is issued
which shows fluctuations in prices, dividends, rates, etc.
Out-of-town customers, who wish to scalp fractional one-
point profits, trade through a "wire house." Private
cipher codes are provided, which insure privacy and min-
imize expense when telegraphing orders. Orders may be
sent by any means of communication.
When you buy or sell for cash in full the certificate
is recorded in your name and delivered by messenger or
registered mail.
When you buy on margin your broker pays in full
for the stocks, holds the stocks as security, and receives
from you a cash payment or "margin" sufficient to protect
him from loss through possible depreciation in the market
value of the stock. He takes the stocks to a bank, hypo-
thecates them and borrows on call the amount of the
value of the stocks not covered by margin. A rise of five
points means a profit of $50 (less charges) on ten shares
of stock, and multiplies accordingly. The minimum of
protection required varies. It is usually ten points (a
point is one mill) on active stocks, of low or medium
price; that is, for a deposit of $100 your broker will buy
and carry for you ten shares; for $200 he will buy twenty
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS 59
shares. The requirement of high-priced stocks is fifteen
to twenty points or $150 to $200 for ten shares.
The required margin must be kept; additional margins
are seldom called for while six points protection remains.
"Stop loss" orders may be entered two points or more
from the price where the margin is exhausted. A stop
loss order is an order to sell at the market if a certain
loss is reached on the decline. Stocks may be bought on
a margin, and paid for in partial payments, by, at any
time, settlement of balance due.
In sending orders you state whether you wish to buy
for cash, on margin, or on the partial payment plan; what
number of shares you want, the name of the stock, and
the price you pay, or whether "at the market."
A "scalper" is one who buys in and sells out the same
day, or sells in and buys out the same day.
Selling stock you do not own, prices rise and you can-
not withdraw without loss is called "short selling."
To be "caught long" is to be overloaded and find no
sales without loss.
Short sales are made with the intention of buying
back at a lower price and making a profit of the differ-
ence. When an order is given a broker for short sales,
the broker "borrows" the stock for delivery. When a
customer gives an order for the short sale of any stock,
he deposits with his broker a margin. The usual require-
ment is $10 a share. This means that the stock can rise
10 points before the margin is entirely wiped out. The
broker borrows the stock for delivery. The lender can
"call" the broker for a margin, and it is the usual prac-
tice among brokers to call this margin to the market.
It is the practice of New York Stock Exchange houses to
Oend stock which they are carrying on a margin for their
customers. The rules of the exchange allow this, and un-
der the agreement they make with their customers to
be allowed to hypothecate the securities. So the stock
is borrowed "against" the sale and when the seller has
"covered"-i.e., bought a stock of which he is short-the
stock is returned to the lender.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
The expenses of exchange transactions are met by
commissions charged by brokers. Commission charges
are one-eighth of one per cent of the par value for buying,
and the same for selling, or $1.25 each way on 10 shares,
and for other quantities in proportion with a minimum
charge of $1.25 per transaction.
On the subject of commissions, the rules of the New
York Exchange are so varied that Article XIX of the
constitution fills six pages.
Interest is charged on money advanced for the pur-
pose of stock on margin, on the difference between cost
and margin, which varies from 4 per cent to 6 per cent.
Long stock carried on margin, on the day that com-
pany's books closed for a dividend, pay dividends for time
carried by purchaser. One may sell his stock, on which
he is entitled to a dividend, at any time after it sells
"ex-dividend," and still receive the dividend when pay-
able.
On the partial payment plan $10 a share, regardless
of the par value, is the smallest initial deposit accepted;
no stock selling under $10 a share can be purchased on
the partial payment plan. The balance is paid monthly
in amounts equal to $5 a share on all stocks bought at
a price above 30, and $3 a share on all stocks bought
below 30. Bonds have similar requirements. Payments
on a one hundred dollar bond would be $5 a month and
other multiples accordingly. At any time total payment
may be made, and the stock certificate will be issued to
purchaser. Securities may be sold at any time, and the
seller receive his aggregate deposits plus the profit, if
any, less the charges. Holdings may be increased without
additional deposit whenever payments on the first pur-
chase aggregate the stated requirements on both pur-
chases, and provided the security first purchased is not
at the time selling below its purchase price. In the event
of failure to pay an instalment when due, the securities
are considered as carried on margin, subject to rules gov-
erning margin accounts. Thus, a stop loss order will
be entered close to the point of exhaustion of margin.
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
This is the usual rule unless otherwise ordered. If the
customer prefers he may receive in return his deposits,
plus the accumulated profits, or less the accrued losses,
and less the charges in either case.
On the subject of contracts, Sections 1 and 2 of Arti-
cle XV of the constitution of the New York Stock Ex-
change (1929) reads as follows:
"Members contracts and Exchange Contracts. Sec-
tion 1. All contracts of a member of the Exchange, or
of a firm having a member of the Exchange as a general
partner, with any other member of the Exchange, or with
any other firm having a member of the Exchange as a
general partner, for the purchase, sale, borrowing, loan-
ing or hypothecation of securities, or for the borrowing,
loaning or payment of money,whether occurring upon the
Floor of the Exchange or elsewhere, are Members' Con-
tracts. Section 2. Exchange contracts shall include all
Members' Contracts.
(1) Made on the Exchange;
(2) Not made on the Exchange, unless made sub-
ject to the rules of another Exchange, or unless
the parties thereto have expressly agreed that
the same shall not be Exchange contracts."
The interlocking of directorates, resulting in inside
management, and the practice of companies buying and
selling their own stocks on the exchange, has led to the
officers, directors, or stockholders of a company artifi-
cially bullingg" the market or artificially "bearing" the
market, and thereby swindling the investing public.
Sometimes flurries in the stock market will start tre-
mors in business that are felt throughout the civilized
world. "Black Friday" may be mentioned as an instance
in the early days of American stock jobbing. Jay Gould
was counted "king of the stock market" in his palmy days.
Tom Lawson, in his "Frenzied Finance," acquaints us
with the big stock operators of recent years. We all
remember Brown and Sully in the cotton market, and
Patten on the wheat pit, as masters in their line. The
speculation on exchange during 1929-30 is valued $8,000,
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
000,000. The collapse of the stock boom brought ruin
to thousands and shocked the business world.
C. W. Smith of England once said: "It is by such dead-
ly 'bull and bear' international gambling weapons that
these men have also cunningly and secretly obtained the
key to the financial, agricultural and commercial con-
quest of the world. I maintain I have ample justification
in denouncing international financial and commercial
gambling in 'options and futures' as standing out as the
greatest of all perils which the world has to contend with
in the future in the connection with preserving the rights
of the property, as well as upholding the liberty and
privileges of the people."
Mr. Coats, of Manchester, England, for many yearn
President of the Cooperative Manufacturers' Associa-
tion, representing 6,000,000 spindles, said, in an address
before the convention of the International Spinners and
the cotton producers of the United States, in Atlanta,
Ga., October 7-9, 1907: "Ninety per cent of the business
of the cotton exchange is evil, and unless the evil can be
eliminated-and the good retained, it had better be abol-
ished."
