BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1891 5^.'..4.aH4A- .a,Pvv<^i.ai«5-. Cornell University Library HD1484 .A36 Farmina corporations, by,, Wj'fJi'.L.lfilffl'^*' olin 3 1924 030 054 526 Cornell University Jbrary The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030054526 FARMING OORPOEATIONS BY WILBUE ALDRICH NEW YOEK W. ALDEICH & 00. 120 Broadway 1892 "^.^.^'.^..-'^—.1 . ■> o^/ LIBRA... CorYBigHT, 189 ^ Bt WILBUR ALDRICH. Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York TO MY FATHER, CYRUS LOVELL ALDBICH, AND TO HIS AND MY OWN CLASS, THAT OF AMEEICAN FARMERS, NOW SUFFERING AN INGLORIOUS DECLINE, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK. PREFACE. "It is certain that the agriculturist must earn more than is necessary for his own support before any other person can contrive to exist. It was with some reason, therefore, that the economists and Adam Smith put him in the front rank of productive laborers. However scanty may be his share in the distribution of wealth, except he abide in the ship, none can be safe. It is true that in the rudest pastoral age the labor of the individual always produces more than is requisite for himself and his family. He can therefore be made to maintain others on his labor. Some of these consumers will benefit him, by Increasing his comforts, by allowing him to devote his undivided attention to his own industry or calling, and by furnish- ing him with economies in the conduct of his business. Some will quarter themselves as of right or .by force on his labors, and will color their usurpation by alleging that he owes them allegiance or duty." — Prof. James E. Thorold Rogers, M.P., in " Six Centuries of "Work and Wages," p. 159. Prof. Eogers goes on to intimate that the claims of those who have thus quartered themselves upon labor have been disputed in the course of English social history, and that their pretensions may yet be disputed and criti- cised " when it is not anticipated or expected." But the present work is not a contribution to the criticisms of the title of the fortunate classes in society. It aims at construction rather than destruction ; to show vi PREFACE. farmers and other producers how to organize themselves successfully after the example of the successful ; how themselves to manage the wealth created by their own labor ; and how to retain the proceeds of their exertions long enough to make their own bargain for the comforts they wish to get in exchange, and to determine upon the distribution of the surplus. The project outlined in the following pages is one of a strictly business character. It is believed to be founded upon sound business principles and upon the teaching of economic history, and to be in line with the evolution of affairs. It is addressed to that class who are in a measure the basis of the economic structure, who are most needing to reform their business methods, and who are most likely to successfully undertake a reform which shall ultimately benefit all classes alike. An effort has been made to point out a simple and sufficient amendment to the practi- cal btsiness methods now in most effective use, and at the same time, through a sketch of its probable workings, under known conditions, submit it to the most rigid test short of actual experiment in its application. It is an attempt to indicate a constructive and con- servative industrial advance, radical in its power for the amelioration of the condition of the masses of the people. It is based upon the idea that the principles that now govern industry, are sufficient with some needful adapta- tion to circumstances to sustain industrial progress and secure economic justice to all classes of society. It in- dulges in no expectation that history will not be, and remain, continuous and without break to the end, nor that evolution will not continue in regular lines ; and therefore no attempt is made to set the hands on the dial of time either forward or backward. The propositions are those PREFACE. VU of the practical man rather than those of the theorist, of the lawyer rather than the statesman, of the economist rather than the reformer. They are for a new departure in industry rather than a new constitution thereof. The command is not " right wheel " or " about face," but " for- ward, guide right, march." "Wilbur Aldrich. 130 Broadway, N. Y., March 1893. CONTENTS. CHAPTBE I. A PAEMEE'S COEPOEATION. PAGE § 1. From Occupation to Business 1 § 3. An Example 3 § 3. The Androscoggin Industrial Association 3 § 4. Promoting the Corporation 4 g 5. The Company's Store 6 § 6. Wages of the Farmers 8 § 7. Consumption by the Farmers 9 § 8. Corporate Dwellings 13 § 9. Capitalization 13 § 10. The Preliminary Agreement 14 §11. By-Laws 15 §13. The First Tear's Work 35 § IB. Finances of the First Year '. 36 § 14. Wholesale Marketing 37 § 15. The Farm Machinery 39 § 16. Ensilage 30 §17. Rainy Day Work 31 §18. Muck Digging 33 § 19. Improvements in the Pasturage 33 § 30. Forestry 33 § 31. Maple Sugar 33 § 32. Bee Pasturage 34 §33. SeedBaising 34 § 34. Nursery Rows 36 §35, Improved Stock 37 § 38. Poultry Raising 38 § 37. Draining 40 § 38. Improving Sandy Land 41 § 29. Irrigation 43 § 30. Fish Culture 43 §31. Rabbits 44 § 33. QuaU 45 X CONTENTS. FAGB §33. Roads 45 § 84. Disposal of Stones 47 g 85. Spirit of the Year Old Association 47 § 86. Interdependence of Farming Operations 48 § 37. Farming Requires Co-operation 61 § 38. Widening the Circle of Industry 52 § 39. The Second Year's Growth 55 § 40. The Association County Wide 55 § 41. The Limit of Area 56 § 43. Saw and Grist Mills Associated 57 §43. The Woolen Industry 58 §44. The Clothing Trade 59 § 45. Wool Growing 60 § 46. Leather Manufacturing 61 § 47. Iron Industry 63 § 48. Aluminum 63 § 49. Electrical Development 64 § 50. Small Manufacturing 66 § 51. Completing the Circle of Industries 68 § 52. Extension to the Sea 68 § 53. Reaching Outside Markets 70 § 54. Branch Associations to the Southward 70 § 55. The Cotton Industry Associated 71 § 56. The Negro Associated 73 § 57. Use of the Northern Androscoggin Valley 75 § 58. Different Methods with Game 76 § 59. Log Houses 78 § 60. Transportation 79 § 61. Refrigeration 80 § 62. Wheat Raising 82 § 63. Meat Producing 83 § 64. Com Raising 84 § 65. The Best Paying Crops Fallacy 84 CHAPTER 11. FARMING COEPOEATIONS IN VABIOUS LOCALITIES. § 66. Eastern Associations 86 § 67. Canadian Associations 87 § 68. The Ocean Fisheries 88 CONTENTS. XI PAGE § 69. Lobster Culture 88 § 70. Wave and Tide Powers 90 § 71. Western Associations 90 § 73. Southern Associations, 93 § 73. Association in Ireland 94 § 74. Linen Manufacture 96 § 73. Association in England 97 § 76. Association on the Continent 99 § 77. Association and Irrigation 100 § 78. Arid Land Association 103 § 79. A Hydraulic Basin 104 § 80. Interdependence of Arid Land Interest 105 § 81. Self-goyemment by Hydrographic Basins 107 § 83. HydrauUo Basin Associations 108 § 83. Corporate Agriculture not Wanted 109 CHAPTER III. A CITY FAKMINQ CORPORATION. § 84. Capitalization of Labor Ill § 85. A Working Scheme 112 § 86. AWayto Begin 116 § 87. The Consumers or Market Initiative 118 § 88. The Consumers Awakened 130 § 89. About Starting City Associations 131 § 90. Customers to Share Profits 133 § 91. The New York Association Heady for Business 124 § 93. The Country Branch of a City Association 125 § 93. Distinctive City Development of Associations 136 § 94. The Uses of a Fleet 137 § 95. Employment for the Unemployed 139 § 96. General Booth's Plan 130 CHAPTER IV. TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. § 97. Revival of Canals 133 § 98. Cost of Canal Carriage 134 § 99. Canals in Poland 136 § 100. Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon 137 § 101. The Trans-Continental Canal 139 XH CONTENTS. PAOB § 103. Kansas Canals 141 § 103. Other Western Canalization 243 §104. The Mississippi Outlet 144 § 105. How to Improve the Mississippi 148 § 106. Mississippi Land Improvement I47 § 107. Water Industries I49 § 108. Association Necessary to Water Industries 151 § 109. Trade Aspects of Eiver Improvement 154 § 110. Revival of Sailing Vessels I57 § 111. The North and South Direction of Trade 158 §112. A Trade Circle 161 §113. The True Use of Cities 163 § 114. Cities not Required for Trade 163 § 115. Cities not Required for Workshops 164 § 116. Cities not Required for Markets . 166 § 117. Farmer's Interest against Cities 167 § 118. Trade Reduced to its Lowest Terms 169 §119. Retail Prices 171 g 130. Amount Taken by Traders 173 § 121. David A. Wells on Retail Prices 177 § 123. The Remedy for Retail Prices 179 § 133. Why not Co-operative Stores Alone 180 § 124. Necessary Trade 181 § 125. The Production of Surplus Products 183 g 126. Abnormal Development of Localities 184 § 127. Decentralization of Eastern Industry 185 § 138. Decentralization of English Industry 188 §129. Money 190 §130. Banking 191 § 131. Farming Corporation Banking 193 § 133. Corporate Money 195 § 133. Corporations as Money Issuers 196 § 134. Coi-porate Credits 197 § 135. Parmer's Corporation Credits 199 CHAPTER V. HE3Xra.TS. §136. Transitional 303 8 137. Association of Industries 204 CONTENTS. , xui rAGE § 138. Profit Sharing 306 §139. Partial Profit Sharing, i 208 § 140. Capital Beginning Associations 211 § 141. Association by Present Industries 313 § 143. Railway Associations 315 § 143. Railways Transitional 217 § 144. Electrical Roads for Farmers 219 § 145. Tlie Post Office of the Future 330 § 148. Post Offlce-Telegraph-Railway 322 § 147. Canal — Railway— Highway 824 § 148. Assimilating Country to City 326 § 149. The Farmer's Isolation 237 § 150. Labor Shifts 329 § 151. Insurance 232 § 152. Life Insurance 233 S 153. The Present Androscoggin Valley 335 § 154. The Future Androscoggin Park 336 § 155. An Agricultural Park 338 § 156. Association Architecture 240 § 157. Association Villages and Cities 241 g 158. Agricultural Communities West and South 243 § 159. Opportunism 214 g 160. One Sole Association 246 § 161. The Butter Factory Problem 348 § 163. Butter Factory Argument Extended 350 g 163. The Farmer's Independence 351 g 164. Freedom 263 FARMING CORPORATIONS. CHAPTER I. A farmer's corporation. § 1. From Occupation to Business. — Considering the poor success of the farmers as money makers and financiers, it is a wonder that they have not been advised to organize themselves into corporations. In trade and industry the modern panacea for want of financial improvement is to join forces in great corporations, and thereby practise great economies, and obtain great opportunities for devel- opment. Considering the hard and laborious life of the farmer, it is to be wondered at that they have not thought of organizing their occupation into a business or industry, and thereby make their toil easier by division of labor. Almost every other occupation has become a business enterprise or manufacturing industry. Weaving is no longer a domestic occupation, but it is a great corporate industry. And the sum of the occupations that have been transformed in part or wholly into regular and orderly operations, by the great Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, is greater than the whole agri- cultural industry. The farmers feel the need of combina- tion, and are only waiting to be convinced of the right method of organization. 2 A FARMERS CORPORATION. Perhaps it may be objected that the farmer is as much a laborer as a capitalist, and that the ordinary corporate distribution of dividends to capital only, would not be either attractive to him, or equitable under the circum- stances. But there is more than one way for the distri- bution of corporate earnings. Suppose farmers went into a corporation, all woricing for the company and receiving wages, and that interest at a stated rate, say four per cent., were next paid on the capitalized farms, stock and tools ; and that any surplus which might happily be realized were distributed, upon the profit sharing principle, to the wage and salary earners according to their earnings. This would be a suitable modification of capitalistic methods to adapt them to the wants of the farmers. Its influence in procuring industry, interest and intelligence in a calling that would depend much on human intelli- gence as compared with power and machinery, and more on human industry than any other business, would be very beneficial. Perhaps it would be absolutely essential to success. § 2. An Example. — I wish to give an example, as con- crete as possible, of the manner in which a farmer's cor- poration could be inaugurated and how it would work, with a glimpse of what it might be expected to accom- plish. The location chosen as that in which the idea is to be worked out in theory, is not one in which the most brilliant results would soonest appear, if ever. Let us therefore try to think out in detail an agricul- tural corporation from the time it is started by its promoters. To give the ideas that will be presented practical direc- tion, it may be well to apply the theory propounded in the town in which the writer spent his boyhood and youth, to which he returns for his holidays now, and TES ANDROSGO&GIN INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION. 3 which with its inhabitants he well knows. The town has no prominent advantages for an easy solution of the prob- lem, and has many disadvantages by comparison, which, however, may impart all the more value to the conclusions reached. § 3. The Androscoggin Industrial Ansociation. — Let ns suppose then that I, with a few of my old schoolmates and friends, had started out to promote a fanner's corporation among ourselves and our neighbors and townsmen. For a name that should be at once attractive, distinc- tive and suggestive, we might call it an association instead of a company or corporation. The feeling of those pro- moting and joining in the new enterprise, would be very distinctly that they were associating themselves together, and this is the legal phrase for the act of joining for incor- poration generally. The idea of association would ever be uppermost in the kind of company contemplated, both in its internal and external relations. Association is the generic term which includes all species of voluntary co- operation for whatever purposes, whether incorporated bodies or not, and whether employing capital stock or not Though farmers would be the men to whom we should first appeal, the word farmers in the name of the proposed company _would not be advantageous. In the East farmers are modest and distrustful of themselves, and their class name is not a drawing card with them. Industry and industrial are names that strike them as more savoring of success, and more accordant with the spint of the age, than farming or agricultural. Then considering the locality in which the corporate beginning was being made, and the limits which the com- pany's operations might be expected to finally reach, and because the name is an unhackneyed Indian name, we 4: A FARMER'S CORPORATION. would invite our farmer neighbors' consideration for The Androscoggin Industrial Association. We would first show the plan to the farmers of my aforesaid native town, Poland, said to have been named from a ferocious Indian chief of the neighborhood when inhabited by the natives. It is the westernmost town in Androscoggin County, Maina Along the north eastern border of the town runs the Little Androscoggin River, which falls into the Androscoggin after running five miles beyond the boundaries of Poland, easterly through the city of Auburn, the county seat. Upon the Little Androscoggin at the most northerly corner of Poland lies Mechanic Falls, a village containing somewhat more than a thousand people, a paper manufac- tory and a shoe factory. Across the river containing the other half of the village, is the town of Minot. The two towns were formerly, and are naturally, one. They con- stitute the trade sphere of the village, and supply it with what country produce it has not become the custom to obtain from the West and South. The village is the mar- ket of the towns, and they should be united in supplying it, and in receiving any benefits to be derived therefrom. § 4. Promoting the Corporation. — We had therefore better calculate on having our association cover both towns from the first The number of members, not over a thousand if all the farmers should join, would not be large as corporations go. Nor would the company be difficult to float by dint of half the push and perseverance of the promoters of ordinary corporations in and about Wall street The magnitude of the beginnings proposed as essential to success would not stagger us. Such a show of numbers in the beginning would not only be necessary to indicate, but to stimulate corporate enthusi- PROMOTING THE CORPORATION. 5 asm. The work to be accomplished would be so exten- sive and varied that a small number could not so well hope to accomplish it. Indeed the object would be, by a greater aggregation of force, to overthrow the obstacles that now retard the improvements of individuals. The men we should go to, would easily understand the plan. An idea that farmers must co-operate more is becoming widespread, and many farmers have more or less of a notion as to what the workings of such a plan as ours would be. We should find them, however, very conservative and hesitating. Many would have pro- nounced objections to general corporate methods because of their dreaded tendency to supersede individual man- agement. The traditional independence of the farmers is yet cherished by them as a theory. But, withal, if those of us who were promoting the association, had first put our names down by subscribing money, or our farms at a fair valuation, to the capital of the new corporation, the same as we should invite them to do, we should be in a position to obtain a hearing for our plan to try an experiment in combined management, without any elaborate discussion of theoretical points. "We should have to impress upon the minds of expected corporators that the company would be made up pf farmers like themselves and their conservative neigh- bors, who would choose their own directors from among themselves ; and that this would naturally be a very conservative body, too conservative if anything. They would themselves see that there could be no wild-cat business indulged in at first, as the amount of cash sub- scribed to the capital could hardly be expected to be large. No large borrowing could be done at the incep- tion of the enterprise before confidence in its stability had 6 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. been established. In short, it would easily appear that there could be no large cash transactions, and bo great accumulations of cash to tempt the cupidity, or tax the inexperience of the new management. It would probably be reassuring to our neighbors that their deeds to the association might contain the condition that if they wished to withdraw and surrender their cer- tificates of stock, within a certain time, they should have the right to have their farms back, upon a fair accounting for betterments. This condition, making the signatures of subscribers necessary to a deed of their former property by the association, would assure them of a hold on the land until they became satisfied enough with the associa- tion to give it a quit claim of the condition, should that become desirable. § 5. The Company's Store. — It would not be surprising to our neighbors, being urged into the ground floor of a farmer's corporation, that the most prominent feature of the early management would be the opening of a store at Mechanic Falls. They would like to imagine if possible who would probably run it And we should explain that it would be in accordance with the plan of association to invite one of the existing grocers there to come into the corporation, with his building or leasehold, and stock, as capital, and be paid for his services as storekeeper such salary as might be agreed upon. If no existing grocer could be induced to enter the association, we should assure them that some other man, with as much store- keeping experience as could be found, would be hired and set up in a more or less modest mauner to sell the prod- ucts of the association, and keep a stock of goods to be sold, practically as in an ordinary co-operative store, to the members of the company and the public generally. TEE COMPANY'S STORE. 7 The trade of the members for goods from the store would tend to cheapen such goods to them by adding to the profits of the association. But our people would easily see that the store would be their store, and that it would be to their interest to trade there if agreeable. We should have little difficulty in justifying the company store part of the programme. Its value is admitted among farmers. The added strength of the association store over ordinary co-operative stores, through the line of associa- tion grown groceries to be sold to the villagers would be apparent. But we should tell them that there would be no com- pulsion as to buying at the store, that their noses would not be forced into the company's ti'ough, nor would they be compelled to eat company swill against their wills. We should have to tell them that, as they were to be no slaves, as are no eastern farmers yet, if they did not like the brands of tobacco supplied at the company's store they could buy elsewhere. But they would have the Yankee shrewdness to see that their patronage of the association store would tend to make them and the rest richer in divi- dends at the end of the year. And this would probably be all the inducement necessary for the association to hold out, to secure trade. All goods would be sold at the fair regular prices to members and villagers alike. The prices of the farm products of the association would of course tend to be made favorable to buyers, but their freshness, quality, and abundance would probably secure all legitimate sales. The delivery of supplies from the farms to the store, by bringing the members of the association there, would in practice facilitate securing their trade almost exclusively. Such a trade would be regarded as sufficiently advanta- 8 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. geous to justify the opening of an individual or co-opera- tive store. This would be one of the most attractive features of the scheme, from its familiarity, known suc- cess, and known capacity to make and save money. § 6. Wages of the Farmers. — Almost all the farmers would say they would be glad to work for fair wages and nothing else, if they could stay on the old places and live in the old independent way. And if sucli an arrangement promised to be lasting, it would appear to the majority to be a decided improvement on their present situation, But they would have to see that their wages could be equitably rated so they could use freely the products of the home acres as heretofore, without account or stint. They feel accurately the great disadvantage they are under in changing the products of their labor for those of others. And they would know that they would be overwhelmed, if they, like city people, had to pay any price they could imagine would be fixed for products, out of any wages they could hope would be paid them. The market prices of wages and the retail prices of products, they feel do not, and probably would not, fairly represent them in the balancing of the one against the other. And they could not allow it as to their own consumption. There would be no need of mincing the matter with the farmers, but it might be assumed as a fact that they would cease to work for themselves and would become the servants of the association ; and that their whole yearly labor would have to be evaluated upon the exist- ing rates paid for the same kind of work. Little stress would have to be laid upon the fact that this rate, though made the basis of reckoning both in the first, or wages fund, and in the third, or profits fund, would not repre- sent a mere wage as the term is now used. They would CONSUMPTION BY THE FARMERS. 9 be glad to feel that thej could probably get more by tbe end of the year than their former meager savings had amounted to. "Working together with their neighbors for common benefits, and upon fair and scientific principles, would, to them, imply no disagreeable servitude after it had been fairly thought over. Their wages, then, would be discussed as those of a man hired to go on to a farm and carry it on, being found, as to house rent and farm produce, by the em- ployer. They would be likely to be fixed at, say two hundred dollars per year. The size of one's family, to be partially boarded, would have the same influence on his wages that it now does. Wives would simply have an influence to increase the wages of their husbands, if only employed in taking care of their own homes. But under the corporate management they would soon have little real farm work like butter making to do, and would become housekeepers and home makers rather than farm laborers. Children would have the same industrial stand- ing as now, with of course preferential claims to employ- ment in the company when they desired it. The division of the surplus or profits fund when there should be one, would be easily equalized between those who were paid on the different bases of employment without board, with board, and with partial board, by adding to the actual amounts paid the two last classes, for the purposes of that division, a fair figure to represent the value of such board or partial board. § 7. ConsuTTvption by the Farmers. — We have seen that no difficulty would arise over the rule that every farmer member of the association sbould retain in his cellar ordinary farm produce for his own consumption as he had formerly done. But a question would arise as to garden 10 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. products, which is very difficult at first thought Whether the garden should be separated from the farm in any way, under corporate management, and how the varying pro- portions between garden products and other farm produce used by different families should be adjusted, seems to present hard, though minor questions. It would be im- practicable to make allowances to corporative employees of gardens separate from the association land, or of time in which to cultivate them outside of their work for the association. ' But it is plain upon consideration that the whole farming industry would immediately tend to assimilate farming to gardening and gardening to farming. For the purpose of supplying the store, beans, beets, corn, cabbages, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes and turnips, would all be cultivated in the same rows in the same fields. So would peas, oats, wheat, buckwheat, barley and all sowed crops, all be grown indiscriminately as required. The ordinary farm crops repay a culture like garden culture, which is indeed none too good for any crop worth raising at all. The limitations of farmers struggling along individually have brought about among them a neglect of garden products. But they would soon grow in importance, and be culti- vated by the entire force of the association. A large part would be for the store, the rest, in comparatively great abundance, would be for general consumption at home by the growers, just as the potato, meat or corn crop is consumed by them. The fruit garden would be assimilated to the orchard, and that in turn to .the general agricultural operations. Fruit, large and small, would be grown in much greater abundance than ever before, for the store, market and home use. And all varieties of fruit would be of equally CONSUMPTION BY THE FARMERS. 11 universal consumption by the men who raised it, where now, a few wild berries, and very limited quantities of apples are all that Maine farmers in general provide for themselves. Neither fruits nor vegetables are more expensive than the ordinary farm products, and the pastry which the in- creasing use of the former would displace, is far more dearly purchased. It also is almost entirely composed of non-home grown products, now that wheat is not raised in the East. The differences in the prices of farm and garden products have grown out of the exaggerated production of the so called staple products, and not out of any real differences in cost. The system of few crops is, however, natural under an unassociated system. But chickens should cost no more than beef, cauliflowers than potatoes, or plums than apples. Let production be equalized by corporate manage- ment, and the total cost of the whole luxurious diversity will be reduced below that of the lean and one-sided pro- duction of the present. Thus we could probably convince our candidates for membership that there would be no difficulty whether they wanted much or little garden stuff or fruit There would be plenty of everything, and the choice of each for his own consumption would be indifferent to others, and others' choice equally so to him. It would probablj'^ be seen also that the further question of consumption by the associates of fish, flesh or fowl would reduce to a similar indifferent matter. After fish culture was begun and poultry raising was developed on the same principle as gardening, there would seem to be, and actu- ally would be, little intrinsic difference in cost to the company, of trout, beef, poultry, mutton, eggs and pork. 12 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. And so members could eat unquestioned and unwatclied what they liked and the company still thrive as they throve. This point would be dwelt upon to obviate any appearance of the pestilent notion of a common table, that no man who wished to be fed otherwise than as hogs or cattle are, could tolerate. Our farmer friends in Androscoggin do not wish progress in that direction. They have too much of the satanic or some other spirit to desire too much brotherhood. They wish to live to suit tliemselves, whether their business be carried on in com- mon or not § 8. Corporate Dwellings. — As to private houses we should have to say that the association would take houses of ordinary character along with farms, and that their use would remain exclusively in the control of their occupants, rent free, just as the land so far as used to produce what they consumed was rent free, or rather, merely reckoned into the wages calculation. We should explain that of course the company as a good landlord would keep its buildings in tenantable repair, and that it would make additions to buildings and build new ones from time to time to accommodate its requirements. If one wished something beyond the ordinary standard in the way of accommodations he would be at liberty to spend his money for that purpose to suit himself. The necessity of refusing to accept as part of the capital of the association valuable dwellings that could be in no way productive, except in the occupier's exclusive and unequal ease and taste, would be apparent. The poorer dwellings would however soon be made more comfortable, and the ordinary standard be raised. And the new dwellings put up by the company in the course of its operations would have to have all the CAPITALIZATION. 13 modern improvements applicable to the circumstances. They would have to be commensurate with the new habits of life of the people who had become corporators, and could in no way deteriorate if the membership were to be satisfied and remain in the company. The bugbear of community bouses, phalansteries and other such non- sense would have to be avoided. Bams would not be pro- vided as for human cattle, but houses for stockholders. Household furniture, our interlocutors would see, could not be taken into valuation as capital. No one would desire to have his furniture, long used by him, owned outside of himself. And those using only plain furniture would not like to feel any interest in the extravagance of others in that particular. And such extravagance, or its opposite, would have no interest to the association. Fur- niture like clothing it could not undertake to control, much less to provide upon any common rule. Both are matters of personal and very variant tastes, and constitute part of rightful, necessary and exclusive personal privi- lege. They are on the other side of the boundary of common action. § 9. Capitalization. — We that were promoting the new corporation would go around among the farmers in the towns of Poland and Minot inviting and urging subscrip- tions to stock as ordinary promoters of corporations go about among capitalists. In the mean time the people would be talking the matter over among themselves and in a short time those who were to become charter mem- bers would have been secured. A preliminary question of great importance would be the settlement of the amount of the capitalization of the farms and property taken for stock. To avoid the ordi- dinary scandals of over-valuation of property taken for 14 A FARMERS CORPORATION. the stock of corporations and the abuses connected with ground floor performances generally, preliminary lists of the names and the capitalization desired by each one propos- ing to join might be circulated, as fast as filled, for general discussion and information. And it would probably be best to leave the final settlement of valuations together with the first statement of rates of wages, to the first president and directors, chosen in general meeting by personal suffrage of all who had signed the preliminary agreement After these settlements had been made those persons who were sufficiently dissatisfied might retire. For, although the assessments made by the newly elected officers would probably be liberal, it would be necessary that over-valuation, which is vitiating the fairness of the dividends of most corporations, and is making their capi- talization sufficiently misleading to be a gross fraud upon the public, should not become habitual in a new class of corporations intended to reach and take in a great majority of the plain and honest people of the country. For similar reasons the wages and salary arrangements should be plainly and conservatively settled so that self seeking promoters and others should not be unfairly paid salaries they could not earn. Many corporations are crippled and become really fraudulent devices through such means. And the new popular corporations if not carefully watched by those interested would prove quite as susceptible of this abuse. Those who asked unfair valuation either for their property'' or prospective services should be allowed to remain outside until their demands became consonant with those of their neighbors. § 10. The Preliminary Agreement might be headed some- what like this : We the undersigned hereby agree to join together for BY-LAWS. 16 tie purpose of forming a corporation to be called The Androscoggin Industrial Association, the object of which is to carry on the farming industry, and all other indus- tries connected therewith, growing thereout, and which may be carried on by us ; also to trade in our own products, and in the supplies required by us, and in other things properly connected with such trade. The acts and doings of the association are to be governed by the general corpo- ration law of the State, as far as applicable, until special incorporation can be obtained if that shall seem desirable. Each of us reserves the right to withdraw our signatures hereto and refuse to go on with the signers hereof, at any time before the actual operations of the association begin. And we stipulate that the by-laws of the association shall allow us to withdraw our capital, as far as practicable the very things paid in, at any time, upon proper notice and surrender of our stock certificates. "We contribute to the capital and subscribe for the stock of the association to the amounts representing the prop- erty' set against our names, subject to revision by the chosen officers of the association. Eeal Estate. Personal Property. Cash. Total. Albert Brown fHom.e farm, J $3,000 ; 1 Out pasture, [ 1300 Stock, $500 ; ] Farming tools, !- $300 1 $200 500 ""566' $3,000 200 Edward French George Hyde Store, $1,000 Shop, $500 Mill, $3,000 jSt'ck in trade, ) 1 $2,000 f Tools, $200 3,500 700 3,500 § 11. By-Laws. It would no doubt be best to circulate a skeleton at least of the by-laws which might be expected 16 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. to be adopted. They would serve to clarify and settle views of management and the association run easier at starting. 1. This corporation shall be called The Androscoggin Industrial Association. 