Congressman W. P. Hepburn, of Iowa, some years ago
said: "It is not at all probable that business men would
pay $75,000 or $100,000 for a seat on the New York
Stock Exchange if there was not a prospect of great re-
turns. Would dozens of brokers, who own these price-
less seats, maintain thousands of miles of private wires,
at a cost of thousands of dollars per month, if there was
not the sure-thing gamblers' profit in sight? Would
they buy seats of gold and wires of unknown cost, if they
were only buying and selling stocks in a legitimate man-
ner? All the race-track gambling in the world; all the
games of cards in the 'Tenderloin' and 'red light districts'
of the cities; all the games of chance at Monte Carlo
and the other famous gambling resorts of the world are
as drops in the bucket compared with the enormous
transactions of the stock exchanges of the United States."
The Saturday Evening Post, in an editorial, once said:
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
"First and last, a lot of money is made out of this gam-
bling. Otherwise it would not continue. Whether the
bull finally gets his money; or the bear, or simply the
broker, does not matter. Whoever gets it does not earn
a penny of it. He does not produce or transport or dis-
tribute a bushel of grain or a pound of cotton. He con-
tributes absolutely nothing to industry itself. He merely
sits aside and bets on it. So that the money that is made
is speculation, whatever the amount and whoever receives
it, is just so much scooped out of the wealth that the
country produces, with no return on the scooper's part."
William Jennings Bryan said, in a speech in New
York, in March, 1908: "Measured by the number of
suicides caused by the New York Exchanges, Monte Carlo
is an innocent pleasure resort by comparison, and the men
who operated the Louisiana Lottery never did a tithe of
harm that grain gamblers, cotton gamblers and stock
gamblers of New York do every day."
January the 12th, 1912, Mr. Andrew Carnegie was
testifying before the special committees of Congress, in-
vestigating the United States Steel Corporation and from
the official record we quote the following:
The Chairman. "I understand. Your shares were
in blocks of a thousand dollars apiece?"
Mr. Reed. "That was the Carnegie Co., of New Jer-
sey."
Mr. Carnegie. I made them as thousand-dollar
shares so as not to render them gambling instruments in
the stock exchange."
The Chairman. "I see. You put them at a thousand
dollars apiece to keep them out of the stock exchange?"
Mr. Carnegie. "As far as I could."
The Chairman. "Why did you want to keep them
out of the stock exchange?"
Mr. Carnegie. "Because I did not want to have part-
ners that would be tempted to go into speculation. I never
bought a share in my life in a stock exchange. I never
sold a share. I have been, you might say, a monomaniac
on the subject of speculation. I have never touched it.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
I have never bought a share of stock long nor sold it short
in my life."
The Chairman. "Before 'the Ways and Means Com-
mittee I find this statement right in line with what you
said: 'I want to say that I am no stock gambler, and I
never in my life associated with stock gamblers. * *
I think that the common stock gambler is one of the worst
citizens that a country can have. They are parasites,
feeding upon value and creating none."
Mr. Carnegie. Can you say a better thing than
that? (Laughter.) They are parasites, feeding on values
and creating none. You said something I had said should
be put in marble. I think that would be a splendid thing
to have in the New York Stock Exchange, in marble."
(Laughter.)
The Chairman. "I say amen to every word of that."
Mr. Carnegie. "Thank you, sir."
"Legitimate purchases of commodities and of stocks
and securities for investment have no connection whatever
with purchases of stocks or other securities or commodi-
ties on a margin for speculative or gambling purposes.
There is no moral difference between gambling at cards,
or in lotteries, or on the race track, and gambling in the
stock market. One method is just as pernicious to the
body politic as the other in kind, and in degree the evil
worked is far greater.
"It would seem that the Federal Government could at
least act by forbidding the use of the mails, telegraph
and telephone wires for mere gambling in stocks and
futures, just as it does in lottery transactions.
"The apologists of successful dishonesty always dis-
claim against any effort to punish it, on the ground that
any such effort will 'unsettle business.'
"The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to
secure honesty in business and in politics is well expressed
in brazen protests against any effort for the moral regen-
eration of the business world, on the ground that it is
unnatural, unwarranted and injurious, and that business
panic is the necessary penalty for such effort to secure
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
business honesty. The morality of such a plea is precisely
as great as if made on behalf of men caught in a gambling
establishment when the gambling establishment is raided
by the police."-President Roosevelt's message to Con-
gress, January 31, 1908.
Thomas W. Lawson says: "I began to' play the game
at twelve-I am now fifty-five, and I have tagged-and-
tilted chair at the game's center table-that is, I have
played 43 calendar years. I have bought and sold, traded
in and traded out, every prominent stock in all the Amer-
ican exchanges, London, Berlin and Paris, and in 1000
($100,000), 10,000 (1,000,000) and 50,000 (5,000,-
000) share lots. I have organized, capitalized, and
consolidated corporations, and have financed and man-
aged new ones. I have not in the past thirty-five years
been off the boards of corporations. In forty-three years'
active playing of the stock game, it has brought me an
averaged profit of more than a million a year, so I have
no grudge against it. That is why I have the nerve to
say, unqualifiedly, that Stock Exchange gambling is the
hell of it all. As a practical working device the purchas-
er of stocks on margin is as perfectly in the system's
hands as if they had that section of the American people
who buy and sell stocks (and they number millions)
bound hand and foot and gagged, for the going-through
of their clothes, with the profits limited only by the
amount of money their victims had about their person.
The legitimate business transacted by the Stock Ex-
changes is infinitesimal compared with its gambling bus-
iness. It is the most gigantic sneak-thief-bully-ragger
civilization has ever known. High cost of living is caused
by the Stock Exchange trick. If high-cost living continues
it will bring to the American people black, brutal revo-
lution."
Mr. Lawson estimated the eleven hundred seats on
the New York Exchange at a hundred million dollars;
the amount invested in the exchange business through-
out the country at a billion dollars; the commissions at
seventy odd million dollars; the amount borrowed on
66 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
these securities at two billion dollars; the interest charged
to customers, on money borrowed on stocks in excess of
the margins at a hundred million; average number of
shares sold 195,000,000, involving a turnover of $15,500,-
000,000, and of bonds of $800,000,000.
CHAPTER VIII
OUTLINE OF
COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE
1-Sources of supply: Countries where produced
A-Grain
a-Wheat
b-Corn
c-Rye
d-Rice
B-Fibers
a-Cotton
b-Hemp
c-Wool
d-Silk
C-Meat
a-Beef
b-Hogs
c-Sheep
d-Fish
D-Root Crops
a-Potatoes
Sweet
Irish
b-Turnips
c-Beets
E-Fruits
s-Apples
b-Peaches
c-Citrus
Oranges
Lemons
Limes
Grapefruit
d-Figs
e-Nuts
F-Vegetables: all truck products
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
G-Dairy products
a-Butter
b-Cheese
c-Milk
H-Poultry: all fowls and eggs
2-Agricultural Development
A-Ancient
B-Mediaeval
C-Modern
ZONES OF CONSUMPTION
1-Commercial centers
A-Commercial centers
B-Mining centers
C-Manufacturing centers
D-Miscellaneous causes of density of popula-
tion
2-Character of articles used in each center
COST OF DISTRIBUTION
1-Agencies determining the price of the various products
a-Supply
b-Demand
c-Cost of distribution
1-Transportation
1-Manner and distance
2-Wages of employees
2-Tariffs
d-Number and profits of intermediaries
e-Municipal markets
f-Carriage costs
1-Interests on money invested
2-Insurance
3-Storage
g-Labor conditions
h-War conditions
i-Supply of money
j-Speculation
1-Spot buying and selling
2-Future buying and selling
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
k-Farmer's Exchanges
1-Its functions
1-Mobilizes supplies and sells in quan-
tities
2-Reduces cost to a minimum
2-Fundamental characteristics
1-Limitation of profits to stockholders to
a fixed per cent
2-Division of all net profits among
patrons on basis of percentage
3-One member one vote
4-Control of transfer of stock
3-Fundamental essentials to successful opera-
tion
1-Available market-location
2-Guaranteed volume of business
3-Standardized products
4-Efficient management
4-Examples
1-California Fruit Growers' Exchange
2-East Shore of Virginia Exchange
3-Witcheta Texas Farmers' Cotton Ex-
change
4-Washington Framers' Wheat Exchange
5-Farmers' Cooperative Grain Elevators
6-Miscellaneous
5-Business and legal forms used
1-Commission methods
1-Securing cars
2-Grading
3-Marketing
4-Consigning
5-Settling with owners
1-Averaging shrinkages
2-Collecting damages
3-Securing charter
70 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
4-Making of by-laws
5-Making contracts for the sup-
ply of material to exchange
2-Financing
1-By ordinary banking methods
2-By cooperative banking methods
3-Functions of managers
1-To manage folks-be a leader
2-To master the business details
CHAPTER IX
SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURE
By F. L. MUSBACK, Professor of Soils, University of Wisconsin
In Better Crops; April 1930
Agriculture has undergone a more radical change in
the last 25 years than has any other important business.
While the total population of the United States has in-
creased from 76,000,000 in 1900 to 115,000,000 in 1925,
yet the farm population has remained practically station-
ary during this quarter century. But what may seem
quite startling is the fact that the production of our lead-
ing farm products has increased 35 to 40 per cent.
It is, of course, impossible to discuss at length all the
factors concerned in this record of efficiency on the part
of the farmer. In the first place about 20 per cent more
land has been brought under plow.
Power machinery is also a factor. It is not generally
known the 25 per cent of the horses and mules in the
United States have been replaced by power machinery
of one sort or another. This change released 18,000,000
acres which were required to furnish feed for these beasts
of burden. These acres may now be devoted to the pro-
duction of food-stuffs.
And a further consequence that cannot be overlooked
is that less man power is required on the farm. Let me
illustrate. Last year in the grain section of Illinois, three
men with a combine cut, threshed, and binned 745 bushels
of barley in the same time it required 12 men to shock,
thresh 840 bushels with the usual threshing outfits.
BIG BUSINESS
The livestock men also have made strides in effi-
ciency. The science of feeding has been adopted by the
hog raisers so that costs have been materially reduced.
Competent authorities estimate that efficiency in feeding
and care of swine has been the means of saving 100,000,-
000 bushels of corn annually. The dairy man, too
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
figures prominently in the picture. The U. S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture reports that through improved prac-
tices of feeding, breeding, and culling the low producers,
the production per cow has been increased at least 25
per cent.
There are some factors, however, which merit a some-
what further discussion. These are concerned with the
soil and the crops. We are especially concerned with the
soil. On it we must depend for food, raiment, and shelter.
A prosperous farm community cannot be built on a de-
pleted or worn-out soil. The wealth of any State "lies in
her soil and her strength in its intelligent development."
In no small measure is the efficient production of the
farmer due to the improvement of soil and crop practices.
Both State and Federal governments have been liberal
in supporting experiment stations to study soil and crop
problems. The Hatch Act passed in 1887 made it possi-
ble for each State to establish an institution of research
whose business is to assist in solving farm troubles.
It is interesting to note that in the past year about
$20,000,000 were spent for research work by State and
Federal authorities. This may seem a huge amount. It
must be remembered, however, that agriculture repre-
sents a capitalization of approximately $60,000,000,000.
Yes, agriculture is Big Business! The manufacturing
interests of the United States are also considered big
business, but the capitalized value represents only three-
quarters that of agriculture, and yet these vast manufac-
turing interests spend annually $168,000,000 for various
phases of research work. Experiment stations, I might
state, stand in exactly the same relation to farming as
do the research laboratories to manufacturing interests.
CHAPTER X
CORN HISTORY
By E. N. BRESSMAN, Plant Breeder, Oregon Agricultural College
Corn is one of the few important crops which origi-
nated in America. It is mentioned in tradition that the
Norsemen found corn on this continent in 1002, when
they touched this country. Of course the crop became
well known after the discovery of America in 1492 by
Columbus and after the first settlers came.
There are two places which appear to be the most
logical spots where corn was first grown. These are the
highlands of Peru and Southern Mexico. In 1914 an
explorer found a fossil ear of corn in Peru. This ear of
corn is without a doubt many thousands of years old.
It is of interest to know that it is very similar to the small
varieties that they are still growing in Peru, and rather
similar to our ordinary rice popcorn. One outstanding
authority thinks that corn originated in Mexico then.
moved north, reaching the Rio Grande about 700 A. D.,
and got as far north as Maine by the year 1000.
Of real support to the claim of Mexico as the first
home of corn is the finding of two native grasses which
are related to corn. These grasses are Teosinte and Gama
grass. Teosinte is very similar to corn. It has a tassel like
corn. The ear is enclosed in a husk but there is no cob.
The kernels are arranged end to end and number any-
where from 5 to 10. It is extremely easy to make crosses
between Teosinte and corn. This shows that there is a
close relationship between these crops.
It appears that the Indians grew at least three
types of corn known as sweet, flint, and gourdseed. Dent
corn, which is the corn of commerce and the ordinary
field corn, is not mentioned by any of our earliest writers.
It appears that this important type of corn was originated
by both intentional and accidental crossing of the flint
and the gourdseed types. Mr. H. A. Wallace, editor of
Wallace's Farmer, and the writer developed this theory.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
As late as 1858 Iowa farmers were still speaking of
yellow flint and gourdseed varieties and not about dent
corn, which is now their common corn. Neither the flint
or gourdseed varieties were satisfactory. The flint corn
was too hard for best results in feeding. On the other
hand, the gourdseed corn was too soft and light to have
much feeding value. One grower stated that it took
about a fourth more of gourdseed corn to have the same
feeding value as flint corn. As late as 1825 it was com-
mon to mix the flint and gourdseed varieties. One writer
at this time says, "So prevalent are mixures that I have
never examined a field of corn which did not exhibit
evident traces of all the corn in general use for field
planting, with many others that are not used for this
purpose."
The writer is of the opinion that the long shoe-peggy
type of kernels that we commonly find in our dent or
field corn is due to the gourdseed present. Many tests
have shown that these long, shoe-peggy kernels are of
poor yielding ability. It is of interest to know that by
inbreeding corn for several generations is is possible to
obtain from dent varieties a pure flint similar to that flint
grown by our earliest settlers. On the other hand, it is
not easy to get out a pure gourdseed type by inbreeding,
because they are so extremely late and susceptible to
disease.