2. The object of tbe association is to carry on the farm- ing and allied industries aad to trade in the products and supplies thereof. 3. The officers of this association shall be a President, Secretary, Treasurer and a Board of tbirteen Directors. 4. The officers shall be chosen by the ballot of all qual- ified members of the association annually. The principle of minority representation sball prevail in voting for directors, and the whole thirteen votes may be concen- trated upon tbe same person or any number of persons, less than thirteen, if desired. 5. The annual election of officers shall be held in each town or election division that may be established, on the first Tuesday in February, and the term of office shall begin March first of each year. 6. The president of the association shall preside at directors' meetings and shall have general executive man- agement of the association. His salary shall be fixed by the board of directors, as shall those of the secretary and treasurer. 7. The secretary shall be secretary of the board of directors, and head and manager of the clerical and book- keeping department of the association. He shall design BY-LAWS. 17 and provide all blank books for superintendents and direct their systems of accounts by general and special orders. The secretary shall make up from the returns from all the superintendents and the treasurer, at the end of every year a statement of the capital and of the receipts and expenditures, including labor paid for and shall calculate the dividend upon capital at the percentage fixed, or at a pro rata thereof, and apportion the surplus according to the annual wages of each employee, from the president down. This statement in fair detail shall be printed in a pamphlet and sent by January first to every member, together with a blank for eacb member to give notice to the secretary whether the amounts of such dividends or surplus, or how much thereof, shall be credited to the cap- ital account of the member, or be considered in the treas- ury subject to immediate withdrawal. In the latter case the secretary shall notify the treasurer who shall be pre- pared to pay such amounts by March first. 8. The treasurer shall receive and disburse all general funds of the association and have the custody of the same. He shall give receipts in duplicate for all money received by him, the duplicates retained by him to be daily turned over to the secretary. Duplicates of the vouchers of all payments by him shall also be daily turned over to the secretary. The treasurer shall keep memoranda accounts only of such sums so received and paid out. His system of accounts shall be as simple as possible to check and guide his actions and preserve him from liability, without unnecessary duplication of the clerical work, which is done in tbe secretary's office. The treasurer shall honor drafts upon him signed by the president. All other payments by him are to be made 18 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. only when he is satisfied they are regularly, duly and prop- erly the obligations of the association. His judgment in the matter is an official action upon which his conduct shall be judged, upon his account as it appears in the secretary's office. Accounts upon which the treasurer does not wish to take responsibility he shall submit to the president for his signature, and if approved, the president and not the treasurer shall be regarded responsible, unless there be collusion between them. When there is more or less money in the treasury than is currently needed, the treasurer should notify the presi- dent. And at any time, upon request of the president, he shall give information of the state of the treasury. The secretary may also be called upon at any time by the president for a statement of the apparant balance in the treasury as shown upon his books. 9. In case of the death or disability of the president, secretary or treasurer, the directors shall elect successors to serve the balance of the year. 10. The board of directors may by unanimous vote at any time suspend the president, secretary or treasurer, and appoint successors to serve the balance of the year. 11. The directors shall hold weekly meetings at which the president shall preside At the last such meeting but one, in February the votes for officers for the ensuing year that have been returned to the secretary's office, shall be canvassed and the results declared and the secretary directed to notify candidates elected. 12. The directors shall exercise general visitatory powers as to all workings of the association. A number of days BT-LAWS. 19 or all tlie days of the year shall be made visitation days, and such days kept secret. A director or directors shall be assigned in rotation for the days so designated in each month, so that if all the directors' time is not so taken up their time so spent may fall into separate months as far as possible. Each director shall make his inspections and visitations without notice, and shall inspect any and all matters connected with the association's affairs. Each director shall make particular returns in writing of his inspection, whether what he saw was found in" a satis- factory or unsatisfactory condition, together with his recommendations thereupon. These inspections shall be arranged to include even the minutest detail of the associ- ation's affairs fully, at least annually. These returns shall be recorded in a book kept for the purpose in the secre- tary's office, and shall be open to the inspection of all members. The directors shall be paid by the day for this duty, as well as for attendance at meetings. 13. A town superintendent shall be chosen by ballot at the annual meeting for elections of general officers in each town, and shall hold office from the first of March. He shall have general charge of the agricultural industry of the town, and shall direct changes in the areas of farms, the general management thereof, and the general associ- ation works of the town. He shall keep accounts of all his operations, and especially of all moneys disbursed, and the amounts received by him from sales of goods directly sold by him. He shall make monthly statements of his accounts from his books, to the secretary on the first of every month. He shall make returns, at least monthly, to the treasurer, of all moneys in his hands that are more than necessary for his current uses. And annually on 20 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. December first he shall return a complete inventory of all the property under his charge, with specific reasons for all changes in valuations. To draw money from the treas- urer, he must give such account of the uses for which it is intended, that the treasurer may judge of its regularity, or he must get the president's order therefor. He shall consider of subsidiary industries needed in the town, and make detailed recommendations thereof to the president 14. All industries, not directly involved in the actual cultivation of the soil, shall be organized by the president by creation or purchase, or by the merger of some estab- lishment already organized, with the association. In the first case he shall appoint a superintendent to take charge thereof, in the latter cases, the manager or owner of the existing industry may be appointed such superintendent. When the original superintendents have died or been removed by the president, the workers in the industry shall select a new superintendent Superintendents shall be general agents of the industry. They shall keep and render accounts and valuations like town superintendents. 15. Storekeepers, superintendents of trade, shall manage their stores under the general direction of the president, and shall keep accounts and make returns like other superintendents. Storekeepers shall be set up, removed and their successors appointed, by the president 16. Shipmasters shall class as superintendents, rendering their accounts after each voyage and as nearly as possible like other superintendents. Their succession on each ship shall be by official rank, but new ships may be put in BY-LAWS. 21 charge of any of&cer of any of the association's ships, by the president. 17. Superintendents of temporary undertakings and works shall make returns of their accounts as soon as the work is finished, or periodically, at least annually. The president shall have charge of such enterprises. 18. The president shall have power to appoint general or special managers to exercise any of the functions of the president especially in regard to the general management of superintendents. Such managers may be appointed for any separate industry or branch of trade, or for subor- dinate districts, and their authority shall be the president's certificate. The president shall have absolute direction of such managers. 19. All superintendents shall keep at least one deputy well trained in the coaducfc of the business, and generally shall provide for a system of progression in gradation according to merit, submitted to election when practicable. They shall take care that all are given proper opportunity for learning the requirements of the next higher grade. And all shall be enabled to keep well informed and skil- ful in their own grade. The object is to obtain succession by election of fellow workers as far as consistent with pro- motion by merit through all grades, by means of adequate preparation of all for candidature for higher grades, ^nd for judging of such candidature. To this end generally, superintendents shall give every worker a chance to know the business as far as practicable. 20. In the agricultural industry, the present farmers shall remain farm managers as far as practicable, and their 22 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. sons after them. In case of the removal by the town superintendent or of the decease of a farm manager and no resident son that is acceptable to the superintendent, remaining, the town superintendent shall appoint another manager or annex the farm to others. But in cases where three or more men are permanently employed, besides the sons of the former manager, they with the said sons shall choose the new manager by majority vote. 21. The president shall provide for the distribution of books in and from libraries, so that all may obtain the technical books of their vocation. This shall be in addi- tion to any establishment of libraries and reading rooms for the general spread of knowledge that may be decided upon by the president and directors. 22. No workmen shall be employed by the association, except temporarily, while any that are members, or who have applied for membership, shall remain unwillingly unemployed. And it shall be the duty of the executive to see that no members are so left without employment. Those who work for the association shall be regarded as members, and their names furnished the secretary to be entered on his books as such, in time to participate in the first annual surplus dividend possible! Those leaving the association before the expiration of any year shall forfeit their interest in such surplus. In case of applications for membership by employment the nominees of members shall be given preference. All descendants of members shall be regarded as members for the purpose of employ- ment until they withdraw voluntarily from the association. 23. Females employed by the association and wives of members who are their working housekeepers are mem- BY-LAWS. 23 bers and entitled to vote as well as females holding cer- tificates of stock. The pay of females when employed shall be placed upon an equitable basis compared with that of males. And special attentioa shall be given to providing appropriate employment for all such females desiring or needing such employment. 24. Any member of the association may retire at any time from its employment, but the sale of his stock shall not deprive the member of employment by the associa- tion, or terminate his continuance as a working member. In case a member wishes to sever his connection with the association entirely he shall have the option to receive the par value of his stock upon giving three months' notice to the treasurer, if that shall be required by the president by standing order at the instance of the treasure]-. The amount paid shall be the amount as it stood at the last annual statement of the capital account. IE the member retiring wishes to retain the homestead he may have sub- scribed to the capital, it shall be allowed him at a fair value as it stands, but if it is connected with any general improvement, he shall take it with such covenants or reservations as shall save to the association unnecessary severance of such improvements. 25. Certificates of stock shall be issued for every one hundred dollars of each member's capital account. These shall be negotiable the same as the stock of other corpora- tions. The purchase or ownership of such a certificate constitutes the purchaser a member with all the privileges thereof. Direct application for membership by any who wish to bring into the association their property may, how- ever, be made to the president, and if he grants the appli- cation he shall certify the valuation of the property to the 24 A FARMER'S CORPORATJON. secretary for insertion in the capital account. Those wish- ing to become members by contribution of capital shall be received or not by the president according to whether the state of the industries will justify the receipt of further capital, except there be redeemed certificates of stock lying in the treasury, which shall be reissuable. Members, however, are entitled to make additions to the capital of their dividends and their wages at pleasure, in which cases the amounts are not to be withdrawn from the treasury at all. 26. Statements of the accounts of the capital of each member shall be rendered annually. Certificates of stock shall be issued therefor and transferred upon the books of the company according to the usage of corporations. 27. Reductions of the rate of interest on capital may be made by the president and directors to take effect any ensuing year. Such reduction shall be made usually only to correspond with the settled market for money. When thought advisable they may make general changes in the hours of labor, and the superintendents under the direc- tion of the president and managers shall adapt their opera- tions to such changes by having different gangs succeed each other the same day when necessary, and by allowances for overtime, when any desire to work overtime or it is desirable that they should. Superintendents may at any time, especially in cases of old men, children and females, employ persons at fractions of a day regularly or irregu- larly. They may employ any, and especially such, in temporary or periodical employment 28. In cases of sickness or disability, members are to be supported by the association if desired, out of their capital. THE FIRST YEAR'S WORK. 25 Those having no capital will be given support by and for the general haman interest that governs the association in all its dealings with its members. That interest is regarded as having a money value, in the capital fund, more than equal to the natural requirements of the unfortunate. In case of those without capital an account of expenses con- nected with their care upon the sick or disabled list shall be made, but not rendered, except in case of restoration to health and strength. And such sick or disabled persons shall be enabled to live in their old home where practicable and desired. During the time such worker is sick, how- ever, his wages shall not go on, his keep taking the place of that provision. This article shall, however, only apply to those who have been members of ten years' standing, or those injured about the business of the association. And in cases of partial disability only, or of old age, appropriate occupation should be provided, so that no person shall be deprived of the privilege of paying his way as long as possible. This draft of by-laws would be submitted for discussion, digestion and adoption in amplified form after the associa- tion organized. It would also afford a clew to the workings of the association, which could only be obtained by having an idea of the formal management and rules under which its functions would be exercised. §12. The First Year's Wor^.— There would be little change in the ordinary routine of the farmers' work for the first year, except that the superintendent would inves- tigate and advise with the members, so as to have crops grown or omitted to suit the exigencies of the store. The choice of crops for the general market would also be more intelligently and effectually governed under the additional independence and capacity of the association. 26 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. If any men joined that had no farms — and there would be as many such as could be safely taken, as tbey would have nothing to lose and much to gain, and at any rate regu- lar wages from the first, tlie superintendent would put them at work where they would do most good in crop results. These hired men would be engaged with or without board. If boarded witb members, an additional compensa- tion to tbe woman of the house, and for the partial board beyond the farm supplies coming from the association, would have to be agreed upon between the association and the members taking such boarders. Nobody would be billeted upon anyone, or thrust unwillingly among uncon- senting bed-fellows. Every one so hired would become a member, and as though he was to remain a member, but he would be able to leave at any time, and spead or save his earnings, and invest them at his will, in the capital of the association, or elsewhere to suit himself. But it would be supposed that the association would have an attractive bank of savings. §13. Finances of the First Year. — While soliciting mem- bers for the association we should have invited any in the village or elsewhere to take capital stock in the association and pay cash. But no definite inducement would have been held out, and no special advantages given to secure cash. If money were thus raised it could be profitably applied from the beginning, if there were not too much of it. The want of it would be no great hindrance, and might save embarrassment through an inexperienced or injudi- cious use of it. Very likely large capital might not at first produce expected results, and thus would give the manage- ment trouble, and shake the confidence in the association. Sales of products at the store would very soon produce cash. The sales in other channels, under the direction of WHOLESALE MARKETING. 27 the president, would bring in cash as soon as the farmer members were accustomed to receive returns from their labors. And the treasurer would easily make temporary arrangements as to the payment of wages for the first few months, to the wage workers, even though there were al- most no cash capital subscribed. Other money outlays before the first crop returns might be as little as necessary and would need to cause no embarrassment, even in the absence of any credit for the association. Indeed the gen- eral policy of the association would be not to use credit at all. And at first, when credit would seem most beneficial and necessary, it might be most dangerous and better entirely avoided. What would be the results and promises of the first year? The requirements of the store would tend to in- crease the raising of quick garden products from the start. They would enlarge the cash returns by their comparatively high prices, and by the difference between wholesale and retail prices. Surplus products, whether potatoes, sweet com, butter or what not, would on the whole be better marketed than before. And it can hardly be supposed but that the farmer members would have some more profit to show at the end of the year than they had been accus- tomed to having, although possibly only the wages as settled would be paid. If wages were more than paid and any percentage whatever on capital realized, the remaining farmers in the two towns would tumble over themselves in their efforts to get into the association before the opening of the next season. § 14. Wholesale Marheting. — A very appreciable saving that would become most apparent after the general har- vest would be in the transportation and marketing of the products not sold at the store. In the first place they 28 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. would go in car-load lota and tbe associated farmers would get the same rates of transportation that the speculators now do. With a little planning even the most unusual of the articles raised for the general market would be pro- duced in quantities to either fill cars by themselves or in conjunction with other crops of the same season. All know how much better is the position of the regular shipper in large quantities than that of the irregular for- warder. In this respect the association would be a shipper more preferred than any single speculator and would get rates accordingly. The fact, too, that the association would be able to regularly cart its product to Portland for convey- ance by steamer or chartered vessel, would have its influence in causing the great railroad system of the East, which is reached just outside the boundary of Poland, to make fair rates, by rail, both to Boston and New York. And as the association outgrew the two towns or came to include nearly all the producers therein, it would not only send car-load lots, but train loads, and soon it would be able to dictate that its goods should be promptly delivered upon schedule time, something never yet obtained of the railroads. In the next place all of each product would be raised in such quantities, and with such special attention to quality, that a good grading and assortment of qualities could be made. This would insure to the association a favorable reception of its goods in the market, far different from that of individual lots, no matter how good in quality, now swept into the speculators' drag-net, and paid for at one uniform price. Honesty in quality and grading would become the best policy, and the benefits of such honesty would be perceptible by the association inside of a year. And although the association might not find it to its THE FARM MACBJNERT. 29 interest to try to obtain fancy prices for its products from rich regular cnstomers as some few enterprising farmers now do, it would obtain decidedly advantageous prices in tbe general market. Furthermore the association would be enabled to com- mand the best services of the best commission merchants and thereby receive the top prices in the wholesale mar- ket. These prices are quite different from those the spec- ulators now pay. And it is probably within bounds to say that twenty-five per cent of the total value of the prod- ucts of the farms in our towns would be added to the amounts received upon articles thus wholesaled upon the general markets. The savings in this direction indeed are amply sufficient to justify a trade combination among the farmers for this single purpose. § 15. The Farm Machinery in the association would begin to show its possibilities during the first year. "With the simpler machines such as mowing machines, horse rakes and the few others that the farmers now have and would turn in towards the capital, it would be found that all the work to which they were adapted could be done, over all the farms of the association. For the present farmers are not able to work the machinery they own to its full capacity. But if there were any funds in cash at the start, numbers of machines of the first importance would suggest them- selves for purchase. Gang plows, horse drills and planters and manure spreaders, ditching machines, stone gatherers, hay loaders, self binders, fodder cutters, feed mills and po- tato diggers, could all be used to advantage the first year, and not one of these indispensable machines is in use by any farmer to my knowledge in Poland. Such machinery is essential to good farming upon its 30 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. present plane of development. But the plans laid even at this early stage of association would include steam plows, mud diggers and ditchers, steam farm locomotives, and other equally effective and expensive machinery which, with that above indicated, would rob farming of half its terrors while doubling its advantages. With these aids that our civilization has now in readiness for enlightened use, the farmer's life would be a continual holiday com- pared with its present drudgery. Indeed driving a team about the fields and taking care of the team is about the worst part of farming as it should be now done. Much of it could be reduced to the plane of running a steam engine. There is hardly an agricultural operation namable which we do not now know can be done by machinery and with- out manual labor. And to say it may be so done implies that such is the cheapest and most economical way it can be done. § 16. Ensilage, the product of the modern way of grow- ing and preserving cattle feed in the rough, would occupy the attention of our association to the end that it should even the first year be developed to something like its proper proportion of the fodder crops. Its planting in the spring would entail no difficulty, and before the autumn the available labor of rainy days would have prepared the additional silo room for its reception. And probably by that time, an improved ensilage cutter and carrier could have been obtained to insure it better storage than the smaller eastern farmers can now give it. They are obliged to store it uncut because the machines are expensive and require quite a gang of men and teams to economically work them. One such machine would do in a day more than the entire growth of even the largest present farms. Ensilage could only thus accomplish the revolution in agri- RAINY DAY WORK. 31 culture which was expected of it wheu first brought to the attention of our farmers. § 17. Rainy Day Worh, which now figures somewhat in the recommendations of agricultural writers and only there, would be susceptible of a very easy organization in asso- ciation. The consolidated interests would continually present jobs, the doing of which by short hour, rainy day's works of easily collectible squads of workers, would be of great profit. The one item of composting could be made of the greatest advantage. But there are cellars to be dug yet, under most barns in the East. All grades of carpenter work are continu- ally demanded about farms. And trellises, hen-coops or rather movable hen-houses and such like articles upon the associated farms would be quite an item of manufac- ture. Further yet, it would probably be found best to have complete rubber suits for a proportion of the farm help in which they could comfortably work a few hours on wet days about the softened fields and pastures in grubbing and smoothing, which can then be easiest done. And all such work in moderation would be easier than loafing. It would be easily seen from the start that with good management on the part of town superintendents, farm work could be made very much more regularly produc- tive. With the increased use of machinery and the in- creased utilization of days of bad weather the farm worker would approach the factory worker in regularity of employ- ment, and what is more to the point, in the agreeableness of the labor. Of course in case of work upon rainy days, for exam- ple, it would be absurd to require full hours, especially while the hours of the ordinary day's work at all ap- 32 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. preached what they are at present. Provision for such work on such days in companies would not be dreaded even under present conditions, and especially so when the every day labor had been so much lightened as it could be by associated management. § 18. Muck Digging would not be neglected by the association during the slack time after haying the first year. It would be dug out in quantities and would be- come wealth the next season. Other products now largely wasted would be saved, collected and composted with it And it would be largely composted with manure in the stables and barn cellars and barn yards. It would also be mixed with lime in piles in the fields for direct applica- tion. The increase in returns from this factor alone would be immense. The eastern muck beds will long remain banks upon which many large checks may be drawn. The beginning would also be made towards a perfectly sanitary system of earth closets, using probably dry muck, in the farmhouses and throughout the village, thus pre- venting a present great and almost complete waste, and at the same time accomplishing a great improvement, in rural conditions of lifa § 19. Improvements in the Pasturage would the first year begin to show the possibilities of combination in creating capital. During the slack times and in bad -weather, the superintendent and farm managers would organize forces to clear up the old pastures thoroughly, pasture by pas- ture, as single farmers seldom feel able to do. Brush cut- ting would be accompanied by grubbing, plowing and harrowing where required. And even under-draining wet spots could be done at the same time. Such work would probably pay the best returns for wages of all the early labors of the association. And such MAPLE SUGAR. 33 returns would be almost as immediate as ttose from tte ordinary farm work applied to growing crops, as pasture improvements would increase the pasturage capacity of the land the very next season. The increase in the capital value of the extensive areas needing to be so treated would be enormous. § 20. Forestry. — As pastures now do and always have blended with the forest growths, so pasture improve- ments would lead to and involve forest improvements. Unprofitable growths in the pastures would be cut off, and if occupying good soil replaced by grasses, if occupying poor soil better trees would be planted. Many of the cleared portions of the present pastures are fit for nothing but wood and should be planted thereto while the good sorts were being improved in the opposite direction. A copse-like appearance would thus be given the landscape not unpleasant to see, and especially as the new grass plantations would be perfected clear up to and even under the trees upon their borders. The new trees planted would be carefully selected for their adaptability to the varying situations, their com- mercial value and general availability. In short forestry would be learned and practiced. § 21. Maple Sugar. — In the course of the general for- est improvement, maples, conserved and judiciously planted would soon make a valuable return with even greater promise for the future. Little or no use is now made in Androscoggin of the rather scattering and patchy maple growths, now hardly making up distinct orchards or bushes. But these would be thickened up and extended. The full value of intelligent foresight and well directed though slight effort in this direction, would only be appreciable after considerable time, but it would be great 34 A FABMES'S CORPOItATION. in the long run. The maple is not inferior to any for most of the purposes for which wood will continue to be used. And the cutting off of the trees after having served their lifetime of twenty years or so as sugar pro- ducers, should be contemplated as the principal source of wood in the remoter future, so extensive should the maple forests become. The income from ground occupied by maples besides the very considerable pasturage that should be afforded, is now stated to exceed ten dollars per acre annually. § 22. Bee Pasturage. — The superintendent of a town area would incidentally consider ways of improving the bee pasturage along with that of cattla White clover would, of course, be generally sown and kept in all pas- tures, something which is now entirely neglected. Alsike would be substituted for the honeyless red clover in many cases where in other respects it was the equal or the superior of the former. The increased fruit plantations and other improvements in culture would nearly all be found to yield themselves to this additional and much too cheaply prized industry. The great advantage would be that this increased pasturage would enure to the benefit of the creators of it, whereas in the individual scramble, the owner of the pasture simply enriches his neighbor who keeps bees in excess of his pasture. And furthermore the corporation could make its stock of bees correspond to its pasture, and not one year overstock it and the next leave its honey ungathered. § 23. Seed Raising. — The bee pasturage would be im- mensely increased not only by the increased sowing of white and alsike clover for hay and pasture grass, but by the extensive plantations of those clovers that would be required to furnish the seed to keep up these re-seedings. SEED RAISING. 86 For the associated farmers would not think of paying out in bulk the large sum that would be annually required for this purpose. And the crops' of the clover raised for seed would furnish a much more complete bee pasture than that incidental to the grass and hay raising. In the latter case, especially, the clover is all cut off and taken out of reach of the bees by the time it is fairly in bloom, while that destined for seed stands through the entire life of the flower. The raising of seeds of all kinds would at once appear to the aggregate farmers of a whole town to be almost indispensable to financial solidity, for they would then for the first time realize the large amounts that had been annu- ally paid to seedsmen. But beyond this the improved culture would immediately require this expenditure to be increased many fold. And although many of the flowers that produce farm and gai'den seeds are honey bearing, except in the case of the clovers this would be a very minor consideration. This increased use of seeds expensive to buy, would accentuate their cost by being taken together where before it had been distributed among many individuals, and even then bearing heavily upon their pockets. Farmers are continually obliged to forego crops and sow scanty meas- ures of the more expensive seeds. And this is particu- larly so in grasses, a good seeding to which, mixed accord- ing to the best modern authorities, would cost nearly as much money per acre as the land, upon which the mixture would be sowed, is now worth. And, as it is in grasses that the reform in seeding would be most urgently required, this item would be entirely insurmountable by the associated farmers without grow- ing the seed at home. This would be no formidable un- 36 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. dertaking for them on account of their sufficient variety of land and supply of labor, but it is utterly impracticable to the single farmer. Grass seeds in variety he cannot raise nor buy. Probably the hay crop is not now half as valuable as it would be with the requisite variety of grasses for each field and for the different soila Improve- ment is utterly impossible without a reasonable number of grasses to suit the different soils and to make more complete rations for animals. The usual clover and herds grass or timothy with some wild grass are entirely insuffi- cient and unprofitable. What is true of grasses is in a scarcely less measure true of garden seeds. The aggregate spent for unsatis- factory articles is large but it would be immediately mul- tiplied, and the necessity of good seeds and the losses attending sterile ones would be greatly increased. Perhaps it is within bounds to say that little behind in this regard would be found the increased inducements to properly raise and select seed for all the farm crops usually so called. The general attention to this matter is capable of producing great results when compared with the feeble chances and feebler efforts in that direction now. § 24. Nursery Rows would be immediately commenced in a small way in the larger association gardens for the same reasons that seeds would be raised. The new plant- ings of the association both of fruit and forest trees, of fruit and nut bearing and ornamental shrubs and bushes, would be very extensive and it would not be good policy to buy at present prices stock that is more often unsatis- factory than otherwise. At any estimate the company could put upon the labor cost of its nurseries there could be no limitations imposed on its plantings. And these IMPROVED STOCK. 37 plantations would speedily become very valuable assets, and especially so when considered as the aggregate of all the growths of what had been originally nursery stock. § 25. Improved Stock — These considerations lead directly to analogous considerations in regard to the animal life upon the farm. Greater variety and improved breeds would be found indispensable, and the outlay to continually buy well bred stock would be just as impossible to the association as to the individual farmers. But the capacity of the former as a breeder would be unlimited while that of the latter is nothing. Indeed under the present com- mercial conditions of the matter the professional breeding of iine stock is proverbially a precarious and profitless business. Farmers can not buy of breeders half what they should to make both prosperous. But the breeding of sufficient finely bred stock to improve, and keep up the breeding of its herds, would be a merely natural condition and comparatively inexpensive to the association. It would be its own user and market for its choicest and most valuable animals. This is the only feasible way to attain to a general fine breeding of stock. As to the magnitude of this accomplishment it is not necessary to enlighten the farmers. One of the troubles and disappointments of the common farmer's life is the desire, always destined to be beyond his single handed en- deavors, for the possession of fine herds. He knows their beauty and their value. But the aggregate pecuniary loss from keeping year in and year out stock of an inferior capacity to assimilate and make returns for feed used, would make a total that would astound financiers accus- tomed to enormous figures. The fraction of the whole live stock product so lost is a large one, and probably approximates a half, even if it is not more than that. In 38 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. tte most common case of cows, well bred dairy cows prob- ably return in double measure from the same feed the amount averaged by those actually kept throughout the country. But it would be in this case as in the others that the naturally forthcoming improvements would most inevita- bly lead to this one. For any one would see the absurdity of providing fine pastures and a great variety of winter feed for scrub cattle. Although they would make the improved feed pay, it would be an incongruity, and the whole loss from possible returns%eglected would be larger than ever. The one advance would lead to others, for attainment grows from what it accomplishes, and with accelerations at each advance, provided the field is unobstructed. And the corporate capacity to carry forward improvements would be as great as tbe individual ability is small. § 26. Poultry Raising would come in for its share of improvement in this direction. And the association would soon find that it must largely increase its poultry produc- tion. It would have to build many small hen-houses, most of them perhaps movable, and dispose them about the various premises according to requirements for the health and growth of the fowls and for convenience in at- tending them. It could thus easily obtain large products without the risks and expense of raising poultry in too great confinement. Here the profitable medium would be found between the unsatisfactory flock of hens about the barn and door-yard and the more unsatisfactory factory method of raising poultry as a business, perhaps never yet successfully accomplished. It will have been foreseen that the connected farms under one management and in one interest lent themselves to a much more extended and economical raising of POULTRY RAISING. 39 turkeys than formerly. These very valuable fowls wan- der widely over the fields and pastures, picking up most of their living until fattening time, doing little damage and much valuable service in consuming great numbers of insects daily. The conflicting interests and prejudices of too independent neighbors render it almost impracticable for such farmers to raise any appreciable numbers of these birds, a small flock of which is as valuable as a small herd of cows. The same would be true of ducks and geese along the brooks and beside the ponds. Their pasturage, preferably in fields and pastures about such waters, is measurably as advantageous as that of turkeys. It may excite a smile when it is ventured to mention in this connection that large flocks of pigeons could thus be raised to the profit of the purse and the delight of the palate of the associators. These birds, almost wild in their incontrollability as far as fences go, only responsive to the attraction of the dove-cote at night, would also pick up their entire living through the summer. They have always been extensively raised in England. They, with the other fowl enumerated, would be of in- estimable service in keeping in subjection the swarming insect life that is now becoming a threatening and costly nuisance to the farmer, largely through the growing inca- pacity of the decreasing numbers of wild birds to cope with them. There would be the satisfaction, too, of knowing that if grain were consumed by all these feathered flocks, it went to the fattening of no one else's birds and that it had at any rate cost no labor in feeding. Upon the associated acres and among the associators every one of whom would have an interest and duty to 40 A FARMERS CORPORATION. notice and correct any of the peccadillos of the feathered bipeds, the numbers that might be advantageously accom- modated would be large enough to make them one of the most considerable of the sources of income, and one, too, where the receipts were almost clear profits, and almost solely accruing on account of association. § 27. Draining would be first in importance among the many improvements that would begin to grow in the minds of superintendents and members. Although there is much land in the East of good natural drainage, the aggregate of the cultivated acres that sadly need draining is very large. And those parts of the grasslands which tend to run to poor wild grass and brakes and which when plowed are cold and hard to work and unproductive on that account, are by drainage capable of becoming the most valuable lands upon the farm. There are in Poland and Minot, as in all other eastern localities, many tracts of swale, muck and bog that contain all the elements of the fertility of the black prairies of the West in virgin condition. The smallest of these and those now perhaps cleared and mowed over, would be subject to very early attack and subjugation. By clearing, draining and liming, these black mold lands woald be obtained at a less price than partially exhausted lands are worth hundreds of miles west of Chicago. And that the result would be obtained as the creation of labor in combination, at times when it would seem to have cost nothing. And the land would be as though one, five, ten, twenty, forty and hundred acre tracts of the best Illinois lands were showered down upon the association way down East in Maine. The majority of these basins of black silt and products of vegetable growth, are so situated that the drains in them would usually have to be extended only as IMPBOVINO SANDY LAND. 41 spouts through cuts iu the edge of a full basin. The land thus produced would cost a higher price than ordinary New England land sells for, reckoning labor at full yearly rates ; but fifty dollars per acre would be its highest pos- sible cost, and one hundred dollars its least probable value. Large drainage operations naturally require corporate management. As long ago as 1688 a corporation was formed to manage the " Bedford Level," a part of the fen country reclaimed in England. Some of these tracts would be made into cranberry bogs and be even more remunerative than when used for ordi- nary farm crops. Some of the smaller of them would probably be all cleaned of their muck and made into fish ponds. The clearing job would be profitable for the muck obtained, and the water area left would have a value according to good authorities favorably comparing with that of the best farming lands. § 28. Improving Sandy Land. — There abound in those two towns, also, as through the whole seaboard, light sandy pine plains, which are not available to the single farmer laboring for a living year by year, raising the standard farm crops in the stereotyped and perhaps necessary way, while unassociated. But operate these lands by western labor saving machinery, lightly manure them every year with a muck compost (and the muck lies side by side with them) spread on with a manure spreader, and they would yearly produce paying crops. They would not, as the farmers term it, hold the manure, nor ■would they produce grass ten years between manurings, but each year's crop would pay independently of the next, and besides, the land would very fast become permanently fertile. All eastern farmers know and acknowledge the capacity of this land, for the business of making single 42 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. crops remaneratively, as opposed to adaptability for gen- eral farming purposes. In other words they are lands for business farming rather than for farm home making. But the association would combine the two characters admir- ably. This sandy land is best adapted from the first to many crops like early vegetables and small fruits which the association would find it expedient to raise in larger proportions than its predecessors, the individual farmers. The pine plains of the East will quickly become the gar- den spots of the nation, where the sweetest, the richest and most delicate of nature's productions will be abundantly raised. It cannot be by the separate working farming of the past, for such cannot manage a one year rotation, or at least does not think so, and that is reason enough. § 29. Irrigation. — In hilly New England, and in our Androscoggin towns running over with brooks and rivers, many situations would invite the spreading of waters over thirsty lands, and they most all go sadly athirst once at least each season. The collective owner of the soil would soon see innumerable little systems of irrigation that might be arranged by an off day's work of an easily available gang, that would permanently double and treble the crops of many acres. Almost none of these could be complete upon the holding of any one of the present owners, and therefore are impracticable except through co-operation. § 30. Fish Culture.— Vrohahly the first year of the asso- ciation would not have passed before some one would have been sent over to tlie fish hatchery for trout fry for the brooks, and lake trout for the ponds that lay wholly within association lands. Intelligent means would be used from the first to utilize the abundant area of water for food pro- duction. And it is meant that fish would be grown to be caught for eating and for the market, or pot, if you will, FISH CULTURE. 43 and not preserved to be killed for sport by men who wished to spend some idle hours in a cruel pastime. Though farmers generally are not insensible to the fun of catching fish that are needed to be eaten, or that may be sold for necessary or appreciated cash, the association could not tolerate the sporting notion or its practice. The point might be of some importance as the fish waters are ex- tensive, and one method would make them industrially valuable while the other is economically as sterile as the individual occupation of angling is unproductive. The Little Androscoggin for six or seven miles, three large and many small brooks, and six or seven large ponds or lakes, in the two towns, now almost perfectly barren, would soon, without the outlay of any money, and little exertion be among the most valuable real estate of the association. Sowing wild rice in the shallows of the fishing waters, for the refuge of the little fishes among its stalks, them- selves abiding places for animalcules upon which the fish might feed, would cost little. And once done the wild rice would re-seed itself perpetually. Besides, the falling seed would feed the vegetable eating fishes and probably the ducks on the borders. Some further feeding of fishes upon by-products of the farms, would be done without cost. Artificial hatching would probably be little needed, but it would not be expensive. In fear of becoming wearisome and perhaps ridiculous, one other extreme example of the manifold uses that would be contemplated for the not inconsiderable appro- priate spots now under consideration may be mentioned. It is the establishment of froggeries as in southern France for the growing of these delicacies of the thrifty French- men, not unfavored by a rapidly increasing multitude of 44 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. those in this country who are disposed to traverse all the fields of nature in their hunt for its bounties. One other thing, in the purlieus of the frog and the pick- erel aud the duck, which latter, by the way, would have to look out for himself and be restrained in his earlier days from such dangerous vicinities, the Massachusetts terrapin, the succulent mud turtle, would lurk. Associated power and intelligence would make an attempt to regulate and perhaps encourage his multiplication and growth. Some of these denizens of these teeming swamps and waters might have to be restrained in the interests of the better paying species. But all would probably be protected if only for variety's sake. § 31. Babbits. — Several somewhat extensive woods aud pieces of land upon which the wood has been cut off and is growing up again might probably pay to be enclosed in fine meshed wire fence and stocked with the prolific and delicate rabbit Bunny is very much underrated in this country as a meat and profit producer. The thrifty Ger- mans let him grow among their crops and then shoot him for themselves or let shootings to sportsmen. Probably his delicate flesh can be produced more cheaply and as securely as that of any other animal. He is equally at home in good pastures and poor ones. He can eat in the winter anything that any farm stock can, and he will pick up even in that season much of his living, if he is not over crowded. Hay he will eat, clover he likes, and beets are his delicacies. Brer Eabbit's hide moreover carries on it a fur which will make hats for men. Probably this use will be much extended in the future, as wild animals even in South America become exterminated by the advance of the destroying army of men. ROADS. 45 And by the way, the high-priced silver or black foxea might possibly be well turned in to prey upon the rabbits, thus making fifty dollar fur skins out of rabbit stock. It might be investigated at little expense, and at any rate the rabbit meat and skins obtainable in such enclosures would be like the fish and fowls, pure profit what there was of it. The thought of a rabbit scourge need not arise. In the first place, the nature of the country does not admit of it, and in the second place such a catastrophe would carry joy and not sorrow to the hungry, and the gun-carriers who constitute the vast majority of the male population in all English speaking communities. Increase of popu- lation will yet inevitably convert the rabbit producing capacity of Australia and New Zealand into a joy forever. § 32. Quail. — Besides these, delicious little Bob "White would be turned out in the association's woods, pastures and waste places, and his little stealings of grain would be overlooked or charged up against sport, and quail on toast, that would be had at the expense of cheerful Bob each autumn. And when winter gave him hard lines for a living he would probably find occasionally scattered golden grains to tide over his necessities. So it would be with the more shy and saturnine par- tridge. Association would afford her protection to in- crease in numbers so as to fairly well people the precincts in which she lives, to the extent that she can obtain appropriate food wherewith to build up her gamey plump- ness. § 33. Roads. — An early systematic improvement would be in further clearing off of rocks and stones. They could very naturally be carted into rows where the soil 46 A FARMERS CORPORATION. had been plowed and scraped away and prepared for them along the lowest lines of topography, and upon easy and uniform inclines. The largest stones would be put in at the bottom, and the smallest at the top, of low flat- topped windrows which would be deep in depressions and thinner but not less than about two feet deep as they encountered swells in the ground that should not be encircled. On top of these elongated stone heaps migbt be put a layer of stone that had been through a crusher of road metal, and thus would be made gradually, at no money cost, roads such as New England roads should be. Many stone walls, fences that now disfigure tlie country, take up much valuable ground, and impede rational culti- vation, would be dissolved into such magnificent roads as this country has never seen. These roads could easily be so carefully located, that when the need and time came, cars with electrical motors would be used for the regular freighting of the associa- tion, even for very considerable distances. Probably without the aid of rails, such roads would from the first be used for carriages with this or some other motive power, or drawn by steam road locomotives, about much of the regular farm trucking. The value of such roads as highways would be ines- timable. Their addition to the value of the real property in the town would be a large fraction of the whole value thereof. It has even been said that bad roads are the principal cause of the decline in value of farms in New England. These new roads would, however, be primarily used as farm roads. This would mean much more to the asso- ciation than to individual farmers. Its newly created fields and pastures would in many instances be at a dis- SPIRIT OF THE YEAR OLD ASSOCIATION. 47 tance from the nearest farm buildings, and new buildings ■would not be put up for every new clearing of land but a good road would draw it near to the barn. The farm locomotive could then be used to make miles of scarcely more account than furlongs in getting to the land to work or with manure or in removing crops. These roads would also facilitate the improved location of farm buildings so fast as new ones were erected. And they would, more- over, allow of a sociable and profitable concentration of farmers and workers at convenient points, and exclusively along the principal thoroughfares. § 34. Disposal of Stones. — In relation to stones it may be remarked that possibly the granite rocks and stones, now so sorely troublesome to the north eastern farmer, could, by reason of abundance of power, be economically made into flour in cyclone pulverizers and profitably dis- tributed over the lands. The rocks as they disintegrate make fertile soil elements. And there might be a valua- ble use growing out of the getting rid of a serious nuisance. Nature's seeming waste products seem largely capable of good use in skillful hands. Between the rock flour and the roads these terrible stones may prove blessings in dis- guise. Furthermore the late A. N. Cole inclined to think their use in making combination drains and subterranean irrigating streams was almost a sufficient reason for their existence. Possibly the association would find this idea of service also.' There would be no closer students of Mr. Cole's patented "New Agriculture" than the official and unofficial associates in Androscoggin. § 35. Spirit of the Year Old Association. — These, and many other accomplishments, seen in more misty outline, go to make up the vista of coming works, as the minds of the first associates would see them from the things actually 48 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. in hand and being begun, stretching away to the utmost limit that the eye of the imagination could see the prom- ised growths of the future. All are the promise of the first and fundamental industry, farming, upon which the association entered. How ennobling is the conception of this grand and most ancient, though now apparently despised and neglected industry, in the light of associa- tion! Further peering into the minds of the associators teem- ing with plans for the future even in the first year of asso- ciation, might tend to make some over sanguine, and others distrustful of so much promise, and will not be attempted. And does any one believe that these things would be ignorantly planned or listlessly carried out? He may be answered that the Yankee farmers would work breath- lessly at them ; and that every worker would know the use and value of every operation, and how to carry it on ; and would feel the keenest interest in each. There is scarcely a farmer now but could properly apply capital, that is, labor from outside himself, to his present farm and any extension thereof that might come under his manage- ment. He only needs the labor or capital which the asso- ciation would give to each and all the members, capitaliz- ing them so to speak. No agricultural community exists in the civilized world in which such operations popularly conducted, would not be successful as a business, and raise the community, be it now high or low, in the scale of civilization. It is even believed that with slight encouragement Indian Eyots, the Chinese, and the brighter Japanese would prove good associates and powerful in association. § 36. Interdependence of Farming Operations. — The INTERDEPENDENCE OF FARMING OPERATIONS. 49 diverse and incidental but very important farming opera- tions now regarded as of minor importance can in some instances be made of prime importance. And wbat is also to the point, is that in these branches of the industry the net profits would be much the largest, that is, the same amount of money and labor therein would produce more product. Such results can never be thoroughly well accomplished by individual farmers or under any factory system of farming. It may be answered that large estates may be devoted to single minor branches of agriculture, to poultry raising and such like, and thus the greatest economies be prac- ticed. But poultry raising does not submit readily to con- centrated management The slightest mistakes or careless- ness and untoward circumstances cause immense losses by disease. No ordinary hired labor is fit to conduct so deli- cate an operation continuously as raising poultry in crowded quarters. Besides it is expensive to provide land for the single purpose of a poultry range and moreover it is not econom- ical. Ample poultry ranges can be provided and moved about as is required on a lot of associated farms combin- ing all conditions of land and cultivation, so that the best of ranges shall not only not be costly but a benefit to the land, sufiB.cient to offset the trouble. Labor cannot be specially and singly occupied in poul- try raising with economy. Men who were worth having for such work would be very few and very expensive. Biit on the associated farms the simple incidental care and watchfulness of all the people about the houses and fields would obviate nearly all the labor otherwise necessary. Special shepherds would not be necessary as all about would be watch dogs. 4 60 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. The poultry that will range around a farm with but a little intelligent care and always remaia healthy and pro- ductive, will, if brought together by itself into small quar- ters necessary for economy, become the most difi&cult of all things to even keep alive. This distinction as to poultry raising applies with more or less force to all the incidental industries about a com- plete farm. These operations from their very nature can- not be concentrated and carried on alone. Sheep raising is very difficult to carry on at all separately, to say nothing of making it pay especially on valuable land. But some proportion of sheep about a large farm seem not to cost anything even if their presence is not a positive benefit. Hog raising is very much the same, and the absence of them upon a farm would cause no increase of capacity in any other branch. The whole philosophy of this is in the interdependence of the farm operations. They mutually aid one another and are dependent upon each other. Dairying is partly stock raising. The cows have to be raised by some one. Half the calves will not make cows in the nature of the case and must be made into veal or beef. Some of the heifers intended for cows will not prove up to the standard of excellence, and must be fattened and killed. The cows themselves finally go the same way. The by-products of the dairy, skim milk, buttermilk and whey, must be fed to hogs to make it not a waste product but an article of value. To generalize wider yet, all the animal life upon the farm depends upon the vegetable for food, and the latter in turn upon the animal, for the excrements of the latter are the fertilizers that sustain the growth of the plants. Not one of the great circle of industries flourishing upon FABMINQ REQUIRES CO-OPERATION. 51 the land can be separated from each other without losa and failure, — ^loss to all those left, and failure for the one taken apart. If this is the order of nature in cultivating the soil and raising its food, and other products, the true method to pursue is not to go against nature, and separate all these interdependent operations and apply the factory sys- tem to them, but to study the natural course, and make arrangements to meet it in all its intricacies and with intel- ligent prevision. § 37. Farming Requires Co-operation. — It seems that the agriculturist should not be merely a single director, an individual head, or separate worker, but a great multiplied person, an individual made up of many, e pluribus unum, out of many, one. Agriculture is a composite. It is one branch of human activity composed of many inseparable branches. It is a tree nourished by branching roots and growing into many branching limbs, but it is one and inseparable. Corporate association can only make the required many into one individual. The rich man or the employer and his hirelings are not sufficiently unified in action and in interest Perpetual and all seeing superintendence cannot be economical and will not work here as in mechanical industries. The co-operative group where there is the least compulsion required to make it up, and unwilling- ness to remain in it, or dissatisfaction with its distribution of rewards will not have the requisite unity in spirit, the strength of unified feeling. The voluntary incorporated association fills the bill. Instead therefore of agriculture being the one industry in which co-operation is impracticable it is the very one where it is most indispensable. It is the one which requires 52 A FARMERS CORPORATION. every worker to be an interested proprietor, not an- hire- ling, an eye servant. The interdependence of many oper- ations necessitates an interdependence of workers, a mere dependence will not do. Further the very wide scope of the interdependence of farming interests necessitates large operations, so that the minor ones may flourish more thinly spread over the same territory with the larger ones. The by- and waste-products of large industries become valuable, whereas in the case of smaller ones they cannot be utilized. This is pre-emi- nently so of agriculture. So corporate factory farming will be stronger than individual, but co-operative corporate agriculture stronger yet. §38. Widening the Circle of Industry. — If the considera- tion now given to corporate agriculture should convince the farmers of the East that they could as a corporation hold their own in the market for the products of the soil, even as against the competition of the "West, doubts will still arise and linger as to whether they could thus suc- ceed among the corporate giants and monopolies whose products they have to obtain in exchange for their own. They would naturally look to some way of avoiding the exactions of the industrial and trading interests which have now so thoroughly subjugated the farmers. To tell them they must more and more shield themselves from the present disastrous competition by providing for them- selves their own supplies, that they must more and more dominate throughout the circle of the industries which are necessary to supply their wants in civilized life, would but represent to them their own feelings. They would gladly listen to any recital of the methods by which it could be accomplished. They are willing to work hard in any rational way to WIDENING THE CIRCLE OF INDUSTRY. 53 support themselves upon a high plane oiE attainment They are£icking, however, very stoutly against the results of their exertions being gathered in by people and classes who belittle their importance and ridicule their character. To proceed, then, the Androscoggin association would, from the first, include the blacksmiths, the carriage and tool makers and repairers and the local carpenters, with shops and tools upon capital valuation and wage arrange- ments, exactly as farmers were associated. "Work for all sorts of mechanics would quickly be very much increased by the new buildings and appliances re- quired by the association. Advantage would be taken of the fact that in the country mechanics are easily farmers in the summer, and some farmers mechanics in the winter. The association could thus easily manage to make many men's work steady throughout the year though their principal and avowed occupations were available for but one season of the year. Hoop makers and barrel makers, now numerous in Poland and Mi not, would probably be soon largely em- ployed in making cases for the company's own use rather than in making a mere product for sale in the outside market. During the first year the need of drain tile and brick would invite the revival of the abandoned brick yards, or the establishment of new ones with tile as well as brick machinery. Both cost too heavily for transportation to allow of their being purchased outside. While brick would be in much increased use for increasing and more substantial building operations, the great demand for tile would be entirely new to the towns in which our association was operating. The very extensive draining there needed has not been commenced. 54:- A FARMER'S CORPORATION. The butter factory in Poland being now purely co-oper- ative would be patronized by the association. It would of course, however, become ultimately associated formally, as the great majority of the present patrons became mem- bers of the association. The improvement in the herds of the association would soon make it inequitable or imprac- ticable to co-operate with those having poorer ones. The difference in herds is now a serious objection to the opera- tion of butter factories. The corn canning factories are now run very little to the satisfaction of the farmers in Poland, and if any large proportion of them had joined the association, the factories would have to make better terms or not get enough corn planted to keep them running. And in any case, the association would probably have little difficulty in bring- ing one or more of the present canning plants into associa- tion or leasing one of them, if it could not build or buy outright, the first year. The association would have a retail market for some of its canned corn at its store, and instead of packing only corn, it would pack all other fruits and vegetables that could thus be sold at the store. The association's cannery would have the advantage, if it did have to scatter its efforts among several slightly dif- fering productions, because it would sell some of all of them at retail rates, and it would not need to fear the results. An allied business would be to can or put up preserves (in New English) or sweetmeats, when any kind of fruits raised were cheap. The market for these, honestly made, at fair prices, at the store, would be capable of indefinite extension, both in the village and among the farming members of the association, as well as in the general market. All fruit juices whether plain or preserved with THE ASSOCIATION COUNTY WIDE. 55 sugar, or in tlie form of jellies, would be included in this business. The best and most expensive jars might be used, especially as so many would be easily brought back from the store and used any number of times, without loss or transportation of empties. § 39. The Second Year's Growth. — Now considering the second year of the association about to open, the associa- tion would probably have seen that its products, so far as retailed at the store, had produced the best return. Any- thing but flat failure would have made those in neighbor- ing towns wish to join. Then, naturally, a store in another market, next nearest, would be sought out. And one could be advantageously located in Auburn, a city of about ten thousand urban population connected by bridges with Lewiston twice as large. The stores would now take up an increasing proportion of the production of the asso- ciation, and less of the heavier, cruder and lower priced product would be left to be sold at wholesale prices in the open market. The location of the new store would also determine the direction of the growth in area of the asso- ciation. The farmers in the country portions of the city of Auburn, formerly two full sized towns, and in Turner, and possibly Durham, would now be added by association as they wished. § 40. Tlie Association Couniy Wide. — Another year suc- cessful, and a new store in Lewiston would be established, and an increase ia area to cover the other half of the county on the east side of the Androscoggin might be made. Even this county wide area would not make an unwieldy corporation. The number of members would not be absolutely or comparatively excessive, nor would the managerial or clerical work have gotten beyond the executive eyes and hands of the first president and secre- 56 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. tary and possibly an assistant for each. The treasurer of the association would even then, probably, not require assistance. Superintendents would, of course, have been appointed after the first year, in each town. § 41. The Limit of Area. — But just as much as it is necessary to be impressed with the idea that the manage- ment of a sufficiently widely extended and large associa- tion would be perfectly practicable and responsible, it is desirable now, before the limit set for the extension of the typical association is reached, to call the reader's attention to the fact that, after undue extention, this management would become a machine, running perhaps as it was geared, still blindly, and without human intelligence and adaptability. All should try the reach of their imagina- tions, in following this plan, to the widest extension to which single associations are imagined to reach, and see if they can rationally believe in the successful working of even the best system, if extended nation wide, or even State wide, if we consider the larger States. In considering the great capacity for growth of this kind of organization, it is almost as essential to arrive at, and set its legitimate limits. Those limits are probably those set by the capacity of one human intellect to know and grasp detail. It may be said that all the minutest details of the workings of a corporation or association need not be within the knowledge and control of its ex- ecutive head ; but essential details, and all general matters, must be appreciated and digested, and still leave power of execution and government in the executive brain and will. The brain must not be so over-loaded and over- worked that will, initiative and power are annihilated. Such an annihilation of will power by over crowding details is frequently seen. It is this kind of over-work that SAW AND GRIST MILLS ASSOCIATED. 