All of this will show that our field corn today is in a
very mixed condition and anything but pure. It is also
true that this mixed condition has much to do with the
yielding ability of our corn. Selection, therefore, in some
cases may be of no value, as it may tend to concentrate
some of the weaknesses of corn which are ordinarily
covered up by its mixed or hybrid condition.
Corn quickly became the most important crop in this
country. In 1609 it is stated that there were 30 acres
planted. About 40 years later there were 600 bushels
of corn exported and almost every year afterwards there
has been an exportable surplus of corn. In 1800 there
were more than 2,000,000 bushels of corn exported, show-
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
ing the rapid increase in the corn acreage.
In 1839 the leading corn states were Tennessee and
Kentucky, and the entire crop of the United States was
less than the crop in Iowa at this time. Twenty years
later or in 1859 the corn growing area moved to the west
and north. Illinois and Ohio became the leading corn
states at this time. Ten years ago or in 1919 the corn area
was still moving north and west. One authority states
that in the 50-year period from 1849 to 1899 the center
of corn production moved westward nearly 500 miles but
northward only 5 miles, showing that the trend was to thi
west at that time.
From 1900 to the present date, the movement ha
been a little faster toward the north, because of th
development of early varieties of corn, and the corn grov
ing area has been spreading toward Minnesota, Nori
and South Dakota, and Montana.
At this time corn was spreading over much of the oid
world. It did not spread with the same rapidity, however,
that it did in this country and in no place did it become the
dominating crop as it has here. As early as the 16th
century, however, corn was being grown in practically
the entire temperate and subtropical regions of the world
CHAPTER XI
JESUS THE COUNTRYMAN
By HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
"And He Took His Disciples Into the Garden"
The two dominant characters in the New Testament,
Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus, stand in clear con-
trast in one regard-Paul was a city man, and Jesus be-
longed to the country.
Born in the city of Tarsus and educated in the city of
Jerusalem, Paul reveals in his habits of work and thought
his thoroughly citified disposition. His practical strategy
as a missionary centered in cities. He stalked across the
the Roman Empire founding churches in the great centers
of population, and Ephesus, Philippi, Athens, Corinth,
Rome were the familiar objects of his campaigns. More-
over, his language never is fragrant with the similes and
metaphors of country life, but rather the games of the
city amphitheaters-races and boxing bouts-furnish his
typical illustrations of religion.
How different is the atmosphere of Jesus! He sprang
from the countryside, loved it, lived in it, thought in terms
of it, and so little accustomed himself to the town that
during his last week he went out every night from Jeru-
salem to the little suburb of Bethany as though he wished
to escape the city's tumult.
It is true in Palestine today that nothing under a roof
matters much and that everything out-of-doors matters
a great deal. The same situation must have held good in
Jesus' time. Then as now, the out-of-doors itself, with
its highly diversified scenery was the real home of the
people. In particular, the country was the open book
in which, as though on raised print, one could read the
history of the past.
This influence of the out-of-doors on the mind of
Jesus must have begun in Nazareth. The famous view
from the hilltop behind the town surely held, many a
long hour, the fascinated gaze of the growing boy. To
the southward the great plain of Esdraelon lay before
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
his eye, the pathway of marching troops from the old days
when Thutmose III of Egypt made seventeen expeditions
into Palestine. Across the plain ran the long ridge of
Carmel with the pass of Megiddo through which invad-
ers had passed so often that even in new testament times
the word Armageddon already had become the symbol
of a crucial fight.
Turning his eyes eastward, Jesus looked over Mount
Gilboa, where Saul fell, the Jordan valley and the hills
of Gilead, and turning northward he could see the snow-
capped crest of Mount Hermon almost sixty miles away.
Ranging westward, he watched the ridge of Carmen run
out into the Mediterranean where, eighteen miles toward
the sunset, at the curved beach of Acre the shining
scimiter of the surf cut into the land. And on clear
days he could see out on the Mediterranean some
Quinquerme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
That view is still one of the most beautiful and sug-
gestive that can be imagined. I saw it once on a lovely
day in spring. The Arabs were tilling their fields, still
using one-handled plows of the sort that Jesus the car-
penter made. The children were playing in the fragrant
furrows. On every side the spring flowers were glori-
ous. The far-flung view carried the eye over a spacious
and diversified landscape full of historic suggestiveness.
The indescribable beauty of Palestine's changing hues
of light and shade played over all. It was Jesus' world,
out-of-doors, with nature, husbandmen, children, flowers
and God.
All of the Master's life is thus associated with the
open country, and the thoughts and figures of speech
which the out-of-doors inspires in a sensitive spirit are his
characteristic media of expression. Even his temptation
in the wilderness, at the beginning of his ministry, has a
new meaning when one has seen the wilderness. Go
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
out eastward from Jerusalem across the Kedron valley,
and turning the corner of the Mount of Olives you stand
face to face with unspeakable desolation. A kind of
lunar landscape confronts you with the earth tumbling
swiftly down amid wildly broken undulations so that in
fourteen miles you drop from 2,500 feet above sea level
to nearly 1,300 feet below and land on the shores of
the Dead Sea.
No one could think at first of calling this grim wilder-
ness beautiful ,yet it is so impressively fascinating that,
returning to Palestine, I should wish to see it first of all. I
have watched hyenas prowling there, and at night have
heard the jackals up from the desert on their nocturnal
scavenging under the very walls of Jerusalem. A few
years ago two students tried to leave the beaten path and
cross this wilderness but soon, lost in its mad grotesque-
ness, one died and was eaten in a jackal's den and the
other was carried unconscious to Jerusalem by a band of
Bedouins.
Yet, wild and terrific as this wilderness is, it is in a
sense beautiful. The play of color over it is endlessly
fascinating. During the Great War I met an American
soldier in France who hated the sight of green country
and wanted to get back to his loved Arizona desert where
there were, he said, real colors, like purples and reds.
That man would delight in the Judean wilderness. All
the hues of the rainbow play over it with the changing
sun. In its total effect terror and loveliness, grimness
and beauty combine. It was to this out-of-doors that
Jesus retreated at the beginning of his ministry to face
his temptation and work out the principles of his life. I
often wonder if he ever could have reached the same
spacious decisions in a city room.
When he was driven from Nazareth by his too-ortho-
dox fellow townsmen he chose the Sea of Galilee as the
center of his active ministry. Here, also, nature has ac-
chieved uniqueness. This lovely lake, thirteen miles long
and at its broadest seven miles in width, lies 682 feet
below sea level. The Jordan pours down from the snows
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
of Mount Hermon, which, a few miles north of the lake
towers over 9,000 feet above the sea. Even yet the lake
is beautiful. Its shores ascend on every side into hills
which in spring are so thick with flowers one cannot
walk without crushing them at every footfall. Still sun-
rise and sunset are as Jesus saw them and moonlight on
the sleeping waters must create a scene that he would
recognize today.