67 drives business men and officials distracted. Weakness of executive action is often conspicuously illustrated by the executive of the nation whose mind has become distracted by detail, for instance in the multitudes of considerations connected with forming judgments of the qualifications of many candidates for many offices. More commonly, how- ever, with accumulating detail strong executives grow to disregard them largely and act upon general principles and by intuition, but even they make great mistakes. Lazy minds also throw away facts and manage by guess and at hazard. In all these cases machinery comes in to take the place of intelligent control. Then the dreary round of bureaucracy begins and progress is stayed. Not only is all this essential as to the executive, but the general workings of such an association must be known and grasped by all the members, if the idea as organized is to be really fruitful. The men must dominate the machine, not the machine the men. A general national association might possibly be as beneficent in its operation as those confined to small States, or to fractions of large States, but probably it would become a great drifting incubus, grinding all to powder, stifling liberty, and op- pressing the intellect. Watch for the limit of your intellectual grasp, and do not let any scheme carry you beyond it, and do not let the best and truest of principles usurp the place of intelli- gence. This is the limit of corporate co-operate or asso- ciate activity. § 42. Satv and Grist Mills Associated. — Before the county wide limits had been reached, the industries to serve as a vanguard of the invasion of the kingdom of industry proper, would have begun to be recruited. Saw mill by saw mill would have been absorbed, and soon would 58 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. become power shops where all the various forms of wood- work was done, from simple planing to cabinet making. More grist mills -would have immediately become a prime necessity to an improved and diversified and extended agriculture ; and runs of stone would have been added to the saws and woodworking machinery on the best water powers. Probably all the minor products, or forms of grains, for consumption, like oatmeal, cracked wheat, and graham flour, that have a relatively high retail price from the smaller demand for them, would very soon be turned out by the association. Its flour would, of course, be ground by itself, even if from purchased wheat. § 43. The Woolen Industry. — Carding mills, knitting, and other wool working machinery, would be associated and improved, or set up on the unused or partially used water powers. It might be that the existing woolen mills, now apparently being deliberately ruined by the policy of theif owners' fool political friends, would be found within available absorption as lame industrial ducks. They would have to be remodeled however. For the associa- tion would better use up its wool to make the varied minor fabrics that its own market would take up, rather than continue the business on the lines which have of late led to the sepulchre of capital. The utmost adapta- bility of circumstances have been rendered nugatory to produce prosperity hj business mismanagement and legis- lative ignorance. The association would find, notwith- standing the former failures, that the wool which grew on its mutton would profitably be used at home, even long before any manufacture of cloth of any of the uniform standards, to say nothing of the higher grades, was attempted. Here as elsewhere, the association would find its greatest early advantage in doing a retail, rather than THE CLOTHING TRADE. 59 a wholesale business, even iu manufacturing. It is the result and resort of business incapacity, to blindly pro- duce immense quantities of simple or uniform product, without regard to any probable market. The greatest industries are now really the most stupidly carried on, prac- tically left to run themselves — into the ground. § 44. The Clothing Trade in the North grows out of the woolen industry. The first cloths that the association's woolen mills made would be for home consumption. The association's market would soon justify a ready-made clothing shop upon a small scale. And then the women throughout that country who do slop work for sweater's wages, would do the company's work in better shape for several times the wages they now get ; for the wages, fifteen or twenty cents for making a pair of trousers, for example, constitute such a small percentage of the cost that much more could probably be paid and the sweater's present profits not used up, leaving several other profits to be still saved by the association. Indeed it is likely that it v;ould be found that in the company's shop all the work could be custom made to measure, and yet present retail prices of the ready-made article not be reached. Much custom work is now done in New York at ordinary ready made clothing prices. In this industry is now done some of the meanest trad- ing any business can show. The wages paid are outra- geously inadequate. Sweating is indigenous in this field of labor. Human vultures prey on the most unfortunate in the industrial lottery. Besides the oppression of the clothing workers, the grossest frauds are practiced on the materials ; yet " regu- lar " prices are so out of reason that they are constantly cut by the dealers from a third to a half, and then real 60 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. value is probably not reached. And ■withal, the manage- ment of the persons carrying on the trade is so imbecile and corrupt that fraudulent failures are constant, and so much the rule that in New York a large j)erceatage of the goods retailed are sold under real or simulated forced sale. Broadway is constantly plastered with flaring signs of assignee's sales, dissolution sales and fire insurance sales of clothing at half or one-third prices, and in the Bowery little else is seen. § 45. Wool Growing would take on a very different aspect when it came to be a question of providing directly for the clothing of the corporators, than when it was sim- ply to raise wool to sell upon a market filled with finished product universally made of cotton and shoddy and called woolens. The association would naturally think of returning to the lost art of making pure woolens such as are needed in its northern climate. It would find that wool was cheaper in the end than cotton ; and the people would cease to wear clothing in which there was no warmth, and which would hardly outlast three foggy mornings. Sheep raising would be capable of great extension in the wide territories controlled by the company. The actual cost of its wool would be almost nothing considered with reference to the disadvantage of not engaging in its growth. It is very short-sighted policy for northern agricultural interests to neglect the great northern clothing staple. Much northern land is good for nothing but sheep walks, or is improved by periodical or temporary use as such. The association would have the men at disposal for shepherds, so that the sheep need not be left to shift for themselves entirely, as they are now almost necessarily left by individual farmers continually employed at their other regular farm work. LEATHER MANUFACTURING. 61 Large interests have always been essential to sheep- raising, as witness the growth of the industry among the landed proprietors of England only when their estates became large, and in other countries where wide ranges are obtainable. The associated interests would easily adapt themselves to this most important business, and instead of sheep driving and keeping men out of the country, the better the men were organized, the more sheep would be essential to their complete cultivation of the powers of nature for the supply of their needs. Considering the eternal fitness of things, the lean lands, the hardy habits of sheep, the extra quality of wool grown in cold latitudes, the requirements of the human body for honest woolen coverings in such climates, and the adapta- bility of sheep raising to large herds and wide ranges, it would seem that great northern farming corporations would tend to run to sheep raising almost as the South now does to cotton. No effort would be required to set the fashion of mutton consumption. No farmer would say that the policy of pushing the business of sheep rais- ing as far as the experience of the company should war- rant, would not be extremely judicious. The requirements of the industry would but be the utilization of wasted opportunities. Not fewer cattle and hogs would be raised in consequence, but more, as a direct result of the increas- ing flocks of sheep. § 46. Leather Manufacturing. — Another industry, now ranked as a great industry, that is, one in which very extensive manufactories are now operated, would immedi- ately be begun by the association in its smallest develop- ments, where also the greatest profits would be found by intelligent management. The leather that had covered the beef and veal raised by the association and sold at its 63 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. stores, would be tanned by the association in some of the revivified, but now decaying tanneries scattered through all the region. This leather would be made up, perhaps, by single working shoemakers, at their own benches or aggregated together in a bench shop, or its equivalent, into superior goods for the home retail trade. It would not be at all indispensable that a modern shoe factory be started, at first, if at all. In this industry, progress in division of labor seems to have accomplished no certain advance, except in the way of chaining cheap labor to incompetent management, for the production of goods, cheap in both senses, cheap in cost, and cheap in value. It is a striking commentary on the vaunted management of capital and machinery enterprise, that the latest and largest shops for making shoes in the centre of the largest city on the continent are for the turning out of hand made shoes. These makers like the association manufacture their own shoes to be sold at retail. It may be well imagined that these large establishments do not succeed in selling their hand made shoes much cheaper than individual shoemakers will sell them made to measure. In fact the large majority of these custom shoemakers, and their number does not seem in New York to diminish but rather increase, make and sell their work cheaper than the hand made work of the larger establishments is retailed for in their expensive stores. And generally the prices of the two kinds of work, hand and machine, approach very closely in New York between those who make and sell their own goods at one profit and those who sell machine work to cover many profits. The association shops might very probably be custom shops where the lasts of all the members would be kept and boots and shoes made upon them to order, just as is ALUMINUM. 63 now done by fashionable makers in New York and the large cities. And again we may say that the prices of the well fitting honestly made work need hardly exceed pres- ent prices of slop work. We may say, then, that the company would probably begin tlie making up of its own leather according to the latest developed plan, that is, the old plan of honest work turned out by intelligent labor. It is a satisfaction to me to believe that in the first steps in many of the industries the association would take, it would rediscover the true industrial path, though perhaps long untrod by a greedy generation unwise except in selfishness. § 47. Iron Industry. — One of the earliest necessities of the association would be an iron foundry and general iron works on a small scale. Agricultural implements of the simpler forms and carts and wagons composed partly of iron, and much miscellaneous iron ware could profitably be made to sell to a retail market and for the supply of the association itself. This near-by market would be entirely adequate. And indeed from the nature of the industry, it will be inevitable that wholesale shall give way to retail manu- facture of iron after it is in pigs. There is and can be no such advantage in division of labor in immense estab- lishments that can legitimately overbalance the greatly increased cost of transportation of most wares and imple- ments into wbich iron enters, to say nothing of the loss of such high priced and bulky products in finding a slow and uncertain market. Iron works will inevitably dot the whole country and be interspersed throughout the villages and among the farms where iron prodiicts are used. § 48. Aluminum. — If a process is pei-fected for making aluminum cheaply out of clay, the clay beds of the associ- 6J: A FARMER'S CORPORATION. ation might very soon be tliouglit of with the intent of adding to the brick and tile machinery upon them that required by the new process. Through this all-purpose metal the association and the whole Bast might soon be somewhat relieved of its reliance upon distant metal producing regions. If therefore the patent monopoly of the discoverers of the process did not prevent, or the tribute demanded were not unreasonable, works would be immediately started to make the metal right where the raw material was found and among the very people in want of the finished prod- uct This product would be completely finished, too, whether made wholly or partly of the metal. This should be the case with aluminum products in case of every region possessing so common a soil as clay. This industry that may become enormous would thus never be centralized in localities or in individuals. § 49. Electrical Development. — Probably the fuel for the iron works of the Androscoggin valley will yet be derived from the falling water of the Little Androscoggin and the Androscoggin rivers turned into heat through electrical agency. But in the first place wires would be strung from its mills and water wheels wherever situated. And they would go in a network to and through the association's farm houses and buildings, lighting and warming them, and furnishing power to all the varied rural industries. This would be done so economically that the service would be extended to the villages and cities, and electricity then, for the first time, become so generally used as to be a real and universal popular benefit. Caillard in "Electricity, the Science of the Nineteenth Century " at page 245 says : " The continual regret of ELECTRICAL DEVELOPMENT. 65 electrical eugineers is the amount of energy running to waste in our streams and rivers, their dream for the future being that as electrical transmission of power becomes better understood, and more easily available over long distances, the water power of every country may be found sufficient for its needs." Employed by associations the electrical engineers may make water powers serve the needs of all the people, but if they can only be the servants of capital, they never can make the water powers serve but the money powers of a select few of the people. It is stated that even now capi- talists have agents traveling through the country, buying up water privileges for mere songs in anticipation of the time when the people can be therewith made to pay them enormous revenues. The idea now is solely to take this power filched from the country to the cities, there to serve the rapidly concen- trating electrical companies which will soon be one. No one has the will or ability to supply electrical improve- ments to the rural districts except great farmers' compa- nies, and the accomplishment would be a progress in the means and gifts of civilization that would go far to justify the existence of such associations among the farmers. It would be done at no great expense of capitalization to absorb the results of the labors of coming generations. It would gradually and naturally come about at almost no appreciable cost, by a simple creation of capital which would be the most prominent economical function of asso- ciation. The forests of the already too denuded rural towns will be relieved of the destruction by the fires of the farm houses, and will only be called upon to answer for cabinet and such like purposes. Coal will not need to be expen- 5 66 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. sively procured to supply wood's place, nor to make gas, and oil will not be needed. The cascades of the Andres- coggin valley may be called streams of oil and natural gas. They are both and more. They will rush when the wells have long ceased to gush. They will flow when the wells have been exhausted and are filled with stagnant water. Association in Androscoggin will have piped its oil and gas through solid wires which will be live wires when the associations of the oil regions and natural gas fields are slowly gathering together the fragments of the powers of nature that may be left over from the exploita- tion of the speculators and capitalists. Those fruitful regions now favored of capitalists will probably be among the most impressive of the ruins of their enterprise, a last- ing memorial of that great aggregate capitalist, the Stand- ard Oil Company. § 50. Small Manufacturing. — Caillard in her work on Electricity, says on page 243 : " It has not indeed yet been applied to great distances and large power; but whatever initial difficulties there may be in thus utilizing it, they are not of such a formidable nature as to prevent or even long retard its wide-spread adoption ; and not scientists and electrical engineers only, but the foremost statesman in England [Lord Salisbury, in his speech at the first dinner of the Institute of Electrical Engineers] has ventured to look forward to the time when noisy and crowded factories will be abolished, and each workman supplied at his own house with the power necessary for his work, distributed from a central station as electric lighting currents now are." At least we may hope that the transmission as well as collection of power will allow the use of comparatively small and economical factories close by, though possibly SMALL MANUFACTURING. 67 not in, the houses of the workers, which is the consum- mation most devoutly to be wished It is pleasing to see, on page 400 of "Wells' " Eecent Economic Changes" an inspiring corroboration, extending and giving authority to this view. "Dr. Werner Siemens, the celebrated German scientist and inventor, in a recent address at Berlin on 'Science and the Labor Question,' claimed that the necessity for ex- tension of factories and workshops, involving large capital and an almost 'slavish' discipline for labor — to secure the maximum cheapness in production, 'was due, to a great extent, to the yet imperfect development of the art of practical mechanics ' ; and that mechanical skill will ultimately effect 'a return to the system (now almost extinct) of independent, self-sustaining domiciliary labor' by the introduction of cheap, compact, easily set up and operated labor saving machinery into the smaller work- shops and the homes of the workingmen. Should the difficulties now attendant upon the transmission of elec- tricity from points where it can be cheaplj' generated, and its safe and effective subdivision and distribution as a motive force be overcome (as is not improbable they vdti- mately will be), thus doing away with the necessity of multijplying expensive and cumbersome machinery — steam engines, boilers, dams, reservoirs, and water-wheels — for the local generation and application of mechanical power, there can be no doubt that most radical changes in the use of power for manufacturing purposes will speedily follow, and that the anticipations of Dr. Siemans, as to the change in the relations of machinery to its operatives, may at no distant day be realized." Here we have the highest authority for the removal of one of the most serious objections association has to en- 68 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. counter, the factitious economy and power of the great factory system. Tbe small industries of the future would flourish best in association with their nearest neighbors. § 51. Completing the Circle of Industries. — The number of minor industries that would fall into the county associa- tion's operations would not be less, but infinitely more, in number and variety, than those newfound in eastern coun- ties. The industrial or artisan class would then begin to feel the full advantages of association started by the farmers. Then would come into view the outlines of the complete circle of industries of the maturer association with its benediction to all, believers and unbelievers alike. The benefits of association would eventually be alike to the just and unjust, for its all-enveloping and pervading power would be just as universal as the natural sequences of the dews and rains. Its employing capacity would be such that, if the laborers who came in at the eleventh hour were not paid for the whole day's work, they would at least find employment at equitable wages for the re- mainder of the work day, as surely as those who had commenced in the morning. There might be the further justice in the modem vineyard that those who had worked through the heat of the day would long before the eleventh hour, say at the eighth, have retired with their just recompense to spend the cool of the day and shades of evening in the enjoyment of a well earned rest. § 52. Extertmm to the Sea. — As the county organization of the association was approached and realized the neces- sity of attending to the recurring surplus of production and to the importation of outside products would force itself upon the association. It would see the advantage of adapting and co-ordinating the one to the other, and of exercising nearly the same precision and control of this EXTENSION TO THE SEA. 69 trade as of its home market trade. It would wish to ap- proach and directly sell to those from whom it found it necessary to buy. It would early begin to look for a sea- port. It would find that from the lower extremity of the market, as well as political influence of its Lewiston and Auburn center, it was but the length of a single town to an admirable little port with an encouraging and inspiring name. The annexation of Freeport to the association would accomplish transportation emancipation, for from there the association could trade in its own schooners and steamers, and what is more, it could there make them. Freeport does such things now. Old ship-yards might be invited into the bonds of association or new ones might be laid out. The new development of this much cherished industry of shipbuilding would have a patriotic motive and be entered into with the zeal of a state pride in a noble industry now languishing in a lamented decrepitude brought on by wounds received in the house of its enemies, now neglected in the hospital of ignorance and quackery of its fool friends. The word Freeport would, to the association, seem an in- spiration of medicament in the treatment of the disease fastened on the vitals of this industry. It might not be able to secure any medicine to cure the patient while he remained in the hospital, but it would remove him and give him a chance to live hygienically, believing that nature would repair his constitution. The association oxygen would counteract the political miasma of protection, and the industrial malaria of monopoly, and shipbuilding would be itself again. Freeport is at the most northerly extremity of Casco Bay, and it, with Yarmouth, and Brunswick where the Andros- coggin falls into tide-water, would be the natural outlets of -the association to the seaward. The growth of the associ- 70 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. ation in this direction would include tlie northeastern towns of Cumberland County, New Gloucester, Pownal, North Yarmouth and Harpswell and probably Bowdoin and Tops- ham in Sagadahoc County. § 53. Reaching Outside Marlcets. — Then the associa- tion's surplus would go to market under the association's own sails and in its own bottoms, and in return its require- ments from the markets of the world would be brought back. Thus transportation of these goods would be added to the economies of the association. Boston and New York would be at its doors economically, and stores for the sale of its products might be opened there to further bene- fit by retail rather than wholesale prices in those markets. With its experience in the local stores it should be enabled to put its stores in the great markets upon a substantial footing at once. But the principal use of the sea road would be in going beyond Boston and New York and placing the association's northern products upon a southern market and receiving southern products at first hand. The storekeepers at Mechanic Falls, Auburn and Lewiston and the other villages, and throughout the association, would have handled or been able to handle much southern produce, sweet pota- toes, oranges, watermelons and other fruits to say nothing of green vegetables out of the northern season. § 54. Branch Associations to the Southward. — It would be seen that upon this open road were lands and commu- nities where association would flourish. Missionaries of industry would, if association were not already planted and ready to engage in a direct equitable trade or exchange of products, go to the St. Mary's Eiver between Georgia and Florida say, and buy lands and associate farmers and laborers. Then would begin a subsidiary or branch associa- THE COTTON INDUSTRY ASSOCIATED. 71 tion, really an extensiou of the original, and subject to the modified conditions, growing in the same manner as the original. Here upon the St. Mary's, oranges grow fairly well, subject to occasional failure from frost. Sweet pota- toes make astonishing returns to those who will work differently from the negro who is satisfied with the product of half an acre or even the white cultivator whose ambition does not reach a two acre patch. Almost every tropical or sub-tropical requirement of the northern market flourishes. The forests cleared off the southern lands in the course of their improvement, would furnish some acceptable ship and other timber to carry north. The raw material for southern wood working trades, and for all the new build- ings, erections, tools and implements to be required in that almost entirely undeveloped country would be found. The St. Mary's branch of the association could probably economically supply crude sugar to association refineries situated on the Casco Bay coast, at any rate to the extent of supplying the association's own market Even now it seems that the peach growing region of the future is right there in southern Georgia. And the association would gladly embark in so desirable an indus- try as raising and transporting peaches. What is much to the point, too, land has not a boom or orange belt prica The beginnings and growth of this venture would have to be small and carefully watched. But there could be no insuperable difficulties. There would be magnificent opportunities. Combining a reciprocal northern and southern market with transportation by the traders them- selves, being the producers of their commodities also, would be a great benefit to all. § 55. Tlie Coitaii Industry Associated. — One of the most 72 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. alluring of the incentives to the southern venture would be to raise cotton for the Lewiston mills and- bring it in return voyages to their very doors. It is believed great improvements in cotton culture could be made. No such improvement has been made upon the system that grew up under slavery, which sys- tem is really but a one mule system, which, like all one horse systems, will be likely to be superseded. At any rate the cotton produced as but one of a complete circle of agricultural production would of course be more cheaply and advantageously produced than now. It could but be a profitable transaction. More than likely some of the weaker of the mills would be ripe to be associated with the rest of the count}'. From that time, with cotton products added to woolen, leather, wood and iron, the industrial segment of the circle of the association would begin to close up the other segment. Mills not advan- tageously offered would, however, not be taken. The place for the mills of the future would be on the sea shore where the cottou was landed, in Yarmouth, Freeport, Harpswell and Brunswick. Though the power were obtained from the Androscoggin, and but a small proportion from its tide-water fall at Brunswick, all the falls above would be, one by one, wired to the coast, and the great industries to be created by the association would be on the ocean roadway. Thus would grow up the strongest possible industrial combination in the greatest of industries. The cotton raised would be brought by home transportation to the doors of the mills, themselves run by the cheapest of motors, and by their situation in turn being at the doors of the great markets, besides hav- ing a partial market of their own associators. § 56. The Negro Associated. — "We may well stop here TBE NEGRO ASSOCIATED. 73 and consider what the association idea in the southern branch would import to the negro and the negro question on the St. Marj's. Of course the black men of the neigh- borhood as they were gradually employed by the associa- tion would, the same as white workers, be associated with all that that implies, by the fact of such employment. Their participation would be of the same character and could be expected to be measurably fraught with the same consequences as in the case of white workers. Their diligence would at least be somewhat stimulated. The northern association would feel no danger of the preponderance of the influence of the less generally culti- vated black worker. Whether a southern association could be so generous in the bestowal of the corporate franchise might be a serious question. Perhaps more conservative counsels would prevail with them. They might be expected to require the possession of a share of stock as a qualification for suffrage. In either case, the work of the negroes would be laid out for them and their natural errors of judgment result- ing perhaps from inherited inexperience in management would be avoided. Their perhaps easily discouraged wills would be relieved of much of the load that overweights them, left suddenly, as a race, to individual management and self stimulation. They would again work in gangs according to the racial liking. Then light and joyous natures would doubtless bring laggards in work up to the more diligent. Those most diligent would easily be led to be more so, and to appreciate the prospect which would be held out to them in fact and deed as well as word, of taking position in the management. Negroes would, from the first, with care in selection, be given minor superintend- encies. If such a combination of management without 74 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. ofEeBsive coercion did not produce great results with the race it would be a wonder. If the negro is traditionally fond of chickens and watermelons, and forgetful of the special property rights therein, a grand transformation would result from a con- dition in which chickens and watermelons would be raised in association, so that each black associate would be perfectly at liberty to live on either or both to his heart's content. And chickens and watermelons are both probably intrinsically as cheap in the South as bacon and meal. "When the chickens and watermelons were thus placed with reference to the man, the crime in his heart, if indeed there were any in the former circumstances, would dis- appear. When he had enough of everything, such as association management would give him, he would in no case be a purloiner, and probably the sin of covetousness would cease to have reign in his heart at an earlier stage of prosperity than in the case of the men of any other race. He is easily satisfied, perhaps too easily. But abundance of chickens and watermelon, would unques- tionably at first make him a willing associate and worker. Great banking may be made upon the efficacy of the gospel of plenty upon the negro character. It would accomplish much, especially if blended with well placed deserved approbation which the negro loves, and chance of distinction which stimulates his ambition, perhaps more than it does that of most people. The fact is, negroes will make first class associators. Their best qualities are well fitted for it, and their worst ones will be snuffed out by it. Qualities they lack they will sooner acquire under association than in any other way. When they see intelligence and knowledge make USE OF NORTHERN ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 75 their fellows important, and when the means of informa- tion are all about them, they will more or less swiftly acquire learning especially that of a practical kind. Their individual importance in the association would be exactly the same as that of the white members, accord- ing to their varying individual qualities. Their social position would not be changed except as association would induce a gradual if not a rapid improvement in their material prosperity and in their characters. Whether this would tend gradually to social equality between blacks and whites, this deponent saith not, but he does say that the value of association in this as well as in every other respect to the negro race would far exceed that of emancipation. Whether the political position of the negro would be changed, it could be more confidently answered. In the first place political questions under association would have far less importance anyway. And in the second place the experience of the negro in the industrial determinations according to modified political methods in the association elections, would be an experience of value. But further than all, the improvement in the condition and character of the negro would make his political action like that of other men. § 57. Use of the Northern Androscoggin Valley. — The de- finitive necessary enlargement of the area of the Andros- coggin association's home territory would be to extend backward to the sources of the Androscoggin river and the limits of the State. In those counties of Oxford and Franklin are large and convenient areas of productive and virgin land. It would not be recklessly cleared up. The forest areas would be conserved. The great Eangeley Lakes would be great trout banks which would rival the 76 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. cod banks of Newfoundland in their production. Great areas would be arranged to bear valuable game and furs. Fox, sable, otter and bear, moose, deer, rabbits and par- tridges, would all probably be found to have a commercial value not in a domesticated, but controlled and preserved state. Rational means of feeding at critical periods and of improving the natural feeding grounds would allow a many fold multiplication of the natural denizens of the forest. For example, at the foundation of the fur raising part of this undertaking would be the preserving of rab- bits before noticed. Their increase would easily be carried to great lengths by supplies of food at a few points during the winters. Ensilage would probably be an admirable and cheap food for them. Sable, otter and mink would do their own fishing in the association preserves if it was adjudged an economical way of raising fur, if not, they would be disallowed and exterminated. The pasturage for deer would improve by the same means as that of rabbits. § 68. Different Methods with Game. — It may have struck the reader that the way the association approached these northern and wooded regions was very different from the one that had been followed heretofore Instead of simple forest destruction, forest preservation and land improve- ment would be the rule. Instead of game extermination without profit to any one, game preservation would be attended with great advantage to all. Instead, too, of game preserves for the mere sport of the idle and rich, the people of the association would live, more scattered indeed, and thrive throughout the whole of the beautiful region. And it would be these people so living along the sti-eams and upon the choice bits of land that would be compensated for something of isolation by the sport of DIFFERENT METHODS WITH OAME. 77 the chase. They would, moreover, to the visitors the region attracted, allow its attractions to become accessible and popularized all to their further advantage. Visitors could be given the privilege of the utmost enjoyment of sport while the spoils of rifle and rod were utilized, but, most important of all, not abused by indiscriminate de- struction. The sport would be adjusted to the game the same as the killing of flocks is regulated to the advantage of the flock master. In this way the capacity of the region for sport would not be diminished but multiplied, not made costly and exclusive but cheap and popular. An interesting comparison may be made here between association and individualistic management. The royal furs that grow on the backs of black foxes and the other scarcely less valuable ones would, on the one hand, be controlled, regulated and we might say raised almost as though in the state of domesticity, and the beautiful and useful furs would be made a great and increasing source of wealth. On the other hand individual greed has chased all these from the very places to which thep will be brought back. At this present moment, but in a more inaccessible locality, the same ridiculous game of greed is being played and the Alaska seal is being rapidly and senselessly extermi- nated. When the seals are all gone the black and silver fox of our northern climes, which is the only really comparable fur, will be left to be obtained only under strict cultivation, for the}' are now as nearly exterminated as their wide and desolate range admits of. Only by association of wide areas and many persons could such an undertaking be made practical. The cost of any special attendance upon such a preserve would be 78 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. as ineffectual as it would be enormous. Associations would watch and guard along witk their daily avocations at no expense and very effectually. § 59. Log Houses. — The association would very likely in its pioneer work in this northern region, and to some degree throughout its extent, build log houses as did our forefathers in settling the country. Barns and out build- ings, pleasure lodges and shelters, and bird and animal shelters, would also be made out of whole sticks of wood. The last named of these structures would be the work of but a few hours or days and of a few men. Houses and farm buildings would be carefully put up of logs hewn or sawed upon three sides. They might be made in tasteful designs as is now being done by rich men as a fashionable fad. These houses may be finished carefully with matched boards of the native hard woods, oiled to show the natural grain, thus making the most exquisite interiors. If care- fully calked or laid with glue or pitch between the logs, and sheathing paper or felt between the log wall and the finishing, such house would be more comfortable and ser- viceable than any houses yet devised, especially for northern climates. The cost of even the most elaborate house put up by practical men would scarcely approach that of the common frame structures, to say nothing of those of brick or stone. If made by a skilled crew of men with portable saw and planing mills the cost of these buildings could hardly be one-tenth that of the ordinary frame buildings. This would be especially so where made, as they well might be, of woods that were worth no more than fire wood. It is further believed that a modification of this kind of house made of simple squared sticks of timber either put TRANSPORTATION. 