Josephus, however, who was military governor of
Galilee a short generation after Jesus walked its shores,
has left a picture in which the lake is dressed in a natural
beauty which now has gone. The climate was congenial,
Josephus tells us, to all kinds of trees, and these shores
which now are barren were then overgrown with wal-
nuts, palm trees, figs and olives. The hills, moreover,
were rich in wheat. The sea was thick with sails and its
shores were lined with thriving villages.
Wherever one follows Jesus, therefore, from his
home in Nazareth through the dour wilderness of his
early struggle to the lake around which his ministry cen-
ters, one finds an out-of-doors setting.
Indeed, when opposition so pressed upon his ministry
around the Sea of Galilee that he went for relief to
"the border of Tyre and Sidon," he simply passed across
Galilee to the most gloriously fruitful part of Palestine-
the coastal plain along the Mediterranean. Today one's
eye looks from the heights above Sidon over plantations
of orange and lemon trees, palm, banana, fig, apricot and
olive trees. Here Jesus doubtless saw many human sights
from which he drew his ethical conclusions-the far cit-
ies, perhaps, to which Jewish prodigals went to waste
their substance in riotous living. But he must have loved
the country. He always did that and his teaching is full
of rural observations.
His delight in flowers, for example, is a natural re-
sponse to the loveliest sight in Palestine. After the spring
rains have come the flowers flame out wherever soil
enough is present to sustain them. Even the stony ridge
of Judea becomes a great rock garden. Galilee, however,
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
surpasses all the rest of Palestine in the richness and vari-
ety of its floral display. A botanist from California has
said that nowhere else in the world that he knows of do
so many different kinds of wild flowers grow within so
small an area. Anemone, Poppy, cyclamen, phlox, ran-
unculus, lupine, oleander-the hills are resplendent with
them and the Master was literally right: Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
In homelier fashion the influence of the out-of-doors
is everywhere reflected in the metaphors and similes
with which Jesus clothed his thought. Jesus was not
primarily a philosopher; he was a poet. He never said
anything in abstract terms; he always saw his truths in
pictures, bodied them forth in symbols or embroidered
them into parables. And these symbolic sayings and
folk-way stories drew their picturesque expression from
two main sources, either household experiences-like
sewing patches on old garments, putting new wine in
old bottles, building houses on poor foundations, cele-
brating a marriage feast-or else nature and the out-of
doors.
What an appreciative eye he must have had for the
details of country life! The signs of changing weather
in the evening sky, the husbandman pruning in the vine-
yard, the farmer separating tares from wheat, the shep-
herd guarding his charges from the wolves, grass for
household burning, "which today is, and tomorrow is cast
into the oven," how many such reminiscences of country
scenes are discoverable in the few paragraphs of Jesus'
sayings that remain to us!
Is not this one secret of the abiding fascination of
Jesus' words? Had he been a city man his language
would have been inevitably colored by the transient,
artificial circumstances of the ancient towns. Not one
expression, however, from city life that I can recall
enters into the vocabulary of Jesus. Even the Herodian
temple, pride of the Judeans, did not too much impress
him. When his disciples said, "Behold, what manner of
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
stones and what manner of buildings!" he answered,
"There shall not be left here one stone upon another."
Out in the country, however, he was at home. Cities,
"set on a hill," as one sees them yet at a distance, shining
in the declining sun, he could appreciate but for himself
when he wanted refreshment he went away, sometimes
alone, sometimes accompanied by friends, into remote,
quiet places.
Indeed, it is notable that two of the most crucial deci-
sions of his life were associated with natural beauty.
At Caesarea Philippi, under the brow of Mount Hermon,
where springs pour out in the headwaters of the Jordon,
he first was saluted as the Christ. It is still a glorious
spot and in those days, when a temple to Pan and another
to Caesar Augustus stood there, it must have been a place
of surpassing loveliness. To such a natural retreat the
Master took his disciples to prepare them for the hard
days ahead in Jerusalem.
Last of all when he had to make his final, fatal deci-
sion about the cross he went with his disciples to a gar-
den. We are told that Judas knew where to find him,
because he habitually frequented this retreat. Outside
the city wall it was, across the Kedron, up the Mount of
Olives, where he could feel the shelter of the trees and
see the city while not being of it. Here he was at home
with nature. In her, like Wordsworth, he felt a presence
that disturbed him with the joy of elevated thoughts.
So that last night he retired to the out-of-dooors for his
final inspiration. From under those trees he went to the
Tree.
CHAPTER XII
OBSERVATIONS ON COMPARATIVE
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
By T. J. BROOKS, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture
WHY STUDY PSYCHOLOGY?
Those who cannot become interested in non-exact
sciences are necessarily limited in their investigations.
One of the objections raised to the study of psychology
and philosophy is that neither has ever been reduced to
an exact science; the most fundamental principles of
both are yet open to controversy by the most learned.
Were we to study nothing until all things concerning
it were known and agreed upon, there would be no ad-
vance in any science. It is the old idea of the over-cau-
tious mother who forbade her boys going into the water
until they could swim. There are a few subjects upon
which even the most learned are agreed, even on the most
fundamental principles.
In the physical sciences we have those who accept
the hypothesis of the ether and those who do not; those
who hold to the theory of absolute space and those who
do not; those who stand for the theory of universal cau-
sation, distinct from matter, and those who do not; in
cosmogony, those who support Laplace's nebular hypo-
thesis, Lockyer's meteoric hypothesis, Chamberlin's
planetesimal hypothesis, Einstein's hypothesis not to
mention the Koreshan hypothesis-; but this disagree-
ment does not prevent mathematicians from calculating
eclipses at any time in the future. What matter is has
never been determined, but we study matter or have no
science. We do not know what electricity is, but we
have a very useful science of electricity. We have not
yet discovered gravity, but Sir Isaac Newton discovered
the law of gravitation. No one knows what life is, but
that does not hinder us from learning much about it.
Mind understands not itself, but the study of mind en-
grosses more and more great thinkers and students of
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
human affairs. We do not understand spirit, we know
nothing scientifically about immortality, but that is no
excuse for not studying metaphysics, philosophy, theol-
ogy or religions. We do not understand God, but that
is not the slightest plea for thinking not on things tran-
scendant, divine, supernatural.
No one reason actuates every one for studying any
subject. One text book author says that we study psy-
chology "To increase our knowledge of human nature
that we may control ourselves and influence others."
Neither of these ideas prompted me to study the subject,
nor to pursue the study after having commenced it. My
only incentive was that the subject interested me-cur-
iosity started me and mental hunger for more kept me at
it. It has a fascination for me. What actuates most
people to read stories? As a rule there is neither mental
nor financial profit in the incentive-purely for the en-
tertainment, the human interest of the romance. I get
more entertainment out of the study of psychology than
I do from the "best seller" of the novels. The writing
of this article is prompted by a study of national char-
acteristics as revealed by history and by observations
in ten European countries and the United States.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCE
There is no study of man, relative to his behavior,
that is not psychological. Psychology has been assigned
different scopes during the centuries since it was first
presented as a distinct branch of study. At first it was
metaphysics, or the science of the soul. Questions were
discussed as to the nature of the soul: from whence
does it come? Where does it go? What is its relation
to the body? This was the theme of psychology from the
time of Aristotle to the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
The second stage of development in the development
of this science was a study of consciousness. Here it
was sought to confine psychology to that of human ex-
perience-problems of consciousness.