79 up in regular log house fashion or in standing order, side by side, would in most parts of this country be cheaper aud more reasonable and satisfactory than the ordinary houses. In such cases the planed and well matched walls presented by the very timber itself would make the finest kind of walls and ceilings. Upon the outside the planed surface painted would simply be flat where we are used to the corrugated appearance of clapboards or shingles, which, however, is not so plainly artistic as to exclude other fashions, and the solid wall would easily lend itself to ornamentation. There seems to be a good deal of nonsense in the way in which the timber is sawed up and split up and crossed and recrossed in the making of house walls. The timber that is saved by leaving air spaces in walls and floors cer- tainly does not pay for the extra labor and time entailed. The solid wall of wood would be far the best protector from the weather. The whole thing is a nonsensical divi- sion of labor and material that has grown up out of unrea- soning pursuance of customary and trade methods. Even in the case of roofs, timbers set with their sturdy squared sides to each other with good calking, would shed the rain better than the roofs the roofers have given us from the days of the thatchers down. The repairs in periodical calking would be simple and inexpensive com- pared with the repairing of roofs now, especially the ex- pensive shingling the poor farmers have to do every dozen years or so. Coming back to the log houses pure and simple, how- ever, who does not see that such structures in sylvan would be a perennial delight to artistic tastes, in their ex- quisite accord with the eternal fitness of things ? § 60. Transportation. — When we had got back into these 80 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. last two northern counties and even in the northern part of Androscoggin county, we should have got beyond the distance of about thirty miles from the sea, now the limit at which team transportation is cheaper than rail including breaking bulk. But it will be considered that the stone roads that were gradually being made would at least double this limit by allowing twice tbe load to be carried that can now be, and at probably greater speed. And when it is also remembered that these roads were capable of use by electric motors as well as by steam road locomo- tives it will be easily seen that the entire hundred miles between Freeport and Yarmouth and Canada line would be economically covered, especially when it is considered that the traf&c in the northern regions would be compara- tively light from the nature of the uses for which it is intended. We should ultimately need neither the existing nor any other railroads, or their service, for our freight traffic, and probably not for our passengers. The electric motors, as far as stone roads went, would give better and faster service than is afforded upon any railroad beyond the immediate vicinity of metropolitan cities. Electric motors, or at least steam ones, could be arranged for winter snow transportatiou without doubt. There are now steam loggers which operate in the snow, in logging camps, to draw trains of log-laden sleds, which is beyond comparison harder to accomplish than to run over well laid out traveled roads which would be kept well trodden. § 61. Refrigeration. — The growing use of ice and refrig- eration processes for preserving from decay, and prolonging the season of all fruits and vegetables and meats, in their fresh state, would have received attention by the Andros- coggin association from the beginning. There ice can be stored on every farm at almost no expense. The associa- REFRIGERATION. 81 tion would have immediately seen the advantage of pro- viding cold rooms in very many of its farm buildings for the purpose of keeping the products designed for its own stores. Those stores would themselves have been provided with extensive cold rooms. Most home raised vegetables would thus be kept in good condition the year round. The very unsatisfactory process of drying fruits would have been quickly abandoned for the cheaper way of pro- longing the life of the fruit in its fresh state. Apples would thus of course be, as they are now to a limited ex- tent, kept in their original shape until new ones appeared upon the association's own trees. Meats would be kept in cold rooms, and not salted and spoiled as formerly, by New England farmers. This new development in agricultural industry, now be. ing exploited by speculators and traders in farm products to a limited extent and for mere personal gain, which is greatest while the process is made of very limited applica- tion, would, in collective hands, cause almost a food pro- ducing revolution. Not only would the consumption of fresh food vastly increase, but the absolute consumption of all food would increase, and the race become better fed, as the result of the cheap way of placing appetizing products constantly within the reach of all. The limitations of food consumption are little realized by well-fed citizens. In the countrv districts even, salted meats and dried fruits and paucity of vegetables are universal and continuous in their real limitation of the amount that people eat. They cannot properly nourish themselves even on an abundance of such stuff. This, added to the fact that working farmers hardly could have, and certainly have not ever, separately, pro- vided themselves with any reasonable variety of fruits and vegetables and meats, shows the vast room for improve- 6 82 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. ment. Thus those who themselves cultivate the ground for a living, are not, and never have been, able to enjoy any great share of the products that ground might furnish them. Through association and by prosaic refrigeration would be many times multiplied the comforts and joys of the farm- er's existence throughout all our broad land. There can be no need to trace the results of cheapened fresh fruits and vegetables upon the supply of food to the city multitudes, nor to detail the facts of the present under feeding of the vast majority of city populations. It may safely be affirmed, moreover, that not one tenth of the immense improvement in this direction that can be ob- tained, will be derived by the people at the hands of trade, and individual initiative without association. § 62. Wheat Raising would be of questionable policy with the Androscoggin association. But the fact that it is now abandoned in the East is not conclusive of the question, however, for by improved agricultural methods eastern associations would raise good crops of wheat at no great disadvantage. But if associations were organized in the West an arranged reciprocal trade in wheat for other goods would probably be mutually beneficial. But the association would assuredly avoid buying of Old Hutch or any other members of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the cars or canal boats that brought the wheat would be reloaded with the goods the western association wanted in return for the wheat. New England is finding it ruinous to buy farm products from the West in the open market, and throw its own surplus productions onto the same market. There seems to be a want of reciprocity some- where, and unless associations could find reciprocity of a MEAT PRODUCING. 83 definite and certain character they would raise their own wheat. § 63. Meat Producing would not present exactly the same problem as wheat raising. Agricultural operations cannot be profitably carried on without producing animals as well as vegetables. "What is true of sheep, that they are almost absolutely beneficial by their presence on the farm, is more or less so of all animals. As we have mentioned in another connection, they constitute a necessary fact of the agricultural rotation of products. Beef especially, at wholesale prices, does now seem to pay the eastern farmer much, but he would continue to raise cattle if it could not be given away. Besides the retail rate would be a paying one for the association, and it is so inextricably interwoven with the dairying interest that the dairying herds of the association would produce all the beef its local market would need. It would by prefer- ence supply other meats, mutton and especially poultry and fish to a greater proportion than is now demanded, and at a cheaper comparative rate than now, to take beef's place. Young Jersey beef, however, is incomparably excellent. And Jersey cows kept only during the years of their real usefulness as butter producers would be made into beef when but seven or eight years old, at which age they could be made fair beef. AH other dairying breeds are supposed to excel the Jerseys in this particular. There is not the slightest real question that no other meats except pork would be required to be obtained from the West or anywhere else in quantities. And as to the pig his presence in complete farming is indispensable, and he would undoubtedly be much more extensively and rationally grown in the East than at present. He will yet be given an honorable place in the green pastures of the 84 A FARMER'S CORPORATION. East, under the open canopy of heaven, rather than be so ignominiously kept in foul sties as at present. § 64. Corn Raising. — Another important matter would be that no corn would be imported into the association. It, like beef, is necessarily produced in all profitable farm- ing. Good farming must have corn, its fodder and its grain, at the very foundation of the system, along with grass and hay. Besides it is only necessary to remind the reader that we found Illinois lands in the towns from which the association started, to decide the question whether corn can be profitably grown in the East By such farmers as the association would be, it could be grown as cheaply there as in the West, and therefore would not be bought but raised. § 65. The Best Paying Crops Fallacy has taken strong hold of the eastern farmers, until they hardly seem farmers at all, but traders, considering that they themselves buy their flour, corn and meat largely as they do their sugar, tea, coffee and other groceries. The idea of raising only the best paying crops lies at the basis of practical agricul- ture as it is at present conducted there, and as it is taught by agricultural writers. But it is a division of industry that has proved unfortunate to the farmers, the least inde- pendent and wealthy parties to trade. It will of course be avoided by associations, although they would have many advantages in this regard over individual farmers. A crop raised for consumption or for a retail market would be a bird in hand and worth two in the bushes of trade. This is especially so since produce exchange and board room sharks have become so powerful. If busi- ness men still hesitate to use cheap oil for fuel because it is within the power of one party, the Standard Oil Com- pany, to double its price without a moment's warning, it THE BEST PAYING CROPS FALLACY. 85 is but worldly wisdom for agricultural producers not to trust themselves in dependence upon a treacherous market as buyers or sellers unnecessarily. Associations will raise practically all crops that pay it at all to raise, instead of a few crops that apparently pay a little better than the others, relying upon the market for those not raised. CHAPTER II. TAEMING CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. § 66. Eastern Associations. — To show that the Andros- coggin valley is not the easiest place in which to make a farmer's corporation flourish, just think out the points in which it would have been easier to have imagined the pioneerassociationbeginninginthetownsof Falmouth and Cumberland on Casco Bay, farther along towards Portland than Freeport and Yarmouth. The principal market of this association would have been at Portland, as near by as Lewiston and Auburn are to Poland and Minot. But Falmouth and Cumberland are themselves ports from which surplus products would have been from the first most beneficially carried to market in schooners. The store when established in Portland would have been in a more favorable exchange market than Auburn and Lewis- ton. The country around and back of Portland is better than in Androscoggin ; and an association taking in the Presumpscot and Saco valleys and the adjacent parts of New Hampshire and possibly Vermont, for which Portland is the nearest seaport, would have more easily and quickly flourished. A Kennebec association beginning around Bath or Augusta, Maine, would have worked more than equally well, for the Kennebec valley is a garden spot compared with that of the Androscoggin. In an incomparably greater degree must we believe that farming corporations at any point on the Hudson river or CANADIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 87 along the free Erie canal would succeed. The many large cities along this water way afford fine markets quite near enough together, with the greatest of all, New York city, within easy reach both by water in the summer and by rail at all times. Furthermore the soil of this region is nearer up to the standard of the fertility of the country generally, than is that of any part of Maine. An association of Jersey farmers, having any one or more of the numerous suburban cities of that State for a primary objective market with New York or Philadelphia just beyond, over the river, in either case, would seem even more favorably located yet. Indeed any situation in the Eastern States is good enough to give associated farming good chances of success. The great differences in the character of lands that lie side by side throughout that country require the construction of a great aggregated person to make complete use of them. Lands too hard or too sterile to enable an indi- vidual farmer to get his living upon them alone, and there- fore worthless for individual use, would all have consider- able value to associated farmers. Every one of those States would b}'^ corporate farming be made capable of entirely supporting in comparative ease and opulence much more than its present population. § 67. Canadian Associations. — Across the border, the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and even New- foundland, now under the same agricultural blight as New England, are inhabited by a population sturdy and intel- ligent enough to make in the valleys of the St. John and Eestigouche, in storied Arcadia and foggy Newfoundland, great communities of most comfortably situated peoplea The surplus of fish in these provinces, greatest in New- foundland which needs it the most, would insure them in 88 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. fair exchange, or in connection witli tropical branches, all the creature comforts of a better soil and more genial climate, if the fishing were only for consumption and such a surplus, while the actual capacity of the soil were fairly brought out Under association, in those provinces the fisheries would be used and not abused, the fish not threat- ened with extermination, but conserved, and the industry put upon a solid and enduring basis. § 68. The Ocean Fisheries. — The time for the cultivation of ocean fishes on favorably indented shores has now arrived. The incorporated people from Maine to Labra- dor will scientifically hatch, feed and defend the valuable occupants of their ocean pastures. Cod will be hatched and liberated in each bay and harbor, the same fishes will be fed there as much as necessary to keep them there and insure their growth, and the full grown fish developed from the very eggs taken from the parent fish will be the reward of the scientific fisherman's prevision. The seaseless extermination of the menhaden for their comparatively valueless oil will cease, and the natural food of the food fishes will be preserved for them. Means will be taken to rid the near waters at least of valueless fishes that prey upon the valuable ones or their natural food. Best of all the fish caught for use will be afforded to the consumer at prices somewhat comparable with that which the fishermen obtain for it and which it is legitimately worth. § 69. Lobster Culture.— In the " N. Y. Sun " of Aug. 16, 1891, is found this : '• Dearth of Lobsters in Maine. — That the resources of the sea or, at least, its available resources, are not in- exhaustible, is demonstrated by the growing scarcity along the coast of Maine of certain kinds of fish, such as cod, LOBSTER CULTURE. 89 haddock, hake, and mackerel, but particulariy of the lob- ster. Not many years ago a fine, large lobster could be purchased anywhere along the coast for five or six cents, and down in Nova Scotia, around Yarmouth and Digby, these best of all shell fish were peddled out at one or two cents each. But nowadays, even in the coast towns, he who eats lobster must pay pretty well for the privilege, the retail price ranging from eight to fifteen cents a pound, according to the season and the amount of the catch. The canning establishments are mainly responsible for the scarcity and increased price of lobsters. For years they have been packing everything within reach, and now they find it difficult to procure a sufficient supply to fill their orders. Up to 1883 the catching and canning of lobsters was quite an industry at Castine, Camden, Belfast, and other points along Penobscot Bay, but the supply was unequal to the drain made upon it by the canneries, and to-day the lobster pots, or traps, are few and far between in those waters, and the factories have long since been converted to other uses. The present supply of Maine lobsters comes from the outlying islands, notably Isle au Haute, Matini- cus, and Monhegan, and even in these remote localites, directly on the Atlantic, the fish are decreasing rapiJly both in size and numbers ; so that it is natural to infer that at no very distant day the lobster will be practically extinct upon this coast." But it is now understood that all the rocky shores from Maine to Labrador are capable of becoming as secure pasturages for lobsters as are the hillsides that rise from them for sheep, if the pastures are not made too small. Lobsters may be hatched artificially like fishes, and once located remain in that locality without straying except for 90 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. food, ■which being supplied to them makes them as se- curely subject to the needs of their owners as stock of any other kind. Moreover the favorite food of the lob- ster is all sorts of soft and waste vegetable and animal food and fish. The capacity of these shores to produce this crustacean cannot be bounded by any prospective demand for them no matter how large. But under present conditions the supply constantly diminishes and probably never can be adequate under any system of individual as opposed to co-operative industry. § 70. Wave and Tide Powers. — In the region now under consideration there are the same powers in the running waters that we notice in Androscoggin, but there are in addition forces in the tides that ebb and flow along these shores and race in and out of their indentations that can easily be subjected to combined management, enough to make this a marvelouslj' well endowed land, rather than one deficient in nature's gifts. The immense wave and tidal power that is just beginning to be used practically in other localities is here so limitless that we can almost believe that it can be utilized to string open fires along the coast sufficient to very effectually modify the general climate. But it suffices to know^ that it is ample enough to give warmth and light in all spaces that can be en- closed, and force enough to make men's labor everywhere comparatively easy. The ocean's force, now a terror to puny man, will be of the greatest benefit to aggregated men. § 71. Western Associations. — But how would the West fare in the race for association prizes? Suppose Iowa were organized into appropriate associations. They would well be larger than those in the East because there is not so much natural diversity to make their operations com- WESTERN ASSOCIATIONS. 91 plicated. An Iowa association would, in the first place, go to work to diversify its agriculture to supply their home wants with a prodigality of the soil. They have a wealthy soil Why should it not set them a sumptuous table ? That is its primary use. If Iowa will feed itself with the bounty that is most feasible, it will find eastern dollars for wheat, now so meagerly forthcoming, much less indispens- able. There, where the land is full of fatness, it is not understood that the people take any large advantage of the fact. This is not right. They should live like lords. That is the first apparent use of a rich soil. The first improvements of the Iowa association would be, as in the case of its Androscoggin prototype, in its agriculture. Its land would be better drained, better seeded and more manured. Farm buildings that are not at all adequate now for the needs of thorough and scientific agriculture would, much more than in the East, absorb the capital and labor of the association. Diversified crops would require a greater departure from present methods there than in the East, but the results would also be greater. There home market stores would be the enter- ing wedge to diversified farming, and the surplus sent to • market would also become more diversified. It would be composed of more finished product, more meat than corn, more flour than wheat, than ever befora In the way of farm machinery the western company would jump imme- diately to steam plows and cultivators while the East was coming up to their gang and sulky plows. The ultimate care of the western association would be also to establish subsidiary industries to loosen their most servile dependence upon the Bast and upon large cities for all manufactured articles. They have not so many nor so good water powers, but they have some yet unused. Their 92 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. winds whicli sweep the prairies would run windmills ttat would generate electricity, and wired together would fur- nish a material increment of the force required by civil- ization. They have also coal all about and but slightly buried under their plains. This will produce unlimited power at not excessive expense. The western corporations could work up their home grown raw material at least. In fact there is no reason why all manufactures, including that of iron, should not be carried on by them with possi- bly the one important exception of cotton manufacturing. That requiring a bulky imported raw material, much power, and resulting in a concentrated product, would be least appropriate to their situation. They would hasten to establish a branch in Louisiana or Texas. Their commerce would go there because there is a locality differing from their own, whose products are dif- ferent as well as desirable. Moreover there is a direct free waterway between them, only less valuable as a natural tradeway than the great ocean highway itself. Iowa's and Nebraska's, and Minnesota's, and the Dakotas', and the whole "West's trade, is naturally to New Orleans and Mexico and Central America, exactly as it was found that the eastern coast naturally traded to the south. The nat- ural history of the growth of the western associations in whatever part of the great Mississippi valley would not very materially differ from that we have traced in the Bast as an example. They would find somewhat dissimilar natural opportunities, but would use them for the same purpose to provide rationally and abundantly for their human needs. They would study compensations of oppor- tunity and productions, not blindly trade, trade, trade. § 72. Southern Associations. — I have incidentally treated of association in the South by branches of northern asso-^ SOUTHERN ASSOCIATIONS. 93 ciations. This is in fact somewhat misleading. There would be nothing in their having been started later than, and bj, northern associations, to make them less complete in any sense than their northern connections. There would be no difference whatever in their character from that of a southern association that itself took the initiative and established a northern branch. Southern associations would perhaps be less liable to feel the need of such a con- nection than the northern ones. Southern countries are in realitj more complete in themselves than northern ones, and their circles of industries could be made more com- plete within tbeir own area. But on the other hand the southern climate is softer and its soil more prodigal, and the necessary trade between the South and the North will always give the South a much greater return for the same exertion than the North gets. And still the North will always be the most eager for the exchange. Primary association at the South would and should begin and progress the same as in the North and in the West, and, as intimated, it would accomplish more, and more easily. A diversified agriculture even now strongly urged upon the South, would leave very little in the way of products of the soil to be obtained from outside; for it is the advan- tage of warm countries that besides the products that will grow nowhere else, they will produce nearly all those grown in northern climates as well While the South can grow cotton it can also grow wool While it produces rice, cane and sweet potatoes, wheat, corn and vegetables thrive there. But some things do better there than others, and a few crops such as apples and potatoes develop much more perfectly in the North. For tbese a trade would arise. For manufactured articles which require much humap' 94 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. labor, more unpleasant in a hot climate tlian in a cold one, the South will tend to lean upon the North ; although an association that occupies the area of many old cotton plantations still producing that staple, will naturally and inevitably manufacture more or less of it in mills upon their few excellent water powers, and for the supply of their own market. Indeed the most of the irksome labor that will be done in southern associations will not be done in the manufactures but in the cultivation of the crops peculiar to the section, the cane and the cotton and sweet potato. Manufacturing in the South will be easier than farming there, whether it is quite as agreeable as in the North or not. Everyone knows that wood and iron are now being manufactured there, and it cannot be economi- cally otherwise. Association will but hasten the time when the manifest destiny of the South to possess a com- plete and strong circle of industry shall be realized. § 73. Association in Ireland. — No more apposite illus- tration of the capacities of associated work can be found probably, than in the history and present prospects of the flax industry in Ireland. In the United States Consular reports for April, 1891, it is noted that the flax industry of Ireland has steadily declined notwithstanding repeated efforts of late years to revive it. The native (Irish) sup- plies of the fiber for the Belfast manufacturers have con- stantly grown less and those imported from the continent have become millions of pounds' worth annually. So "while Belfast exports its linen products to all countries of the globe the benefits of its trade have a local application only, instead of being felt throughout every section of the country where a pound of flax can be raised." And yet Professor Sullivan writes : " I have examined all the soils of Europe and of nineteen American States ; ASSOCIATION IN IRELAND. 96 none of all these possess the properties for the production of fiber equal to the soil of Ireland." And it might prob- ably be added that the climate is the best in the world therefor, and is in itself a factor of prime importance. An article quoted in the report says the south of Ireland is just as favorable to the crop as the north where it is mostly cultivated. This writer, then, at war with the facts he adduces, says there must be some intermediate agency between the farmers and the factory by which the preparatory processes to the latter can be undertaken, and he says these are .now performed by the Irish farmer and not by the continental. Then he describes the " steeping " and " scutching " of the plant on the continent and in Ireland, showing very plainly that there is no natural discontinuance in the processes from the time the seed is sown until the fiber is ready for the weaver. Indeed about the only important advantage about the continental method that he points out is that there they have a way to save seed from the plant devoted to fibre production, which is clearly a very import- ant matter if the Irish neglect it. But the fact that the steeping and scutching is better done in Europe than in Ireland is not shown to be the result of the intervention of a middleman nor does it clearly follow. They are processes which ensue at a time when the cultivator of the crop is at leisure. The steep- ing especially requires extent of ground or rather water, for it is accomplished by simply sinking the straw in deep water, which should be convenient for the Irish farmer of all others. The other method practiced in Eussia of merely spreading the flax upon the ground and leaving the rain to do the steeping, should certainly be a farming operation and practicable in Ireland if anywhere. 96 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. It is said that in the scutching mills upon the continent the labor is mostly done by girls and lads from seventeen to twenty years old, a cheap and efficient labor, so general is the necessary technical knowledge. This simply means tha,t the process is a simple one and can well be done by those who raise the plant in their unemployed season and by those connected with their households. It is naturally an interdependent operation. § 74. Linen Manufacture. — Now the Belfast manufac- turers propose to establish the growing industry in the south of Ireland in connection with their factories — a very sensible proceeding — only it would be well if the opera- tion could be worked from the other end so associated farmers should have mills and make their cloth. The pioneer Belfast manufacturer made over three hundred per cent, profit upon his first venture, the second season. " This is probably an exceptionally favorable result, but it certainly shows that under proper conditions the production of flax in the southern part of the island can be made to yield wealth beyond the Irish farmers' dreams of avarice." " It is said on good authority that, were the internal affairs of the country properly managed and this important industry properly encouraged and sup- ported, the Irish flax producers would soon be able to drive their foreign competitors out of the market and turn to their account every year from $50,000,000 to $75,000,000." Now of course the " management " should be a matter for the operators of the industry itself. And the industry is so peculiarly a continuous and interdependent industry, requiring the same climate for the growing and the man- ufacture and requiring a series of closely continuous pro- cesses, that that management should obviously be an associated one. And this would give the proper "encour- ASSOCIATION IN ENGLAND. 97 agement" also in distributing the profits to all the workers. It is demonstrated that this sort of management and encouragement suits the Irish character to a T. The Eahaline co-operative farming experiment is conclusive evidence. It is well to consider this example of extreme one- sidedness of the gifts of nature. For the linen industry few countries are adapted, and none so adapted as Ireland. The world would take an extraordinary large surplus product of Irish linen if it were produced at any compar- atively fair price, and in return the world would gladly supply Ireland with the many necessaries of life which it is unfitted to produce in perfection. Probably the finer qualities of fruits, cereals and even vegetables are unknown to the Irish soil and climate. And moreover their land should be too precious for linen production to be used for common field crops. Here association would probably accentuate the special qualities of soil and lead to a trade which should relieve the island of its insipidity and same- ness of character and product. All should be rich in Ireland, and that would make them free as well as inde- pendent. § 75. Association in England. — Perhaps it may be sup- posed that the difficulties farmers' corporations would encounter in England, France and Germany in establishing a circle of industries where the manufacturing industry has developed farthest, would preclude them from the distinction of being universally applicable in practice. But if they had become successful in the United States and Canada a new kind of competition would probably compel their adoption in the mother country. And once started to relieve the new pressure upon European agri- culture and make it more effective, it might easily happen 7 93 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. that their circles of outside industries would be slower in forming. Yet the countries adopting the practice of supplying themselves with manufactures as well as of curtailing their surplus agricultural production would have a depressing effect upon those industries and make them as ready to associate as the agricultural. At all events, agricultural holdings in England are not now so remunerative there, but that many landlords will be glad to capitalize it fairly into farming corporations. The landlords will not suffer any diminution of returns from their lands, nor is it necessary they should, to give associates using them the justice of receiving the full and fair share of the results of their labor. They can well cancel all grievances that may lie hidden in the actual possession of the land at present, when they are given a free field and fair fight for life. It may also be fairly claimed that a staple and prosperous association could be formed of farmers and others occupying rented land under present conditions of land tenura But it would unques- tionably be better to get the control absolutely by waiting until circumstances forced the land into their hands. But this could be accomplished by beginning with rented land and securing the first opportunity of purchase, putting most permanent improvements upon the freehold land of the association. Though association by its superior principle of organization could better afford to pay rent than present English farmers, rent is to be avoided. It is not a satisfactory way in which to hold land for use. It is uneconomical to the producer. With farmers' corporations once started in England the progress would be just the same as that of the Andros- coggin association under, in some respects, more favor- able auspices. The English associations would have home ASSOCIATION ON TEE CONTINENT. 