The third stage of progress in this study was termed
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
human behavior. Instead of rigid introspection study
was turned to that of actions. Psychology is not the only
science that deals with conduct. Ethics treats of right
and wrong, good and bad, cultural and uncultural con-
duct. Standards of social conduct vary with the psychol-
ogy of the age, the country, and the civilization of a peo-
ple.
The attitude of mind of social classes and of nations,
and the reasons therefore, constitute the theme of this
article.
Fundamentally the two great irreconcilable divisions
are the mechanistic and the purposive theories. All
other divisions come under one or the other or both of
these superordinate divisions. These two classifications
have little to do with social phases of psychology. The
discussion would be the same whether we accept the one
or the other as a starting point.
PROVINCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
There is the psychology of the age, of race, of nation,
of occupation, of community. We all absorb more or
less the psychology of our environment. Unconsciously
our thoughts are moulded by our associations, by the
literature we read and by the things we do.
Tradition and modes of thought are handed down
from generation to another and are slow to change in
countries where the population is static, where little mi-
gration takes place. For this reason many countries
of the Old World long ago fossilized. Such is the case
in China and India. A decided tendency as to this is
shown in many European countries.
The psychology of the Jew is due to his age-long
provincial life. Persecution has kept him loyal to his
tribal traditions and engendered a resentment toward
amalgamation with any other people. The ten tribes of
Israel lost their sense of tribal solidarity and with it lost
their identity.
The orthodox Jew as we know him has distinct reli-
gion; a religion that is practical and relates to life in this
world with little to say about the next. Of the future life
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
in their church services or religious views concerning
the resurrection they have little to say. "One world at a
time" is not a Jewish slogan but it very well expresses his
practical-minded views.
There are provincial views on the subject of sex. The
modern woman in America is different from the woman
of any other country. It is due to her political and eco-
nomic status in the United States. In no country nor in
any age of history has woman occupied the favored posi-
tion that she occupies in this country.
Social conscience changes as the ages roll, the tides
of human advancement come and go, the standards of
civilization rise and fall. Ethics, ideals, educational
systems, religious, economic conditions, governments
come upon the stage of human action and leave their
imprints on the sands of time. The psychology of a peo-
ple is the fabric woven by these flying shuttles of human
life.
Europe is obsessed with formalities: To a great de-
gree this is true of official South America. It is a hold-
over from the ancient monarchies. A great ado stirred
aristocracy after the world war when thrones were
tossed into the junk heap and royalty was abased. The
spectacle of a scion of royalty in overalls doing a useful
job of work was so dreadful, so awful that the pampered
autocrats of the purple thought the end of the world
should come to prevent the humiliation and the disgrace
coming to the chosen favorites of fate. And when some
of those who had been instrumental in bringing about
this state of affairs were placed in high position to rule
and meet terms to the erstwhile rulers the resentment
was unspeakable-the same as had been the oppressed
before the revolution. Revenge did its work-the fruits
of Nemesis.
Had a prophet told princes and princesses, generals
and admirals, that the day of retribution was at hand and
admirals, that the day of retribution was at hand and
they would be compelled to earn their bread as porters,
peddlers, waiters, waitresses, bootblacks and scavengers,
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
imagination can hardly picture the scorn with which it
would have been received. Yet such things happened
throughout the Continent.
Did the war destroy the oligarchic doctrine? No, it
merely jarred it. The royalist beggar was still a royalist
in his heart. The liberated Russian peasant did not
know what to do with his liberty. He had imagined that
it was a sort of miraculous Santa Clause. His peasant
mind before the revolution was still a peasant mind
allured and bewildered. The Prussian peasant realized
that he had been made the victim of a useless war, but he
still looked up to the ruling class-even though he hated
it. His turning from a monarchy to a republic was in
form only-just as had been the case in France after
the French revolution. Counts and royal titles were not
abolished. The psychology of caste still held them in
thrall. England did not touch her royalty. She didn't
even give it a thought.
CASTES
America has been blessed by never having permitted
titles of nobility to be conferred upon anyone for any
reason. The aristocracy that went with the ownership
of slaves generated a class-conscious element in the so-
ciety of the South. Since the civil war there has grown
up an aristocracy of wealth that partakes of very nearly
the same characteristics.
The average citizen of the United States cares so little
for the red tape court etiquette that he is often very dis-
gusting to the people of other lands when traveling in
foreign countries. In some instances there is shown a
boorish contempt for the common rules of politeness and
social decorum that marks the offender as beneath the
barbarian. Such extremely uncultured conduct is un-
pardonable. There is also no excuse to be made for the
foppish, supercilious snobbery among the self-appointed
parasites of bankrupt royalty.
There is a certain kind of "I am holier than thou"
aristocracy in educational circles. It comes from educat-
ed egotists. Institutions of learning are full of them.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
This class easily convinces itself that the rest of the
country exits solely for it. The demands made upon
lawmakers for favors are made in as good faith as ever
prompted the calls for money by the monarchies of old.
There is need for bountiful support but there should
always be a relationship between the needs and the abil-
ity to supply ascertained before arriving at a conclusion.
All aristocracies are prone to look upon the "The Man
With The Hoe" as a sort of pitiable but necessary thing.
Aristocracy will never forego a luxury, much less a neces-
sity, to prevent there being a dependent and under class.
No country in the world at any age of history was
ever entirely free from class distinctions, which proves
that the desire for discrimination in society is based on
an inherent trait. The most hide-bound class distinc-
tions exist in India. The Braham is a Braham still, no
matter his fate. The Rajput is a Rajput still, no matter
his place or station economically. Even British rule has
not broken down the class distinctions of India: it has
merely disturbed it.
Militarism breeds class distinction spontaneously.
Military schools are rife with it. However it was not mili-
tarism that brought about the class divergencies in In-
dia; the gradations were economic, political and reli-
gious, and through centuries in which there has been
little intermarrying of members of one class with mem-
bers of another class the distinctions have become hered-
itary in large measure-which presents a study in hered-
ity.
It was thought by many that after the scions of roy-
alty and common laborers and peasants had "drunk
from the same canteen," had fought together "shoulder
to shoulder" in the trenches in Flanders field, there
would ever thereafter be a feeling of comradeship be-
tween them that would break down the social barriers
between the classes. But such was not the case. Each
held within himself the same ideas of difference and
each bethought himself after the war was over as before.
The rooting out of class distinctions is a gradual process
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
and it must be aided by the government itself if it is ever
done. During the early days of this republic there was
a more universal democracy of citizenship than at any
other time or place in all history. A cleavage was begun
with the spread of negro slavery. This brought about
a southern aristocracy that nothing short of a civil war
was able to halt in its process of cleaving the nation in
twain economically, socially and politically. Race pre-
judice is stronger here than in any European country, for
the reason that no European country has ever had the
experience that the southern states have had.