99 markets superior to any ia the world, especially superior to any in the United States, They would have no sur- plus that they could not dispose of in the most favorable way at their established stores. The climate and soil of England have fewer limitations than those of any one part of the rest of the habitable globe. And in mitigation of any expected decline of England, or at least of English industry, would be the circumstance that in the same degree that association enriched the associates, a great new market at home, the best of all markets, would be opened. Until now, the English in England have not consumed half the shoes, cloth and other manufactured articles that comfort, to say nothing of prosperity, dictated. So they have not consumed any large proportion of the best prod- ucts of agricultural industry that they normally should have consumed. But English agriculture, high as it has been carried, can be developed so as to supply all the needs of its population. § 76. Association on tlie Continent. — It is perhaps more interesting than instructive to try to imagine the fortunes of farmers' corporations and their industrial extensions in different circumstances and under the management of dif- ferent peoples. But we well may believe they would be an instant success in France at the hands of a frugal, indus- trious and intelligent people now beginning seriously to feel the results of a too minute subdivision of their free- hold estates. The French love for financiering, combined with a conservatism which would be too great rather than otherwise, would insure safe though brilliant corporate management. The leadership of the brighter wits will in the corporate relation accomplish wonders in bringing all Frenchmen towards the level of the leaders of the world who have always been Frenchmen. 100 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. German associations would be an instant success, though the fact that the freehold in the land is not so much in the people as in France would be against them as it will be in England. But the Germans naturally co-operate. Indeed voluntary co-operation in government was born in the forests of Germany probably before Kome was founded. It is believed that with the initiative that might be ex- pected on the part of the discontented intellectual classes in Eussia the mir system of common lands may be easily transmuted into corporate management, and the change to the most progressive system of management quickly and successfully made. With the active management of the corporations by the classes now engaged in a rather boot- less political agitation much real progress might be ex- pected under no matter how bad a government. § 77. Association and Irrigation have always been ideas connected together. Wherever irrigation has been prac- ticed it has only been accomplished by means of associa- tion. And even the modern attempts at irrigation in our newest west runs naturally to corporate management. But purely corporate management does not prove satis- factory. The companies are not sufficiently associated with the interests of the cultivators. The valuable U. S. special consular report upon irri- gation issued in 1891 affords us valuable examples of approaches to the true idea. In South Africa, upon petition of the owners of not less than one tenth of the land of the district, and the assent of two-thirds of the owners of land at a public meeting, the district is proclaimed an irrigation district, " The performance of all acts, etc., relating to irrigation and the storage of water in such proclaimed district shall be vested ASSOCIATION AND IRRIGATION. 101 in a board having corporate powers, to be chosen from the land owners of such district. Every owner of land is en- titled to one vote for each £500 valuation of land." " The practical and wise laws founded by the Arabs during their dominion iu the south of Spain, in the prov- inces of Valentia, Murcia and Granada, maintained there more specially by careful tradition, are the basis of the new laws framing (in Spain) for all irrigating corporations who will enjoy certain privileges. These privileges con- sist substantially in the right that when as prescribed they unite ia ' Sindacatos ' or syndicates, they can appoint their own independent courts, all proceedings being public, verbal and the decisions of these independent courts or water juries inappealable." In Leon such syndicates exist, so in Logrono, but in none of the provinces of the north, where for this reason, artificial irrigation exhibits an indi- vidual isolated aspect. Speaking of irrigation in Madeira the consul says: " One of the principal difficulties attempting the manage- ment of the levadas (canals) was the want of legal stand- ing as corporate bodies of their committees. . . . Within the last few years a law has been passed enabling the committees to incorporate themselves with power to ac- quire property and otherwise protect and improve their levadas. They can purchase the land containing the springs, and the forest and the trees along their lines." In France " works executed for purposes of irrigation may be divided into two classes : " (1) Those undertaken and carried on by companies called syndical associations (apparently most numerous). " (2) Those undertaken and carried out by a contractor. "Where a syndical association carries the works into execution, its statutes usually determine on what lines the 102 CORPORATIONS IN VAIiWUS LOCALTTIES. distribution of water shall be regulated. . . . The syudical associations are composed of land owners whose interests are affected by the want of irrigation. Their powers, privileges, etc., are more or less determined by the common law." Irrigation in the most difficult department of Bouches du Rhone is conducted by associations of individuals called syndicates, some free and some under government control. Their benefit has been inestimable. Of the oldest and next most important, the Canal de Crap- ponne, in the district, it is said in 1571 Crapponne had spent his entire fortune on the canal, and in addition had contracted enormous indebtedness, and no one coming to his rescue, his creditors took the canal and associated themselves together under the name " L'CEuvre de Salon." This corporation passed into the control of the mill owners and cultivators, and is managed in their combined interests. The Canal de Marseille is the most important of all the irrigating canals of France, because it not only furnishes water for irrigating the country and power for mills and factories, but in addition supplies a city of nearly 400,000 inhabitants with a constant and ample supply of good water. It pays a dividend of about three per cent on the original outlay. The undertaking was by the city. Finally we may notice that of the province of Canton, China, the consul reports that all lands are irrigated. " The system of water distribution is generally conducted and used by the mutual or co-operative plan which pre- vails in China in so many branches of industry and busi- ness as to lead one to believe co-operation is reduced to a perfect system on the basis of equity." Such may be said probably of the great ancient systems of irrigation which ABW LAND ASSOCIATION. 103 apparantly accomplished, so much in rude and primitive ages. § 78. Arid Land Association is a burning question in the western half of this country, considering that association and irrigation are inseparable. We might be justified in claiming that experience had taught that some such prin- ciples as had been elaborated for farming corporations were essentially necessary to solve the problem with which our frontiersmen are confronted. As a further illustration of the theory of corporate association in territorial corporations in the face of the most difficult agricultural problem of the irrigation of desert lands, we can profitably study what amounts to a most remarkable extension of the practice in a tentative illustration. Major J. W. Powell, in his article in the " Century Magazine," for May, 1890, on " Institutions for the Arid Lands," has graphically sketched a plan which would form an excellent basis for the operations of associ- ations. Indeed, in that article, he came very near to the practice, if not the principle of association. He says preliminarily : " What then shall be the organization of this new industry of agriculture by irriga- tion? Shall the farmers labor for themselves and own the agricultural properties severally ? or shall the farmers be a few capitalists, employing labor on a large scale, as is done in the great mines and manufactories of the United States? The history of two decades of this industry exhibits this fact: that in part the irrigated lands are owned and cultivated by men having small holdings, but in larger part the irrigated lands are owned and cultivated by capitalists, and the tendency to this is on the increase. When the springs and creeks are utilized small holdings are developed, but when the rivers are taken out upon the 104: CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. lands great holdings are acquired ; and thus the farming industries of the West are falling into the hands of a wealthy few." The major then figures that it will cost $1,000,000,000 to water the 100,000,000 acres of arid land, that are irri- gabla He then says : " A thousand millions of money must be used ; who shall furnish it ? Great and many industries are to be established; who shall control them? Millions of men are to labor ; who shall employ them ? This is a great nation, the government is powerful ; shall it engage in this work ? So dreamers may dream, and so ambition may dictate, but in the name of the men who labor I demand that the laborers shall employ themselves ; that the enterprise shall be controlled by the men who have the genius to organize, and whose homes are in the lands developed, and that the money shall be furnished by the people ; and I say to the Government : Hands off ! Fur- nish the people with institutions of justice, and let them do the work themselves. The solution to be propounded, then, is one of institutions to be organized for the estab- lishment of justice, not of appropriations to be made and offices created by the Government § 79. A Hydraulic Basin, — " In a gronp of mountains a small river has its source. A dozen or a score of creeks unite to form the trunk. The creeks higher up divide into brooks. All these streams combined form the drain- age system of a hydrographic basin, a unit of country well defined in nature, for it is bounded above and on each side by heights of land that rise as crests to part the waters. Thus hydraulic basin is segregated from hydrau- lic basin by nature herself, and the landmarks are practi- cally perpetual. In such a basin of the arid region the INTERDEPENDENCE OF ARID LAND INTERESTS. 105 irrigable lands lie below ; not cbiefly by tbe river's side, but on the mesas and low plains that stretch back on each side. Above these lands the pasturage hills and mountains stand, and there the forests and sources of water supply are found. Such a district of country is a commonwealth by itself. The people who live therein are interdependent in all their industries. Every man is interested in the conservation and management of the water supply, for all the waters are needed within the district. The men who control the farming below must also control the upper regions where the waters gathered from the heavens are stored in the reservoirs. Every farm and garden in the valley below is dependent upon each fountain above. " All of the lands that lie within the basin above the farming districts are the catchment areas for all the waters poured upon the fields below. The waters that control these -works all constitute one system, are dependent one upon another, and are independent of all other systems. Not a spring or creek can be touched without affecting the interests of every man who cultivates the soil in the region. All the waters are common property until they reach the main canal, where they are to be distributed among the people. How these waters are to be caught and the common source of wealth utilized by the individ- ual settlers interested therein is a problem for the men of the district to solve, and for them alone. § 80. Interdependence of Arid Land Interests. — " But these same people are interested in the forests that crown the heights of the hydrographic basin. If they permit the forests to be destroyed, the source of their water sup- ply is injured and the timber values are wiped out. If the forests are to be guarded, the people directly interested 106 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. should perform the task. An army of aliens set to watch the forests would need another army of aliens to watch them, and a forestry organization under the hands of the General Government would become a hotbed of corrup- tion ; for it would be impossible to fix responsibility and difficult to secure integrity of administration, because ill- defined values in great quantities are involved. " Then the pasturage is to be protected. The men who protect these lands for the water they supply to agricul- ture can best protect the grasses for the summer pasturage of the cattle and horses and sheep that are to be fed on their farms during the months of winter. Again, the men who create water power by constructing dams and digging canals should be permitted to utilize these powers for themselves, or to use the income from these powers which they themselves create, for the purpose of constructing and maintaining the works necessary to their agriculture. "Thus it is that there is a body of interdependent and unified interests and values, all collected in one hydro- graphic basin, and all segregated by well defined bound- ary lines from the rest of the world. The people in such a district have common interests, common rights, and common duties, and must necessarily work together for common purposes. Let 'such a people organize under National and State laws, a great irrigation district, includ- ing an entire hydrographic basin, and let them make their own laws for the division of the waters, for the protection and use of the forests, for the protection of the pasturage on the hills and for the use of the powers. This then, is the proposition I make: that the entire arid region be organized into natural hydrographic districts, each one to be a commonwealth within itself for the purpose of con- trolling and using the great values which have been SELF-GOVERNMENT BY EYDROGRAPniG BASINS. 107 pointed out. There are some great rivers where the larger trunks -would have to be divided into two or more dis- tricts, but the majority would be of the character described. Each such community should possess its own irrigation works ; it would have to erect diverting dams, dig canals and construct reservoirs ; and such works would have to be maintained from year to year. The plan is to establish local § 81. "Se^- Government by Hydrographic Basins. — Let us consider next the part which should be taken by the local governments, the State governments, and the Gen- eral Government in the establishment and maintenance of these institutions. Let there be established in each dis- trict a court to adjudicate questions of water rights, timber rights, pasturage rigbts, and power rights, in compliance with the special laws of the community and the more gen- eral laws of the State and the Nation. Let there be appeal from these lower courts to the higher courts. Let the people of the district provide their own officers for the management and control of the waters, for the protection and utilization of the forests, for the protection and man- agement of the pasturage, and for the use of the powers ; and with district courts, water masters, foresters, and herders they would be equipped with the local officers necessary for the protection of their own property and the maintenance of individual rights. The interests are theirs, the duties are theirs ; let them control their own actions. To some extent this can be accomplished by co- operative labor; but ultimately and gradually great capital must be employed in each district. Let them obtain this capital by their own enterprise as a community. Consti- tuting a body corporate, they can tax themselves and they can borrow money. They have a basis of land titles. 108 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITISa. •water riglits, pasturage rights, forest rights, and power rights; all of these will furnish ample security for the necessary investments ; and these district communities, having it in their power to obtain a vast increment by the development of the lands, and to distribute it among the people in severalty, will speedily understand how to attract capital by learning that honesty is the best policy." § 82. Hydraulic Basin Associations. — It is hardly neces- sary to stop to point out how the corporate polity would fit on to this idea, how, where this plan becomes rather halting and indeterminate, the association organization would show the way clearly. The great capital required would be more easily obtained by an industrial corporation than a political one. The increments of profits arising from the general undertakings could only be practically and fairly distributed by the industrial body, and not by the political. Instead of co-operative labor accomplishing the object " to some extent," the whole matter would be done by association. Associated effort is, in fact, through- out this brilliant plan, postulated. This effort will have to be organized industrially as well as, or rather than, politically. Major Powell has intelligently studied the wants of a vast region now lying undeveloped. He has clearly and intuitively seen that association can conquer the diffi- culties of human development even in that now desert region. His hydrographic basin governments, even as he imagined them, would be really industrial associations. If they went as far as he has indicated, they would neces- sarily' develop a circle of industries which would grow to be complete, though no theory in regard to such an indus- trial organization had ever been formulated. The water powers of those basins would, as in the CORPORATE AGRICULTURE NOT WANTED. 109 Androscoggin valley, warm and enlighten the inhabitants, and would be harnessed by them to their industries. From their forests and pastures and soil would spring the raw materials of the manufacturing industries just the same as everywhere. Besides that, the mines of the arid land basins would generally be found to be available beyond the capacity of the eastern country. Indeed, the surplus product of those regions would be mine products, natur- ally. New mines would come to be developed, especially for coal, by every community fortunate enough to have such deposits in their basins. Low grade mines would naturally first fall into the people's hands after association had got started, and after a time the inevitable result would be that all the mines within association spheres would be worked in association. § 83. Corporate Agriculture not Wanted. — I must, with my apologies to the publishers of the " Century " and Major Powell, permit myself to further appropriate a conclusion of Major Powell that is remarkably pertinent to this mat- ter of association. He says : " Hitherto agriculture in this country has not come under the domination of these modem rulers (corporations). Throughout all the humid regions the farmer is an independent man, but in the arid regions corporations have sought to take control of agriculture. This is rendered possible by the physical conditions under which the industry is carried on. Some- times the corporations have attempted to own the lands and the water, and to construct the great works and operate them as part and parcel of wholesale farming. In other cases the corporations have sought to construct the works and sell the water to individual farmers with small holdings. By neither of these methods has more than partial success been achieved. There is a sentiment in 110 CORPORATIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES. the land that the farmer must be free, that the laborer in the field should be the owner of the field. Hence by unfriendly legislation and by judicial decision — which ultimately reflect the sentiment of the people — these farm- ing corporations and water corporations of the West have often failed to secure brilliant financial results, and many have been almost destroyed. Thus there is a war in the "West between capital and labor — a bitter, relentless war, disastrous to both parties. The effort has been made to present a plan by which the agriculture of the arid lands may be held as a vast field of exploitation for indi- vidual farmers who cultivate the soil with their own hands ; and at the same time and by the same institutions to open to capital a field for safe investment and remunera- tive return, and yet to secure to the toiling farmers the natural increment of profit which comes from the land with the progress of industrial civilization." This sentiment of the distinguished author is certainly a noble one. It contains the association idea in full, interest for capital, the profit of labor for the men who labor, using capital. This is justice. It will most truly make the desert blossom as the rose. CHAPTER III. A CITT FAEMING COEPOBATION. § 84. Capitalization of Labor. — It was in connectioti with the urban problem of co-operation that my thoughts were precipitated and crystallized. And no better way occui-s to me in which to explain the application of the principle and practice of corporate action in cities than to bring forward the discussion which was the occasion and beginning of the development of the ideas upon the subject thus far presented. This matter, which may violate the unities of regular essay writing, will serve as a guide to the practical initiation of a scheme of incorpo- rated industrial self help in cities, corresponding with that which has been outlined in connection with the imaginary formation of a farming corporation. There appeared in the spring of 1890 several weeks suc- cessively in the " New York Sunday World " articles de- veloping or rather foreshadowing a scheme " to capitalize labor." The editor of the " capitalization column " in the paper made a statement that he had received letters showing a widespread interest in the scheme. He invited practical letters concerning " the details and plan of or- ganization for a mutual benefit order, the object of which shall be the accumulation and control of industrial capital by wage-earners upon the assessment plan. . . . These funds shall be held and administrated by the order as capital to be invested in productive ways, subject to such regulations as shall be prescribed in the organic law of the 112 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. order, and tlie purposes of the organization shall be to promote thrift, to capitalize earning capacity upon occasion, and to improve the condition of the industrious working- men of the country by securing to them of industrial capital in a degree wholly impossible without such organ- ization." The aid of the paper in the discussion and its purposes, was promised. § 85. A WorJdng &heme.—The next " Sunday World " of May 12, 1890, contained the following : " The invitation to correspondents printed in last Sun- day's ' World ' resulted in the receipt of a very large number of letters by the Industrial Capitalization Editor of the ' Sunday World.' The large majority of these communications were not of the kind requested, being of a general rather than a specific nature. Some of the most interesting letters are herewith printed : " ' Starting ■with a Fabm. — My plan to capitalize in- dustry includes a creation and management of industries. It seems to me that any mere scheme to create a capital by savings and the interest thereon would give too small return to each individual contributor; in fine, that the workingman contributor would feel no more interest in such a capital than he does now in that of savings banks. '"One essential in the commencement of a scheme to capitalize an industry would be to select a field for a begin- ning in which small capital might be profitably and safely used. Agriculture furnishes such a field. It has not been monopolized yet by capitalists, but soon will be pursued by aggregated capital according to business methods. '"The tract selected for the investment of the first accumulated fund of an industrial association should be A WORKING SGEEME. 113 located upon that open highway of commerce, the ocean. Farming with capital is just as remunerative in the East as in the West. The tract would have a harbor, and a small shipyard could be immediately started to build the vehicles in which to carry its products to market, avoid- ing transportation charges. " ' The products of the farm should find prepared for them a store-house and place where they could be retailed on account of and preferably largely to the members of the association itself. One farm might well be started in each section. North and South, so as to make a complete line of products for the store. " 'The farms would soon produce material for industries and manufactures. Their clearings would first produce lumber to be used or worked up or sold. There would be water powers on the Northern farm, if not on the South- ern, and woodworking machinery would naturally be obtained for the various industries using that as a raw material. Leather and many other things are produced along with meat on a farm, and would very quickly supply small tanneries and shoe shops. Wool comes the same way, and the beginnings of its manufacture may be very small, and, with the members of the association for a market, remunerative. But here we are on the threshold of illimitable opportunities. " ' I believe such an association should open its books to receive payments upon its capital in amounts of $1 and multiples thereof at regular or irregular times, no interest to be paid, but dividends declared upon profits only. This unit should be the share and voting unit also. And it should be understood that for a while at the beginning the dividends should all be used in development No member should depend immediately upon his share in the 114: A CITY FARMING CORFOBATIGN. capital for support. This would be necessary, as in my judgment the shares should not be negotiable, at least in a general way, to avoid the stock jobber's arts. But dividends should be figured up upon periodical valuations of property and credited pro rata so as to allow constant additions to the capital to be made equitably and simply. Transactions by the association with its members should be upon market value, as a basis, but wages paid members might be a per cent, say 10, higher, and prices charged members be the same percentage off. It should be a rule of the association that members should be offered the prod- ucts thereof whenever convenient, and that they should be employed in its industries as far as possible in prefer- ence to other labor. " 'The association should, as a rule of policy, confine its ventures to those growing out of its own operations or those which could be manned by its own members. But this would not be a restrictive rule, for as it began at the first in producing directly from the earth, its field of operations would naturally grow to be as infinite as the productions of the soil. " ' I believe that on these lines failure could not happen or success be small. Thus would be avoided any necessity to delay to attain a large membership or fund before actual operations would commence, and benefits, if not dividends, reaped directly and tangibly. " ' "Wilbur Aldrich.' " Mv letter as written and submitted, went on : "To facili- tate the opening operations, plenty of farmers could be brouo-ht into the association, contributing their farms to the capital and taking employment of the association in managing them, to make that branch of the scheme safe and practicable. Capital need not be applied to farming A WORKING SCHEME. 115 in a wildcat manner. And applied by practical men sen- sibly, and to make profit instead of show, there is do more remunerative or safe investment now open to capital. "After the beginning, the ways would open up them- selves, and the industries established might be located any- where where members of the association lived, or better, upon the property of the association, where members might be given a chance to remove and live in communities of their own founding and development, where the unearned ircrement of the value in the land would be an earned increment, earned and enjoyed by the same persona. " So it will be seen that all interest and profits would both be made by, and paid to, those producing them. The association would also be its own landlord almost entirely. " I know of no other way in which it is practicable to so completely rid labor of the parasites which feed upon and eat up its productions. Labor here would not only be its own capitalist, but its own landlord, producer, con- sumer, distributor and profit maker and sharer, each in equal measure. " "Where the association traded outside of itself it would be in surplus productions, upon which should be profit, and in which there could be no crippling loss. The aim would be to produce almost a complete list of the requirements of civilized men, and be independent of the market manipu- lated by the rich gamblers now in control. " I see no reason why the discussion in these columns should not result practically in immediately starting such co-operative associations, with inherent powers and organs of growth sufficient to allow them to spread and cover the whole country and solve the social and industrial ques- tions now confronting us." 116 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. The departure of this letter from the lioe indicated by the call was due to a profound feeling that there was dis- coverable no financial scheme, invention, or sleight of hand, that would make the poor rich without work, or prosperous without sustained effort intelligently directed. Financial strokes of force that make Napoleons' of finance wealthy almost in a moment, are not creations of new wealth but subtractions from the existing total. And when everybody, or every-body scheming together, expect to make all suddenly rich by banking operations, they will be disappointed. By working together, however, they could fast create and save wealth. § 86. A Way to Begin, — ^I immediately wrote another letter to the editor of the " capitalization column," propos- ing a call to start the capitalization of labor upon the lines indicated by my former letter. That letter follows : "I have been approached by several persons since the appearance of the letters in this column last Sunday, and asked to mature a plan of action based upon my letter. '• I therefore propose that an association be formed, to be called The American Industrial Association, or by any other appropriate name, for the purpose of capitalizing labor, establishing industries, and distributing and ex- changing products, the operations of the association to begin with, and be based upon, the agricultural industry. I propose that all interested send their names to me (or The Industrial Capitalization Editor, 'Sunday World'), those names to represent a desire to enter the association, and take at least a $1 share of its stock, if after meetings called and temporary organization effected, the parties are satisfied to do so. " We could either wait until we had accumulated cap- ital enough, deposited in savings banks or trust companies, A WAY TO BEGIN. 117 to buy farms and hire farmers to run them, at the begin- ning, or we could get farmers to join the association, put- ting in their farms and stock as capital, and then working for the association, or both ways could be pursued at the same time. It would be desirable that the agricultural territory acquired be in fairly large areas of co-terminous tracts, so as to make improvements practicable, and save their results entirely to the society. "I should say we had better begin immediately, and then make haste slowly, that we had better accumulate as many names and members as possible, and as fast as pos- sible, but that contributions to capital be only $1 from each at first, and that no more be taken from the same members until a call for further contribution of another dollar from those disposed, be made, upon a statement of facts and doings, and so on. My idea is not to enlist the whole thoughts and energies of any members until a chance has been given to observe the workings of the scheme. This would allow those who had no real interest to retire, and above all serve to restrain any from forming unreasonable expectations that might not at once be real- ized, and thus ruin their interest in the association as well as jeopardize its very existence. " Perhaps I had better state for consideration, that I believe no contributions to capital in suras of over, say, $5,000 should ever be taken, and that not over, say, $10,000 should be allowed to be contributed by any one member. I believe that it would be essential to the life of the association, that no opportunity be given to hold stock that should pay enough in dividends to keep its owners in idleness during the years of their lives between 21 and 45. This might be aided by, from time to time raising the distributions of earnings to workers, so as to 118 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. keep the dividends within a reasonable figure. The asso- ciation should not be for the creation of capitalists, or be capable of exploitation by them. " On the other hand, it is essential that the amounts of holdings allowed shall let in working farmers generally, with their farms, and let in the accumulations of an ordinary life of work of workers, and be sufficient to support their holders, after the age at which work should cease, and the blessings of a rest earned be enjoyed. " I would have the association, as nearly as possible, afford appropriate work for all willing workers, and pro- vide completely for them and theirs in return. This, I think, it could approximate from the beginning. " I deprecate any discussion as to whether this, or any plan adopted, is in reality Nationalism, Socialism, Anarchism, Co-operation, Voluntary Co-operation, or what not, but I would have it easy to enter into, and just as easy to leave ; and then whether its accomplishments corresponded with the expectations of Utopians would depend simply upon whether its members were real Uto- pians, i.e., good sensible people, in what they did and refrained from doing." § 87. The Consumers' or Market Initiative. — This letter proposing to do something instead of promising something for the columns of the paper, found the capitalization editor "out," apparently. It was immediately returned as unavailable by the regular editor of the Sunday paper. There appeared in the next issue a single letter of a nega- tive character without comment, and the paper withdrew from the contest. I was very much disappointed, as were the others who wrote the letters published. The widely circulated paper would, by issuing a call for meetings, enrollment, and further discussion and reports, TEE CONSUMERS' OR MARKET INITIATIVE. 