The way a people think and act reflects their psycho-
logy. National psychology is the composite thought and
action of a nation. Gradually there grows up a general
characteristic in each nation. Some of these are mani-
fest in one direction and some in another. A few out-
standing examples are readily recognized. The English-
man and the Scotchman have profound respect for those
in authority. This is also true of the French but in a
different sense. The Frenchman is easy to change his
mind toward an official, while the Englishman and the
Scotchman are slow to change and not so intense in their
condemnation when they do change. Neither the Irish
nor the American (United States) has any special rever-
ence for authority or those in authority. The absence
of any official recognition of classes in the United States
very effectively hinders the growth of such ideas as go
with caste and privilege. The long struggle of Ireland
with the rule of England has engendered among the
Irish a resentment for authority.
The deference paid to government and to official-
dom by the English and Scotch makes for stability of
government. It is indeed a shelter in time of storm.
But it is a cloak of defense for miscreant officials. In
refutation of this it might be pointed out that court jus-
tice is much more swift and sure in England, which is
true, but court justice and the justice that is meted out to
politicians by the public at the polls are different. The
latter is the one to which I refer in saying that lack of
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
deference to those in authority makes for quick riddance
of corrupt officials. The French are indulgent with offi-
cials on questions of morals but intolerant and vengeful
if the offense is against the State. This is a key to anoth-
er phase of French psychology.
In the United States there is a positive aversion to
conservatism while in nearly all of the rest of the world
there has been an aversion to radicalism-especially in
social customs. After the World War, there was one
notable exception in the case of Russia. Her radicalism
was more of a fanaticism than a progressive radicalism.
The politics of different countries reflects the atti-
tude of the public toward governmental affairs. We
have political parties in the United States, and seldom
can a man be elected that is not the nominee of some
political party. England has political parties but they
represent definite classes as well as different schools
of thought. No party or candidate would dare to openly
espouse the cause of aristocracy in this country as in
England. In France the alignment of parties is more
after the English but with less organized party domina-
tion-it is more of a race between individuals. Personal
prestige goes further there than party sanction. They
have the three main divisions: aristocrats, including the
titled nobility as in England, Clericals, which is Catholic,
and the plebians, represented in most part at present by
the socialists. The absence of royalty and caste in our
politics presents a marked advantage in the operations of
government in a republic. We have no clerical party
as in France. No party or candidate would dare to an-
nounce as representing the organized clerical forces of
the country. We do have the race question as a disturb-
ing element in our political campaigns and in legisla-
tive halls. European governments have no race question
for the reason that none have had the negro or other
alien races in sufficient numbers to create a problem.
The disturbances in Russia due to the friction between
the citizen Russians and the Jews was more religious
than racial. The Jews were not required to bear arms, be-
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
fore the world war, and were never acknowledged 'as
citizens of monarchial Russia.
Take the political psychology of China and note the
anomaly. What other nation would tolerate the meddl-
ing of foreign nations in its internal affairs as has China
since her close relationship with European civilization.
Now that there is a growing restlessness on her part,
under this long-tolerated practice, there is much um-
brage feigned by the infringing nations.
"The slumbering anti-Manchu feeling flared up anew
and popular resentment grew strong against the Man-
chus who, foreigners themselves, were selling China
piecemeal to other foreigners in return for assistance in
holding their Throne in China.
"So rapid was the series of 'forced sales' that within
three years after the war with Japan there was not left
to China on its whole 3,000 miles of coast a single worth-
while harbor in which it could assemble its own vessels
without foreign consent."-Christian Advocate.
SOCIAL CUSTOMS
Sex proprieties mark the status of social vogue. These
vary with countries and with ages of history. These var-
iations are not accidental. Causes not always apparent
determine the standards set. The standard for each sex
is set by the opposite sex. When either breaks over
there is retribution proportionate to the intolerance of
the opposite sex.
Social customs growing out of sex psychology in
different countries and in different ages illustrate the
relative position of the sexes in the social scale. This
position is the result of economic, political, religious and
educational forces. The Mohammedan believes in wo-
men being veiled when in public. Back of this custom
are age-lasting ideas concerning the relative parts the
sexes are to play in human life. In the days of Shakes-
peare the women characters had to be acted by men!
The custom of the men and women separating at the door
of the church and each going in separately held sway
in the United States until some forty years ago. It is still
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
the custom in Ashanti. Polygamy is still practiced among
wild races as it was in the early days of the Jews. But
in these same countries the men and women dance separ-
ately and eat separately at public feasts.
Primitive peoples are not so profligate and immoral
in their sex relations as the more highly civilized. This
has been found among all races and in all parts of the
world. Not that they are any more reserved or refined
by nature, but the brutal intolerance of the male of any
latitude assumed by his spouse and the condign punish-
ment meted out to the offender held all feminine mem-
bers of the tribe in awe.
Parental espionage is more strict in Germany than
elsewhere. There is less opprobrium to being born out
of wedlock in Latin and Slavic countries than in other
Caucasian countries.
Queer indeed is the social code of Cathay. The wife
is the vassal of the husband. It is not considered improp-
er for a husband to hire out his wife to be the mistress
of a man of equal or higher rank. This is not done so
frequently but it is not illegal or unethical. Strict fidelity
must be observed by the wife if the husband demands it,
or condign punishment is due. Desertion is not the crime
in the Orient that it is in Caucausian countries. This
fact was the basis for the drama of "Madam Butterfly."
The new woman is disturbing China-a hitherto unknown
problem of the Orient. China's feminine intellectuals are
assuming the same prerogatives that women assume in
Europe and America.
PSYCHOLOGY OF YOUTH
The emancipation of the feminine, which has been
brought about by the struggles of men and women, has
led to a changed psychology of youth. The challenge to
custom has spread to all members of the household.
What will the children of the present generation say to
their children? Parental discipline is no longer as our
parents and grandparents knew it. Millions of children
are disciplining their parents. Impetuous youth demands
the privilege of running amuck. They prefer experienc-
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
ing retribution to being told about it. Are we to test the
theory of anarchism in the home and then in the nation?
SPORT PSYCHOLOGY
The psychology of Rome was such that gladiatorial
combats in the Coliseum drew larger crowds than have
ever gathered on any other occasion. When the victor
paused and looked toward the vast throng he awaited
the verdict as to whether he was to spare the life of his
antagonist or slay him-usually it was "thumbs down"
which meant to slay. This brutal amusement went on
through the reign of different kings or emperors, for
three hundred years. Finally one Telemachus dared to
stake his life on ending these brutal contests. Alone he
stepped between the gladiators, and before the hundred
thousand spectators he challenged them to cease shed-
ding each other's blood for the amusement of the rabble.
"And then a shower of stones that brused him to death,
And then once more a silence of bated breath."
The slaughter went on: Apparently another fool had
thrown away his life. But-
"His deed became a clarion that woke a world!
For, while the frantic rabble in half-amaze
Stared at him dead, through all the nobler hearts
In that vast Oval ran a shudder or shame.
"The Baths, the Forum gabbled of his death
And preachers lingered over his dying words,
Which would not die but echoed on to reach
Honorius, till he heard them and decreed
That Rome no more should wallow in this old lust,
Dark with the blood of men who murdered men."
-Tennyson.