119 have facilitated the starting of association, beginning witli an assured market, upon a large and solid basis. This is really a very alluring way of arriving at an industrial association, and, to city people, more so than that founded upon the initiative of farmers, which would be slower in reaching denizens of cities, to associate them. And in any case under that scheme they would be benefited rather indirectly. It will be noticed that my developed thought has obvi- ated the rather crude notion in regard to limiting holdings of stock in the association. Under the modified corporate distribution idea as developed later in my mind, capital could in no case be a menace. The conservatism of that proposal was for the purpose of leading on a discussion that should develop among the many that might have easily been enlisted in a study of the question, the thoughts that immediately began to mature in my own mind. I felt no doubt that there was a definite course to pursue, and that it was going to be easily discovered. I believe meetings called as I proposed would ere this have resulted in an organization and tangible progress. My proposal to begin collecting dollars in New York City to be depos- ited in trust companies to fonn a capital fund would have before now capitalized the contributors, inasmuch as they would have commenced to use their capital for saving and production. There is no real reason why the citizens constituting great markets should not become as a body conscious and knowing. They should not be behind the farmers in this matter. They should act intelligently, and not be any longer used and manipulated as a thing by speculators, and treated as not even a subject in political economy. They can and should combine to control themselves as a 120 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. market Their demand should be an intelligent one and not merely the unintellectual combined hunger of so many thousands of people. Briefly the combined hunger should not be supplied as it were from hand to mouth, but by a wise provision to obtain regular supplies to the greatest advantage, as the thrifty supply themselves in part. To this end market beginning industrial associations should be formed, the pioneers in a new economic advance. It is certainly sound economy that an industry or a busi- ness cannot be better founded than when it has a market waiting for its product The new association would have an assured trade with which to begin business. No demand would have to be created. Capitalist starters of industries, promoters of enterprises, would say success was certain in such circumstances. It therefore seems an eminently inviting scheme as a mere business venture. Now why is not the thing alluring to some city people? Because their ideas are so large that nature in its bounties does not come up to them. To some of the citizens that would be appealed to in New York the earth and the fullness thereof would not be satisfactory. Too many of them have become imbued with the commercial spirit which is kill, kill, kill and eat, rather than work to supply desires. Even the poor who will sometime see their true interests in association, have become too hard to satisfy, too mistrustful of their fellows and too lacking in sus- tained confidence, immediate wealth not being promised. § 88. The Consumers Awalcened. — This city association would begin as a conscious consumer trying to right the abuses connected with its supply of the necessaries of life, just as in the country the farmers made up a conscious producer. It is just as natural and easy for the consumer to inquire into his industrial condition as a buyer, as for ABOUT STARTWa CITY ASSOCIATIONS. 121 the producer to consider his as a seller; but while the subject of the latter has somewhat occupied the attention of economists, the consumer has been entirely forgotten by them. In economies the consumer has been considered a fixed quantity while the producer has been but slightly considered by these thinkers for the traders. Trading in the produce of the producer has become reduced to a real science, and this science has not, except in a rather left- handed fashion, been constructed for his benefit, for he has been considered simply as a machine with a producing instinct, and the spirit of the research has been a commer- cial one. It has mostly concerned middlemen who live by their wits, their power to take advantage of the opportuni- ties afforded them by the blind machinery of production on the one hand and the equally blind but more stable and rigid necessity of consumption on the other. Very naturally, as production has worked blindly and by habit, and consumption has been going on by just as blind and strong instinct, the trader or middleman, open eyed, alert, scientific and^Dowerful in wealth, has managed to intercept a large share of the good things that have been going in the world. But as I have tried to show the largest and primary class of producers, the farmers, how they may take charge of their interests for themselves, so it is just as easy for the consumers in cities to as effectu- ally do the same. Their situations are supplementary to each other. Association economy holds that their needs and opportunities are alike. § 89. About Starting City Associations. — If the New York association started in full confidence, and enlisted plenty of capital, it still would have to comply with the vital prin- ciple of the new development, and let capital return its interest merely, and give the rest, in surplus, to labor, or, 122 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. in profits of distribution, to customers. Otherwise it would be a mere speculation, and would soon be deserted by all workers who could get into any of the other associa- tions. That, you see, states a difficulty — city capital is greedy as now held. It cannot see its interest to facilitate workers in producing things to satisfy their wants, saving only its legitimate interest. Its only mission is thought to be to employ labor to make big dividends upon capital for the employers. But again this is not an insuperable difficulty. It might be perfectly feasible, especially with the customers' profit modification of the association idea, to attract many individual contributions to capital and rely on the aggre- gate of very small holdings. The only problem would then be to make the first accomplishments of the associa- tion appreciable benefits, and make them correspond with the expectations of members. Beginning with aggregates of small capitals, the tendency to go to work with inade- quate means would have to be combatted. But really effective work could be done with very small amounts. Any way of collecting capital from savings deposited would be a continuing one. The association would grow faster and probably more satisfactorily than if capital were subscribed once for all. Undoubtedly the only way associations will be founded in cities at the beginning of the practice of the association idea, will be through the capitalization of labor through mite collections. This is a perfectly workable plan, if any means of awakening a wide interest can be found. This may be done through the interest and promotion of news- papers, or by labor organizations. A determined band of private missionaries, by private solicitation, and through social organizations, could accomplish the organization of CUSTOMERS TO SEARE PROFITS. 123 an association, but it would be up-hill work. But the available young men in many social organizations could together boost an organization upon this basis into great and almost imnaediate success, by working until adequate numbers were obtained to start with. Any method of organization in cities would be more different from the promotion of regular corporations than among farmers. § 90. Custorwirs to Share Profits. — Pure corporate asso- ciation as contended for herein may be modified to suit the special case of city associations by the adoption of the Eochdale method of sharing the profits of stores with the customers. This measure by itself has enlisted the enthu- siastic support of thousands of intelligent workingmen and others in England. This plan of stopping the leaks in distribution alone has resulted in the establishment of an immense business. The proprietors are the consumers who first put into the venture in cash but the savings of a few weeks' earnings, and the rest of the immense capitals now created has been the benefit arising from the saved profits of the necessary retail trade of those who followed the example of the Rochdale pioneers. It would not be at all impracticable to keep the store books so as to show the profits on that part of the indus- trial circle, and upon the wholesale market value of the goods received, figure the profits of distribution separately so as to apportion, say fifty per cent or even all of it, to the members as purchasers, customers of the stores. This should furnish a powerful incentive to working people to join, assuring them some legitimate gains, or rather savings, without capital. Gains made through the distribution of the customers' profits would tend, like the originally conceived surplus profits, to be allowed to remain as capi- tal ; and thus all would tend to achieve a capital inter- 124 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. est in the associatioTi. In an association composed mostly of consumer? rather than producers, to begin with, the customers' distribution of profits would tend to keep the general wages surplus from becoming unduly large and give needed stimulus to patronage. For at the beginning of such a city association, the number of workers in the scheme would be comparatively small, and their situation as producers exceptionably favorable. Indeed it would be the large body of customers at the stores which would pro- duce this situation, and the distribution of part of the results of that advantage among the associates that were customers would be eminently fair. Such distribution is a tried and practicable method of store or distributory co- operation. It is practicableness, rather than theoretical perfection, that we must aim for. § 91. The New York Association Ready for Business. — Suppose it immediately hired a superintendent to organize the farming industry up the Hudson anywhere above the limit of suburban residences and inflated land prices, for a garden-farm to supply the association stores which would be gotten all ready to be opened for the first crops, at convenient points. Suppose another competent man were sent to tidewater Virginia to start the development in that garden spot of the world, situated on the finest, richest waters in the universe, which would cheaply supply the association stores with the most delicate luxuries of mod- ern production. If the association was as large comparatively, and as well managed as the commercial houses by which it was surrounded are, and that too, by hired management, another branch farm in Southern Florida might soon be safely started, the products of which need not be dilated upon. Finally, in San Domingo or Central America, or COUA'TRY BRANCH OF A CITY ASSOCIATION. 125 anywhere in that rich tropic land, the last necessary com- plement to their situation in nature would be reached, and coffee, sugar, spices, fruits of the tropics and of the tem- perate zones, fish of all waters, vegetables of every season and clime, turtles, terrapin, oysters and all that pampered men regard as necessary to the full enjoyment of the life that is in eating, would minister to their wants, without any toll thereon gathered by outsiders. Besides all this, as before shown, the raw materials for a complete circle of industries would be already provided for, almost at the first step of the city association toward supplying its food desires. Cotton would grow on the southern farms, wool would be a natural product of the northern one from the moment it was a farm at all. The wood, the leather and all would be immediate incidentals, as in case of the Androscoggin association. The complete- ness, however, that would come from the opei'ations of the city association from the first year, was only obtained by the Maine association, as by other country associations after years of growth and struggle against disadvantages not existing in the now favored cities. § 92. The Country Branch of a City Association. — Under the plan to begin with a combination of consumers in a city or ward or portion of a city, the agricultural branch of the operations would be conducted and grow in the same way as has been detailed for the agricultural begin- ning method. These farming operations would be very much hastened by the capital collected by the subscrip- tions big and little, that might be obtained among the urban participators in the scheme. As the farming became regarded as the business of each and every member of the association, they would tend to visit the farm and spend their vacations, whenever they 126 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. were fortunate enough to obtain them, where they would have an interest in the board they paid. They would also have the interest of partners in the rural occupations of the estate. Thus would every worker in cities be en- dowed, as it were, with country seats. The phj-sical and moral advantage in this particular would be great. To a season of pure air would be given a broadening contem- plation of nature and the work carried on closest to her- self. Many city members of the association would go into the industries that would be established in the country branch as they were established by the Androscoggin association. Every individual making this change would be benefitted. § 93. Distinctive City Development of Associations. — But there would be a distinct development in associations hav- ing their inception and management in cities. All mem- bers in the capacity of consumers of the country products sold at the store would be interested, if individual pro- ducers, in finding a reciprocal or return market, both in the city and country stores of the association for their product The members having become imbued with the co-operating spirit would continually be suggesting the formation of groups of themselves in their various trades, into establishments to be associated with the general asso- ciation, the same as artisans and industries would be associated in the country. Thus would clothing makers, metal workers and many of the various minor industries now carried on throughout such a city as New York, be- come fully associated while still remaining in their city quarters. In all these cases, however, the question of rent and convenience of wider spaces in which to conduct opera- tions, would tend to the transplanting of the workers to THE USES OF A FLEET. 127 the countiy, before the industries were established as the regular undertakings of the association and even after they had been carried on for differing times in the city. The first thought after such a transplanting, would be the car- rying along of all city con^'cniences and improvements including news and information facilities so the city worker would feel the change as an unqualified improve- ment. Indeed if the function of the city association were little more than that of providing for the gradual spread- ing of urban population over the country districts, it would be a great and attractive object. Perhaps the first establishments brought into connec- tion with the city stores would be bakeries supplied with material from the stores and supplying them with bread, pastry, etc., for sale. Restaurants would also of course naturally carry the distribution of food products to its ultimate limit. Catering is the object and end of all food production and distribution. § 94. The Uses of a Fleet. — The New York association would be in such need of its own vessels as soon as it secured its earliest crop, as would suggest the expediency of associating schooner owners with their crews or even a small steamer or steamers, and perhaps a steam tug or two before any ship yard could be begun, or bought, or associated, or vessels could be built therein, if the yard were available. These vessels would bring the products from the farms to the stores, from the association's wag- ons at the farm landing to trucks at the nearest available wharf. Not an outsider or middleman would get even a look at those goods. That the schooners or the steamers were slow would cause no loss of time compared with the delays in freight transportation on most railroads. The schooners would 128 A CITY FARMING CORPORATION. bring green vegetables from a river landing about as promptly, and as reliably on time, as the Hudson Eiver Eailroad. Where there were other railroad connections to make, the schooners would win every time. The money saved would be appreciable on every quart of potatoes, peas, tomatoes, or apples. What would be saved from the trading middleman added to this saved from the transporting middleman would reduce the prices of the smallest measures of farm products at least half, and the quality would advance almost in proportion, as a direct result of reducing the delays and handlings between pro- ducer and consumer. A subsidiary use of these vessels the association would be acquiring, would be their employment as fishing vessels while not otherwise engaged. Indeed it would probably be found it would be profitable to have regular fishing vessels engaged in catching sea food for the stores. This item of consumption is an important one, and the assump- tion of its supply would be capable of great benefit to the association. The fishermen would most naturally and necessarily get all their supplies at the stores thereby sus- taining their most diverse trade. Besides, the fish market is now one of the most outra- geously exploited of all. The product costs the consumer more than its intrinsic comparative value as a food, while its real cost is far below that of other products. Little of the unconscionable sums asked for fish at retail in New York ever reaches the fishermen's hands. Either the association coald reduce these prices mightily or its profit account from that trade would help make the returns from associa- tion dealings very great The ownership of the fishing vessels would open a good way of furnishing members angling outings, whereby the EMPLOYMENT FOB TEE UNEMPLOYED. 129 cost of the pleasure, and of the fish desired out of the catch of an ordinary single day's sport, might be reduced to al- most nothing, or on lucky days made a source of profit to the angler. Such considerations as these show legitimately the thousand and one directions in which the associator's opportunities would be multiplied by his belonging to a great all-industrial combination. To town dwellers accus- tomed to confinement, and to the merest routine life, this would be a revelation. § 95. Employment for the Unemphyed. — It is but a step to the idea that has probably struck the reader before this, that if the town contributing associator fell out of work temporarily or permanently his association would in many, if not most cases, be able to utilize his services at very short notice and even give him a choice of chances to make his living. Indeed the association would probably do more, and as we saw the Androscoggin association do, draw from the ranks of the unemployed and the precari- ously employed, into its classes of permanently associated workers. The completeness of association would not fail in the matter of wiping out that blot on the present industrial system, the army of the unemployed. Indeed the princi- ple of association is so just that the prosperity of none can be impeded by the numbers participating. And on the other hand the prosperity of none is abnormally enhancible by numbers bidding against each other for work. This would be really a working and not a talking anti-poverty society. It would rapidly extend the bene- fits of plenty to all willing to work. It would do more — it would allure those now regarded as unwilling to work into the ranks of the most industrious. The justice of the 9 130 A CITY FARMING GOBPOBATION. pay, the diversity of opportunity, and the liberty of action would tarn the loafer from his loafing into the paths of fair industry made easy by association. § 96. Qenrral Booth's Plan. — There has lately appeared a plan for helping the unemployed and the waste laborers generally into a sort of organization in which charity would try to organize and sustain co-operation among those alone who have thus far failed utterly in the indus- trial struggle. General Booth's plan proposes to have waste labor assisted to co-operate largely in working upon waste products. He will have the Lazaruses co-operate in collecting the crumbs that fall from Dives' tables. This undoubtedly is the best and most scientific way of collecting "ofEal" from the master's tables. But it is beginning co-operation among those least capable of it, and directing their operations largely to what should be merely incidental to the more important works of the society. If the Salvation Army can organize the London poor by themselves into a prosperous society, the mission- aries in Africa, Asia and the isles of the sea should forth- with be required to answer for the industrial organization of those countries. But the solid reason in what of association there is in General Booth's scheme, though combined with the most difficult conditions imaginable, makes it seem quite prac- ticable. His mere statement of a plan for co-operation among those who are probably less fitted for the purpose than barbarians, to be directed by those whose business abilities cannot be claimed to be at all equal to their zeal, carries conviction of its feasibility to many minds. How much more convincing should be an idea based upon business management, upon business principles, having for incidental objects only, saving of waste and GENERAL BOOTH'S PLAN. 131 employment of the unemployed, the more extreme benefits proposed as the immediate end of the other scheme. The fact, however, that General Booth's ideas as formulated are not mere nonsense is very persuasive of the possibilities of combination among the most backward of peoples and for the accomplishment of the ultimate and by no means far off relief of all that are poor and destitute and unem- ployed. Now it is submitted to the candid judgment of the world whether a London Industrial Association the coun- terpart of the one outlined for New York, is not a more rational solution of the slums problem than General Booth's. Consider for a moment what could be done in that direction immediately with the many millions, pro- posed by him to be raised, as capital for such an associa- tion. All would gladly accept employment in an asso- ciation, while few would enter his harbors or submit to his discipline. The same sum per head put into the capital of associations, that will be required for everyone reached by General Booth's plan, would make him economically free, independent and prosperous. It would give him the opportunity to make a living which, it would seem, ought to be afforded every human being as he comes into existence, by an organization of society having that very end consciously in view. The use of capital to capitalize the London poor should not be a charitable nor a religious offering but a business venture. CHAPTER IV. TRADE AND TEANSPOETATION. § 97. Revival of Canals. — The extension of the icing processes by the farmer's corporations will do much to counteract the necessity for quick transportation of freight Slow and cheap but roomy and cool transportation will be all that will be required even for fresh food products. And although movements of products will be compara- tively much reduced, those on the long routes between North and South will absolutely increase with increased prosperity and increased consumption. And the move- ments on the shorter lines between mineral and agricul- tural districts and between fish producing waters and inland localities, and between all other differing localities, will be enormous. For this most bulky traf&c water trans- portation will be entirely adequate whether by sea, rivers or canals. There is even now a revival of interest in canal pro- jects. The government has been at the trouble of eliciting consular reports concerning the state of canals throughout the world. These reports clearly indicate the superiority of canals for the transportation of all cheap and bulky articles. They are everywhere recognized as necessary to keep railway rates down, because, of course, transporta- tion upon them is cheaper. The consul at Berlin says "the first canals have been and still are of the greatest importance to the Prussian King- dom and especially to the city of Berlin. They connect REVIVAL OF CANALS. 133 nearly all tte great rivers running through Prussia from south to north into the Baltic or North Sea (from the Vis- tula to the Rhine). The great progress made b\' Berlin during the last twenty years would have been quite impos- sible without these artificial water ways, as nearly all the building materials used in the extension of the city have been transported to Berlin through their agency. The importance of Magdeburg as a center of the German sugar industry is likewise due to the facilities offered by these canals for the cheap transportation of all sorts of bulky materials. . . . The traffic is immense ; the rates of transportation are very low." The consul at Frankfort-on-the-Main says : " The whole commercial and industrial life of the city has been quick- ened and restored by the new and improved conditions which the canalized river has entailed." The consuls in England point out the creation of a new city (Groole) through the enterprise of a single canal in bringing it within reach of the sea. The Manchester ship canal attests the faith of its citizens in the superiority of water transportation, while Birmingham, Sheffield and all large English cities are excited over the prospects of be- coming ports. And a general feeling in favor of improv- ing and exi«nding the canal system is shown. France and Belgium are the lands most blessed with canals, and it seems to be acknowledged that they divide the honor of contributing to the great prosperity, only with their unsurpassed systems of common roads. Half of the transportation of bulky articles in these countries is by the canala The crippling of the canal system of England is now universally bewailed, and if the old canals in this country had been made upon the right principles, their abandon- 134 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. meat would yet be regarded as a calamity. But as it is, the work of clearing out and improving will begin anew and be carried oa right in mid-stream of the rivers, only supplemented by wholly artificial canals where the nature of the river bed forbids its canalization. The resulting works will be far more than a mere canal for transporta- tion. Aad moreover the navigation will be far freer than in the little ditches with mud sides so close together that no motor could be used which disturbed the water more than the patient mula These water ways should be navi- gable by vessels rather than by mule barges. § 98. Cost of Canal Carriage. — All of the consular reports above referred to concur in the great cheapness of canal transportation. The consul at Leeds, England, gives a table of the comparative cost of canal and railway maintenance as in the ratio of 70.6 to 200, and another table of the cost of freight in several countries, generally showing about the same ratio of one to three. Mr. L. F. Vernon- Harcourt in "Rivers and Canals" at page 168 says : " Canals possess some important advan- tages over railways : they frequently are less costly in con- struction, and their cost of maintenance and their working expenses are considerably smaller. Moreover, the pro- portion of dead weight to the load carried is much less in canal barges than in railway wagons, and the barges not only cost much less proportionally to their capacity than wagons, but are also far more easily repaired. The resist- ance also to traction is much smaller in water than on rails, amounting, according to M. Malezieux, to only one- fifth of the average resistance on railways. Barges on canals can be loaded or unloaded at any places which they pass ; whilst goods trains can only stop at stations. The combined effects of these circumstances enable canals to COST OF CANAL CABRIAOE. 135 carry certain classes of merchandise more cneaply and conveniently than railways." Mr. David A. Wells at page 111 of "Recent Economic Changes" says : " There is one curious example in which improvement is being sought for at the present time, through what at first seems to be retrogression. With the great extension and perfecting of the railway system, and the consequent reduction in the cost of merchandise car- riage through its agency, it has been generally assumed that there was no longer any necessity for long lines of canals, or profit in their maintenance and operation; and as a matter of fact, many canals of expensive construction in England and the United States have been absolutely abandoned. But at the present time there is a tendency — especially in Europe — to return to the use of inland navi- gation — canals and rivers — for the purpose of still further cheapening transportation. " There is no question that goods can be carried much cheaper by water than by rail. The original cost per mile of an ordinary canal in England has been estimated at not more than one-fourth, and the cost of managing and maintaining a canal in good workable order is not in excess of one-fifth of the charges of a corresponding rail- way company. The average canal charges in England are therefore only about half as much as railway rates for the same description of traffic ; and for the transportation of imperishable goods, when the time occupied in transit is not a prime factor, . . . has become more than ever a matter of first importance. . . . It is also to be noted that a very considerable number of British canals, that have been kept up and not allowed to become useless, continue to pay good, and, in a few cases large dividends; and that the price of their stocks is often largely in excess of par value." 136 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. % 99. Canals in Poland. — The five principal ponds or lakes in Poland are connected by their outlets with the Little Androscoggin river at three different points. From these points running backward through the ponds and up their principal inlets, the lines draw together towards the low watershed of streams that lead to a string of ponds whose waters fall into Sebago Lake whose outlet, the Presumpscot river, empties into Casco Bay at Falmouth, itself a harbor next east of Portland. Now the most natural thing in the world, for the collec- tive proprietor, would be to draw through Poland a net- work of canalized brooks and ponds natural and artificial, which should almost literally lead from and past every farm to the sea and the markets of the world. This sys- tem would contribute to the irrigation of all the farms and would increase the available water power, for every canal lock would be a combination lock and dam, and above each dam would be a combined mill pond, canal and irri- gation reservoir. The boats running on the canals would probably soon be propelled by means of electrical storage arrangements that could be replenished every time they passed one of the lock-dams. All of Maine's thousand ponds and lakes are so connectable with each other and with the sea through the rivers that are navigable or canalizable. And the other interests are so important that the transportation facilities afforded might be regarded as a by-product of the irrigation, fish raising, power and ice producing capacity of the waters. Association boats would thus be enabled to collect their ladings of iced fruits, vegetables and meats from the farm landings and carry them to the seaboard to be reladen on the association vessels for the sea transportation, or to be stored in the association's cold storage warehouses to PORTLAND, MAINE, TO PORTLAND, OREGON. 137 await the market requirements. Possibly for Boston and New York these boats might be joined together in tows and themselves make the voyage without unlading. § 100. Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. — If farming corporations occupy the land, it is perfectly feasible, and one of the probabilities of the future, as early as within the lives of young men now living, that the canal from Falmouth up past West Poland would be extended up the Little Androscoggin and along the general course of the Grand Trunk Railway to Bethel, Maine, thence along the Androscoggin to where the railway goes over the divide in New Hampshire to the Connecticut, thence across that river valley and through Island Pond, Vermont, to the source of the St. Francis river in Quebec, along it past Eichmond, Quebec, and down the river to the St. Lawrence. From thence the way is now open to the great lakes. But probably a short cut will be made from Montreal through the Ottawa, even now projected to be canalized by the Canadian government, into Lake Nipissing down its outlet into Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, which leads, leav- ing one route to the south, to Detroit and Toledo, and another, also southerly, through the straits of Mackinac to Chicago, through the St. Mary's river or strait, past the " Soo," to Lake Superior. This is the shortest possible route from those straits, and therefore from Chicago and Duluth to a winter harbor. Thence the great trade route would lead from Duluth up the St. Louis river to the Mississippi. Leaving the Mississippi navigable to the Gulf of Mexico, to the south, the route now in hand would strike directly west through a prairie stream across the valley of the Red River of the North, leaving another feasible route south through Sioux 138 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. Falls, Sioux City, OmaLa and Kansas City, and a magnifi- cent one to the north into Lake Winnipeg and through its outlet into Hudson's Bay, and also from Lake Winni- peg through the short portages of this remarkable route into the great river of the North, the Mackenzie. And here we may well stop to ponder the greatness of the cross-roads to which we have now arrived. The road that should connect so dissimilar localities as the Frozen Ocean and Hudson's Bay, through all the intervening vari- ations from thence to New Orleans, would rival in impor- tance the one we are tracing across it Continuing our course westward our canal would cross North Dakota by a route the enterprising people of that new State have already in mind as an irrigating and trans- portation way, to where the Missouri bends to the south, thence up that unobstructed water way to Great Falls, thence a short distance to where the great river approaches nearest the very foot of the continental divide. Here would come the work of the greatest magnitude to span the distance between the Missouri and the head waters of the Missoula, a branch of Clarke's Fork of the great Columbia river. Either a tunnel of great magnitude, but perfectly practicable, or a stupendous pair of inclined planes, or perhaps both would be necessary. Over this obstacle the way would be through Lake Pend d'Oreille into the Columbia proper, leaving numerous water ways across the northern boundary into British Columbia, around the Great Bend of the Columbia, until the way becomes directly westward to Portland, Oregon. An alternative way from Lake Pend d'Oreille probably lies through Lake Cceur d'Alene directly through the Palouse country to the Columbia, at the mouth of the Snake river. This route besides ministering to a fine THE TRANS-CONTINENTAL CANAL. 