Which shows that behind all brutal sports there is a
still, small voice of disapproval that needs only to be
aroused to outlaw it. A Spanish bull fight would have
been a tame affair indeed, a football game a bore and a
baseball game intolerable to these barbaic Romans. No
substitutes were offered in the Coliseum to entertain the
amusement-seeking public. They preferred the game of
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
war to the tame pursuits of peace. But finally the spell
broke and Rome lost its taste for blood.
Judging by the crowds that it attracts the favorite
American sport is prizefighting. No other entertain-
ment draws such crowds at such high-priced admission
fares. Thousands paid more to see the Dempsey-Tunney
fight than they paid to relieve the suffering of 600,000
victims of the great Mississippi flood, which happened
the same year.
Next in point of danger and attractiveness is the game
of football. We are interested to a far less degree in
intellectual combats. A debate between two candidates
for president would draw a big crowd-because of the
political importance of the candidates. Such things are
out of vogue. Lectures by the most scholarly and capable
are shunned by more people than seek them.
MOB PSYCHOLOGY
"Mob Psychology" is a term used to express the cor-
posite "mental atmosphere" of the crowd when under the
spell of high enthusiasm or inordinate excitement. In
common parlance a mob is a lawless, disorderly crowd
bent on mischief. However mob psychology has a wider
and more liberal significance. It has its good as well
as bad uses. Without mob psychology lynchings would
not occur. It is also true that without mob psychology
armies would fail on the battlefield, rallies and proces-
sions would lose their attractions and orators would lose
their appeal.
A boy in a "gang" will do things he would not do if
alone, and which his conscience does not approve.
Gatherings of irresponsible youngsters often taken vio-
lent courses of action; the same is true of adults when
swayed by passion against a criminal.
The linking together of all peoples by means of elec-
tric communication has two opposite effects: it tends to
make of the world a mob and it tends to supplant poise
and self-possession for mob action. The daily breath-
ings of the same thoughts by the multitude causes the
stirring of the same sentiments and passions in the re-
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS 95
motest parts of the world. The radio is now addressing
the inhabitants of the earth on every conceivable subject.
The movies are speeding fashion's fads and fancies, so-
cal foibles and faults to the remotest realm.
There is the compensating tendency of stabilization,
as the larger the group to be brought under a spell of
mob action the more difficult the task. There is greater
balance and poise in the whole human race than in the
individual, the community, or the nation. Universal dis-
semination of knowledge makes for sanity and security.
CHAPTER XIII
THE AMERICAN WOMAN AT WORK
By JAMES J. DAVIS, Secretary of Labor
Nations Business for November, 1928
This country has a customer with upwards of six bil-
lion dollars a year to spend. Even in a country now
accustomed to think in billions where once a million
dazzled it, six billion dollars is still a tidy sum of money.
This customer is a composite of the nearly nine millions
of American women and girls who are gainfully em-
ployed.*
*The census of 1920 showed 8,549,511 women and
girls at work. Since then we have added easily ten mil-
lion persons to our population. It is conservative to place
at fully nine millions the number of girls and women
now taking part in our workaday world.
To sit here in the chair of the Secretary of Labor and
watch the countless and ceaseless activities, struggles
and achievements of these millions of feminine workers
is to marvel at one of the remarkable revolutions in hu-
man existence. Not that this social overturn is revolu-
tionary in its novelty, but rather in the sweep of its ex-
tent.
WOMEN'S WORK NEVER DONE
When did woman ever escape her share, and a heavy
share, of toil in the human family? From the days of
Adam she has been the household drudge, even the work-
er by her husband's side in the fields. In the dark days
of slavery men followed the plow while the women often
were harnessed in front of it.
The wives of our Pilgrim forefathers were the spin-
ners and weavers, the makers of clothing for their men
and their children and themselves, not to speak of what
they did every day as family cooks, laundresses and
housekeepers. To her children the Pilgrim mother was
school teacher, to her family the nurse and attending
physician.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
I well remember what a woman's work was in the
little Welsh town where I was born and spent my early
childhood. There the men too were far from being
shirkers. Workers in mine or iron mill, they knew long
hours of the heaviest and most dangerous toil. But so did
their wives know what it was to work.
BUDGETED HER TIME
Every day was set aside for some particular house-
hold duty. On Monday it was the family wash, and the
family was usually a large one. The next day was set
apart for the ironing. Every wife had her own baking
to do, and one day of that was no more than enough for
a family of hardy eaters. Whatever the other duties to
be attended to, the house had at all times to be kept
scrupulously neat, and a single day hardly sufficed for
the scrubbing and dusting that had to be done.
In the thick of all this routine toil, the children every
morning had to be dressed for school and supplied with
a lunch. In the evening the homecoming father needed
his care. The miner returned from the pits heavily coat-
ed with coal dust and grime, and a tub was ever at his
service for the bath to make him fit company for his
family. The only respite his wife ever knew from these
week-long labors was the hour or two of rest she got
in her little pew at the village church. Toil, toil, toil-
I rarely saw my mother at anything else throughout my
boyhood.
Today in America some of us still think, with a mea-
sure of pity, of the woman or girl "obliged to work for a
living," as if it were some new form of slavery. It is rather
emancipation from an old one. We still think of this
widespread movement of married women and mothers
into industry and business, and of girls rushing from
home to the office or factory, as something new. It is
old. Lucy Larcom, who attained an honored and perm-
anent position among American poets, worked as a girl
in the textile mills of Lowell, and has left lively accounts
of the happy times and associations she enjoyed there
AGRICULTURE AND RELATED SUBJECTS
with other girls of education and family backgrounds
who worked by her side at the looms.
They even published a literary periodical, in which
many a sparkling bit from Lucy Larcom appeared.
That was in 1840, but twenty years before that time
the census showed women to be employed in pursuits
as odd as the making of anchors, beer, barrels, boats,
beds, boots and shoes, coaches, cigars, cordage and
twine, chairs, clocks, carts, furniture, gunpowder, gun
stocks, fur and wool hats, hardware, lumber, machinery,
millstones, rope, saddles, stoves, shovels, tinware, tobac-
co and snuff, whips.
The World War, which took four million of our men
into the camps or to the battlefields, created a great scar-
city of labor and drew women into occupations long
thought beyond their endurance or skill. We saw them
pictured in the places of men as mechanics in work such
as the care and repair of locomotives, in the building
trades, in the painting of ships.
Much of this was emergency work, and the women
were willing to relinquish the heavier jobs when the men
returned to claim them. In the skilled occupations the
women have stuck, and these they continue to invade
in steadily increasing numbers. You find them operating
lathes in machine-shops. They work beside men, and at
machines of the same type, in such precision work as
the making of screws for aeroplanes.
You find them making tools, loading shells in a gov-
ernment arsenal, or engaged in cabinet-work in a furn-
iture factory. For now that automatic and labor-saving
machinery is coming into ever wider use in all our indus-
tries and the back-breaking tasks are disappearing,
woman's ancient handicap of physical disability is also
disappearing. Ever new industrial pursuits are opening
to her, and she seizes every opportunity.
WOMEN ARE MEN'S EQUALS
Women now can perform nearly any work that a
man can do. They not simply are able to do such work,
they actually are at it. General appreciation of this fact
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