139 country would lead to a route up the Snake, its tribu- tary the Malheur through various large lakes of Eastern Oregon, into Goose Lake the source of Pitt Eiver, which empties into the Sacramento, and opens the way to San Francisco; and to the southward, before reaching San Francisco, into the San Joaquin which might be canalized to Tulare Lake in Southern California. This branch line from the Snake river opening an inside trade route through the whole length of California up to the great present Northwest, but future central north, of Mon- tana, Dakota, Minnesota, Manitoba, and all northward to the frozen ocean, makes a branch road of prime importance. § 101. The Trans- Continental Canal. — When all this seems a vagary, take into consideration that this route would not have so much value from the through traffic between its termini, Portland, Boston and New York, and Portland, Sa,n Francisco and Los Angeles, as it would have as a commou road connecting the various neighbor- ing associations with each other and with those more or less immediately beyond. It would afford an outlet for regions like Eastern Oregon and Washington, all of Mon- tana, Dakota and Minnesota, which will soon teem with millions of inhabitants, to each other and eastwardly past the iron and mineral country bordering on Lake Superior and the lumber tributary to the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence. When it is remembered that the very ups and downs in the grades of the various reaches of this water way will be points where the water powers will attract strong centers of population, and moreover furnish new supplies of power to propel the boats to the next reach, it can easily be seen that the string of associations along the course will most naturally develop the entire canal if only 140 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. for way traffic, and the direct advantage of the worka themselves locally. But that this way would be the one by which wheat from Eastern Oregon and Washington and Dakota and the Canadian Northwest would reach the East would be natural, and would be a crowning and additional reason for its completion. In contemplating gigantic improvement, of which this is given as an extreme example, it must be remembered that its forerunner would be the associations which we have assumed formed, although the lines of the first imagined of such entities has hardly yet been completely drawn in our minds. These associations would be very large and wealthy companies who would have their own boats to run on such great public highways. These boats would not run to accommodate a blind trade but would be sent on specific missions of exchange from one company to another which had things it wished to exchange imme- diately or mediately. This would not be a reversion to primitive modes of trade but aa advance toward an intelli- gent mutual supply of reciprocal wants on the part of first producers. It is easily to be understood that it would be the interest of each association to keep in free repair the part of the route through its territory. This would be done the same as towns or counties now keep up their highways, only with greater efficiency. It would be the only, best, and, as it were private, outlet of many of the associations of peoples on the most difficult portions of the route, so that they would be those having the greatest interest in it. And their greater interest would be proportional to the difficul- ties to be overcome, so probably the work would be the separate work of each association in its own territory. It would not need to be, and probably would not be a KAJfTSAS CANALS. 141 monstrous government job. If all the associations interested helped the people of Montana to construct the work over the great divide, this seems about all that would be to be done except in the local way indicated. § 102. Kansas Canals. — The West and South are at present wrestling mightily with the problems of trans- portation and trada On account of the remoteness of the great central West from the sea and the inadequacy and costliness of the transportation facilities afforded by the present volunteer carriers, a large share of the labor of the western people is absorbed in overcoming their disad- vantages in situation. The consideration of this question has taken a very practical turn in the proposition of the Kansas farmers to build, or have the State build a trunk line of railroad through the length of their State, with branches to reach each county. But if the farmers of Kansas will reap all the advan- tages and more than can flow from such a work, let them organize in one or more farming corporations and make it possible to cheaply and easily make the Kansas river navigable, by dredging a canal channel and depositing the material so as to straighten and strengthen the banks. Then by planting willows and cottonwoods and grasses judiciously, good banks considerably nearer together than now would be obtained and considerable valuable land made and reclaimed. The worst bends in the river could be eliminated by cutting across their necks. A few com- bined lock-dams to act as weirs would be found use- ful for navigation and valuable for power. They could be so placed that valuable irrigation privileges would become available. The waters could be also held for navigation the entire season. This would give a trunk canal from Kansas City at least 142 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. as far west as the junction of the Smoky Hill river and Ladder Creek in the southeasterly township of Logan county, the next but one to the western line of the Stata The branches of the Kansas that would be capable of sim- ilar improvement would very nearly fulfill the plan of reaching every county in the Stata To the north, leaving a few promising creeks out of consideration, there is the Big Blue river, certainly canalizable to the State line, and easily connectable with the Platte river in Nebraska, in, at least, three places. Then comes the great Eepubli- can river, then the Solomon, and lastly the Salina, all of which through the best branch creeks would reach not only every county but almost every township in the north- ern half of the State. At the south a ditch to the Neosho is probably very feasible. Another ditch nearly due west from the lower bend of the Kansas in McPherson county would intercept the northern bend of the Arkansas at Great Bend. From this point this river would furnish another lateral canal to the western boundary of the State toward the south. An improvement from about the same point on the Kan- sas at Lnndsborg southerly through McPherson county, and the Little Arkansas river would reach Wichita and the lower reaches of the Arkansas. Probably such a system of improvement would have incomparably more value to the community than any im- aginable system of railways. Such water ways would float steam vessels. They wonld be open nearly all the year, except a month or two in the winter possibly, and perhaps sometimes a while in the dryest summers, and when it would pay better to use the water for irrigation than for navigation. These ways would even be no mean competitors of the railroads for passenger travel. OTHER WESTERN CANALIZATION. 143 Connected at Kansas Citj -witli the Missouri, and, through the Arkansas also, with the Mississippi, and thus with the open water ways of the world, the ownership of such a system would make Kansas an independent com- monwealth indeed. The exports of Kansas would then not leave the bottoms ia which they were loaded at the farm landings until they were unloaded at New Orleans, Ship Island or Morgan City, to be placed aboard the vessels that should take them to any part of the world. § 103. Other Western Ganalization. — The results obtain- able in Kansas are feasible in every Western State. The situation of Nebraska is exactly similar to that of Kansas. Iowa is remarkably cut up by canalizable streams, the southern commerce of which would mostly be brought together at Keokuk, and all passing St. Louis. A canal to serve the southern tier of counties, which are too near the heads of the small streams flowing southwardly into the Missouri river, extending to the western boundary of the State in the Missouri, would serve the purpose of bringing the commercial interests of the State very com- pletely to a point at Keokuk. It is an example of some of the more difficult undertakings that would be found desirable in the prairie States, upon and near the water- sheds of the rivers. Almost all the rivers and creeks flowing southwesterly into the Missouri, which flows along the western boundary, would probably be connected east- wardly to tributaries of the Des Moines so that their boats could reach Keokuk directly. Every State between the Alleghenies and the Eockies should thus have its own water roads ramifying throughout their lands, opening into the Mississippi or its principal tributaries so as to practi- cally give them sea ways. Ohio and Indiana should again have canals from Lake Brie to the Ohio. 14:4 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. § 104. The Mississippi Outlet. — These considerations immediately bring up the much mooted question of the improvement of the Mississippi, and it is believed that the principles of action in association would produce a change in the usual method of viewing the question. It would no longer be considered desirable to confine the com- mercial outlet of this great system of streams to one physical outlet The various lateral trunks of the great banyan tree like river would be examined, some by the shipping interests of some of the upper branches, and some by others. First of all, probably, it would seem necessary to find a port at the mouth of the river, where the sailing vessels of associations far and near could receive the cargoes from the river boats and barg&s. Such a port could not well be a hundred miles up a narrow and swift current, and nature has provided an admirable sailing vessel harbor fairly convenient to the mouths of the great river. Open- ing from the Mississippi just below Baton Eouge is a bayou which strikes due east from the long bend ending at Plaquemine, into Lake Maurepas, thence through Lake Ponchartrain and out to Ship Island. This is a fine shel- tered harbor with twenty-seven feet of water and a good anchorage somewhat off shore, making it an ideal point to be reached by sailing vessels, and easily enough reached by the river barges. Ship Island is no doubt an ideal point at which to carry on an exchange trade in tbe tropics. There is room, no doubt, for a tight little city of commercial agents, stevedores and warehousemen, and for the warehouses of an immense traffic. The delta itself, although not a promising place for a modern city, might not be at all inconvenient as a loca- tion for temporary and even permanent warehouses and THE MISSISSIPPI OUTLET. 145 wharves for the exchange of products right at the mouth of the river. At the extreme western side of the region in which the waters of the valley reach the gulf is Morgan City twenty miles up from the gulf. The Atchafalaya river, which leaves the Mississippi at the mouth of the Red river, here flows on in large volume to the gulf. Pos- sibly this point would also possess advantages, although it has but twenty feet of water. The commerce of the Mississippi will probably be led out at even more widely separated channels than those which now receive its waters from Mississippi Sound to Morgan City. The father of waters and its lower branches will be tapped by canals to the southward as well as to the eastward. Two such commercial outlets would con- nect the Tennessee from iis lower bend at Guntersville, Alabama, into the Black "Warrior river, and, at the bend it makes taking its northerly course to the Ohio, to the Tombigbee, both ways leading to Mobile and thence to Ship Island. The Pearl river leads more directly from Ship Island to Jackson, Miss., thence to Yazoo City and the network of bayous in the Yazoo bottoms opening into the Mississippi at numerous points below Memphis. On the other side the Calcasieu easily connects the Eed with the gulf near the western boundary of Louisiana. And lastly from the fine harbor at Sabine Pass the Sabine river leads to easy canalization with the Eed river at Shreveport, and from the Eed to the Arkansas at the mouth of the Canadian. And from the Arkansas the Kansas canals mentioned would lead to the Kansas and Platte successively, and to the Missouri at Kansas City, Omaha and Yankton, making a canal route north and south at a distance of more than the width of the States upon its banks from the Mississippi, and from the gulf to 10 146 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. the Dakotas, Montana and the Canadian Northwest. How much better this than the proposed railway over much the same route. § 105. How to Improve the Mississippi. — The course of improvement in the na^dgation of the water ways in the Mississippi valley, in the interest of the producers there who wished to trade in their own products, would no doubt cause an immediate departure from the suicidal idea of confining the waters to one channel. The experi- ence of the world in confining the lower reaches of rivers in single channels, constantly silting up, requiring higher banks, until finally the water way is carried on a high embankment above the surrounding country, producing a most dangerous and impractical system of drainage would seem conclusive against the policy now being pur- sued. But the commercial needs of the aggregate com- munities for all possible water roads, as many and as widely diverging as practicable, would decree the im- provement of the lateral bayous in the Mississippi bot- toms. This fat country for a width of from fifty to a hundred miles is full of channels reaching every cotton and sugar plantation. From the bend in the river above Cairo, Illinois, the St Francis, the White, the Atcha- falaya and the Yazoo rivers or bayous insure at least two principal navigable channels to the gulf. The consolidated interests in the difiEerent sections of the district would clear these channels for the purposes of the local outlets. These interests being large enough would be carried out with a breadth of scope that would make the local conserve the general interests, and the improve- ments of the associations in Louisiana, Arkansas and south- eastern Missouri would fit together and supplement each other in constituting a public work of national magnitude. MISSISSIPPI LAND IMPROVEMENT. 147 Tte improvements ia the great river itself would be carried out in practice by every farming corporation bor- dering upon it, improving the way past its own doors. And again the magnitude of the corporations would insure the adoption of broad and sensible and uniform methods. The whole would be accomplished without any fuss, with- out any one being burdened, or any disinterested commu- nities being taxed for its accomplishment Of course if the government remained in the business of improving rivers and harbors, what aid could be obtained in that way might be called in. But in all probability the meddlesome and ignorant governmental interference would be found of no value. To improve the channel between them the Arkansas and Tennessee, the Louisiana and Mississippi corporations would keep in commission dredgers which should patrol the river, remove snags and dredge out or harrow over shallows. They would sometimes join forces to open new channels through narrow necks of bends, and would sys- tematically direct their efforts to secure a straight channel and counteract capricious tendencies of the river to make more detours. Constant and scientific work of this kind would soon tell in making a straight and fair canal out of the main stream, especially after the lateral channels began their work of keeping the local drainage away, and even in carrying along large portions of the burdens of the central channel. § 106. Mississippi Land Improvement. — Immense as would be the local and general commercial advantages of these improvements, any one can see that the local land improvement throughout the different associations would be far more in money value. The saving from stopping the almost annual recurrence of disastrous floods would 148 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. be great, but the betterment from tbe improved general drainage would be greater. Large areas of practically new lands would result from the building up of banks, cutting off detours, closing useless channels and leaving shallows to fill up by permanently keeping the current away. As the improvements progressed the permanent betterments of the valley lands would many times repay the whole outlay in making a whole network of navigable channels extending through a thousand miles of latitude. It is more than likely that when the bottoms region is managed by large farming corporations, works will be constructed to allow large sections to be overflowed in each flood period to render the floods innocuous, to secure the fertilizing deposit of mud, and for the purpose of per- manently silting up the lowest lands. The people of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana should be enriched by the wash of a continent. It cannot be that human power and ingenuity cannot find some means of intercept- ing, and utilizing the millions of dollars' worth of plant food annually carried to the gulf. There probably is no reason why the spring floods of the great father of waters may not be made measurably as beneficent as the corre- sponding floods of the Nile. If the levees now built and other highlands are used for dwellings, buildings and other permanent works, and solid flood gates are placed in the banks of the river at proper points so as to let the water into districts prepared to receive it, and let it in methodically and not boisterously, the time may indeed come when the spring submergence of large portions of the three lower river States will be looked upon with the same calm serenity and thanksgiving with which the watery envelopment of Egypt is annually welcomed. At any rate, great county wide rice fields WATER INDUSTRIES. 149 may be cultivated in this manner so as to very materially act as safety valves for the floods, and gradually build up the face of the country. By carefully surveying the districts to be submerged, preparing the channels of the exit of the waters so as to retard them or even stop them at times, the waters will be so led about as to be deprived of their burden of land material and safely passed on to their destination. Thus may swamps be solidified, lagoons filled up and rendered useful, and even the shallow bays upon the shores of the gulf be made to receive a complement of this deposit where its use in maliing new land will be the greatest. The river should now be directed in its land making by the intelligence of man, and be made to repair and complete its former imperfect work. § 107. Water Industries, — Again looking beyond the mere trade advantages of canalized waters, it clearly ap- pears that great industrial and farming corporations, hav- ing charge of the consolidated interests of localities as large as counties, to say nothing of whole river systems, would find the unified administration of their waters a matter of great importance and much profit. The differences of interest between users of water for navigation, for power, for irrigation, for drainage and for fishing would disappear. Associations would, as does the governmental admin- istration in France, combine and harmonize the interests of farmer, manufacturer and navigator. For example, an association would have a large amount of labor on hand in the winter which could be utilized in mills for grinding its grain and feed at a time when water was abundant and wanted for neither irrigation nor navigation. It would probably find that its minor industries upon tha 150 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. smaller lock powers would be most profitably carried on in the winter only, by hands at work upon the lands in the summer. Besides an association's needs of power for lighting and heating would be much larger in the winter than in the summer. As all interests were identical, the water administration would find that by some extra expense it would be able to sink the bed of its canal through swamps and wet lands, low enough that the canal itself might be a drain. By judicious arrangement of dams they could be placed wbere it was handy to start the irrigating ditches. And moreover the dam-locks upon a canalized brook or river would have to be so placed that all the water fall in the whole course of the stream would be utilized. And it may be further noticed that when electric accumulators are perfected the abundant power that is obtainable at most periods of the year could be stored to help drive machinery during the two or three months of low water in the streams. The fishing interests would be very much improved in small streams by canalizing, because the amount of water in them would be very much increased by regulation of the flow and by the enlargement and leveling up of the channels. The only exception to this would be in the case of a stream where it might be necessary at periods to use most of the water for irrigation. And even in this case water could be kept in the channel more abun- dantly than now flows at such times, by simply retarding or nearly stopping the flow over the dams or through the locks except when used by boats. But in most parts of the East there would be at all times ample water for all probable irrigation, as well as for navigation and for keep, lag the stock of fish alive, if not in all cases for power. WATER INDUSTRIES. 161 The dams performing the functions of weirs would pro- vide for flsh ways. And fish traps would be thereat arranged. " The word ' weir ' is the modern form of the Anglo-Saxon word ivcer or wer, derived from the verb waran or werian, to hold up ; and appears to have signi- fied in Saxon times, a barrier placed in a river to hold up or enclose water for catching fish" (Vernon-Harcourt). The future weirs for raising the waters may have the ancient use for catching fish for handling for the procure- ment of their eggs, and also to obtain them for consump- tion. In this way the use of fish could be scientifically regulated, and their benefits wholly utilized. By means of the weir-dams reaches of rivers might be devoted to the special culture of particular fish. All would, of course, be devoted to flsh culture generally. Another, and by no means trivial advantage of unified administration of water ways in northern latitudes would be an arrangement for cutting, storing and floating ice, at and to the proper places of storage. Along many canalized rivers, ice might be simultaneously cut so as to be floated down long distances the same as logs are now floated if the dams were properly arranged therefor. Such cutting of ice would, at mild periods in the winter, very likely allow the temporary use of the canal formed by the ice cutters for navigation. § 108. Association Necessary to Water Industries. — Mr. Yernon-Harcourt in considering " rating for drainage im- provements " strangely separates this from the subject of canalization upon which his book principally treats, and says : " The great difficulty in the way of carrying out any comprehensive scheme, in ordinary river valleys, for the prevention of floods and drainage improvements, con- sists not so much in the want of co-operation between the 152 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. landed proprietors, as in the absence of any means of raising adequate funds for executing the necessary work." He then discusses methods of rating to raise necessary funds, and advocates " 'TheEivers Conservancy and Floods Prevention Bill ' which for two sessions has (1882) occupied the attention of Parliament, which proposes that the ratable area for drainage improvement should be co-extensive with the area embraced within the watershed; but that the lower lands would be specially benefited by the works, they should bear a much heavier rate. A comparatively trifling rate, levied over the whole area of a river basin, would furnish the necessary funds for converting the rivers into adequately efficient channels of drainage to prevent the occurrence of summer floods. The prosper- ity and healthiness of the country would by this means be enhanced; the productiveness of the low-lying lands largely increased, and constantly recurring losses from floods avoided. The Conservancy Bill, without compell- ing the inhabitants of a river valley to improve the drainage of their district, will enable boards to be formed for this purpose in each drainage area, with adequate powers of levying rates, and having control over the whole of the valley." There is a strange superstition or hallucination abroad as to the might of the law, as if it were anything at all except how not to do things. Although there is compara- tively little law upon this subject, and that not intelligently adapted to any end, it may not be generally known that there are in the United States, statutes and decisions per- taining to drainage and irrigation, and decisions pertain- ing to waters and water courses, which could not be prop- erly digested in a single volume, however bulky. If law were all that was needed to facilifete the proper use of WATER INDUSTRIES. 153 hydraulic basins, there is certainly enough, for it would take a bright man many months to master it. But the existing law is impotent and so would be the best possible law upon the subject "What is wanted is work and execu- tive management, not law and judicial regulatioa The one does something, the other tells what not to do, and where the right thing is done, is entirely unnecessary. In another place he says : " The division of authority and of interests which exists, even in such a well regu- lated district as the Fens (in England), where the removal of the drainage water is of paramount importance, both leads to a less careful supervision of the banks than is necessary, and also hinders the adoption of comprehensive schemes of improvement" ..." Concerted action, or the fusion of the various authorities, who have now sepa- rate jurisdiction within each river basin (merging together in the Fen lands), into one active efficient body, is neces- sary before much additional progress is made.'' Mr. Vernon-Harcourt elsewhere learnedly discusses the relation of mills and navigation to drainage and floods, and shows them not incompatible, but never hints at their com- plete unified administration. In this respect he is behind Major J. W. Powell in his essay before quoted. The fact remains that the great blessings of good river basins are not now enjoyed, nor can they be but by the corporate association of their inhabitants. Laws and regu- lations can do nothing. Interests cannot be harmonized except by unification. The involuntary rates and taxes provided by drainage laws cannot be a substitute for the voluntary investment of capital by a sufficiently large cor- poration to reap all its benefits, however indirect. By association almost untold wealth may be obtained from the mere configuration of the country as related to 154 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. its water supply. Only by means of sucli large industrial corporations as have been outlined could all these interests be harmonized and means for their prosecution obtained. But with them other advantages still could be gained. The equalization of the flow of the waters would probably visibly equalize the rain-fall as afforestation seems to do. By the interplay and interdependence of interests it would not be found necessary or profitable to flow good land for the mere purpose of obtaining head for a water power or to store up water therefor. It would not be necessary to obtain so much from one dam as to make a great pond above it desirable, for all in a series would be near enough together to utilize all the power, and the sum of the waters actually impounded still be vastly increased, taking the whole of the canalized stream together. In such systems even rice and cranberry culture, requir- ing flowing and submergence of lands, would find their appropriate places, for there are, in the north certainly, some swamps that in such a system could be profitably used as reservoirs of water to the extent of keeping up the proper submergence of cranberry vines, and the water be duly utilized when drawn off. No doubt the same is true of most rice lands, or at least of sufficient such areas for the purposes of that culture. The actual clash of interests during the disastrous flooding of the river bot- toms in Louisiana in the spring of 1890, between the sugar and cotton and the rice land owners who cut the levees to secure water for their crop, thereby opening crevasses that submerged large districts, points its own moral. § 109. Trade Aspects of River Improvement. — Then in response to the agitation for a deep water port on the gulf we may say the Western States have ports enough' upon TRADE ASPECTS OF RIVER IMPROVEMENT. 155 tte rivers that pass their farms, and that they need to associate together and consolidate their interests so that it will be but a part of their industrial functions to improve their water roads and take their goods to the gulf. By the time they get there they will find their ports. Indeed the ports are probably good enough now. Let them take their barges and steamboats to Ship Island and there establish their entrepot of trade. But New Orleans is already established. If the Kansas and Nebraska farmers can transport their products there under their own man- agement, they will find their commercial position much improved. It will have been perceived that the gigantic system of improvement outlined is not at all directed towards making cities but improving the country. As to cities they will decline both relatively and absolutely. The momentum of their development has even now carried them beyond the reason of their being. They are dead weights on industry, fostered in the past by an unscientific trade. They are not only so but positive hindrances of a most vicious kind. Government improvements of the Missis- sippi are now made subservient to the interests of the city of New Orleans. The interests of an empire are disre- garded for the selfish interests of that city in confining the channel of the river within one set of banks so its com- merce should all be forced to pass within reach of her tariff. Furthermore, river improvement and canals are ruinously antagonized by the railroads everywhere. And in the case of the Mississippi the railroads that parallel the river and terminate at New Orleans can under present conditions entirely stop river transportation. ' But the associations of the gi-eat valley would have no sympathy in the selfishness of any of these interests. 156 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. They would plant, as we have seen, their trading stations where it was most convenient to trade. New Orleans and all these other stations, Ship Island, Morgan City and the rest would probably not grow larger in the aggregate than they are now, by the tendency of eastern and western associations to trade to the mouth of the Mississippi. That trade, in so far as it was the trade of the East with the West, would pass its moutlis without filling the stomachs of traders thera Montreal, Oswego, Buffalo and all other lake and river ports from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of St. Lawrence are probably much larger than there would be the slightest need of. And if they could not become healthy industrial centers of associations they would probably decline in population in spite of the fruitful commerce that would pass their gates. That commerce would be carried on in the interest of the peo- ple engaging in it, not in order to make millionaires in lake or river or any other cities. Moreover it would not be carried on by millionaires either, but by associated peoples. These remarks apply to every overgrown commercial city throughout the country and the world. These cities have become the leeches of commerce as well as of industry, just as the speculators that conduct their exploitations therein are robbers who levy their tariff at the gateways of trade, just so far as they are more than necessary and adequate means to facilitate trad& It is only another example of the end, by abuse, becoming subservient to the means, instead of the contrary. It is just as the methods of litigation become, and remain, the principal subjects of litigation, for which the litigant pays such extravagant amounts, and on account of which, he fails to secure his rights. Technicalities usurped the place of merits, quibbles; of rights. Such abuses growing REVIVAL OF SAILING VESSELS. 157 out of necessities grew up naturally. Thej date tlieir decline from the awakening to their enormities. Evolu- tion bliad allows their growth. Evolution becoming con- scious brushes them aside as we do the mosquito that sucks our blood. § 110. Revival of Sailing Vessels. — It will have been perceived that the key to the trade advantages to be opened up by these waterway improvements is the control the producers would exercise over their products marketed. They would retain the ownership until the goods were at the sea highway of nations, there to trade them or even carry them to other ports. This trade would naturally in either case be with other associations without intermedi- aries. And the natural result would be that the carriers by sea would be association vessels. And we may well consider whether the new conditions of trade would make any change in their character. It will be clear that the same reasons that appeared to call for a revival of canal traffic would lead to the revival of sailing vessels as opposed to steamships. Associations directly trading would not be in a hurry, and their trade would be a distributed one. It would most likely usually consist of small cargoes sent to small places nearest to where the products were to be actually used. This would mean that cbeap moderately sized sailing vessels economic- ally sailed and expeditious enough would be employed. Here again the icing process and the carriage of ice is yet going to have a very important influence upon trade and transportation. For it is yet going to be found that ice is a very soft and effective guardian of the delicate texture and flavors of almost all transported food prod- ucts, even the most tender of tropical fruits. And the hold of the despised schooner will yet bring north the 158 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. fruits of the South encircled with the ice that was part of the cargo down, with that very end in view. The farther annihilation of the time factor in trade which has only lately become important in every branch of commerce largely through the development of the speculative element, would be an unmixed benefit to the association. Its agents holding their products until sold to actual consamers, and being assured of the non-perish- ability of most of them, would conduct an honest trade safely, and to good advantage all around, without any of the so-called business ability, and without any of the dangers of ruin through sudden squeezes. In fact trade would, for the first time, have outgrown petty trickery and dishonest speculation. So may ice purify the course of trade as it keeps untainted the things circulating therein. § 111. The North and South Direction of Trade. — The otherwise favored South will yet import large quantities of the bleak weather of the North congealed in ice which will be placed in the upper chambers of houses, mills and all buildings in which people live or work, to be connected with air pipes to the various rooms below, to carry the air heavy with refreshing coolness. They will also veiy much develop their refrigerating processes as applied to storing and transporting products. Thus they will need an im- mense quantity of ice which will yet constitute the basis of trade between South and North and consequently the universal staple of trade. And this ice will be carried to the southern peoples as the cargoes of ships after their products, and afforded to them at a price which shall make it more desirable to be carried than mere ballast, and still make the frozen water a very cheap commodity. In a fair reciprocal trade ice should be laid down in all parts of the South reached by water at a mere fraction of the THE NORTE AND SOUTH DIRECTION OF TB^DE. 159 extortionate prices the present able traders seem to think it is their interest to ask for it. It will relieve the South, or any other part of the world for that mg-tter, of any general use of an expensive machinery process of provid- ing what nature offers in more than a third of the earth literally as freely as water. Probably also the time will come when there will be a temporary transference of labor from the North to the South every winter, for the purpose of enjoying the season in work upon the things that can there, dui'ing that period, be prepai-ed to send to the northern market. When trans- portation becomes an associated undertaking, for use and not exploitation, it vdll pay northern associations to send great detachments to cultivate soutliem fields between October and April, then to return to the North, by that time genial again. Southern winter labor would unques- tionably be very popular, and very productive to northern workers. Perhaps the many northern youth annually suffering with lung troubles would find that this would give them the needed opportunity to shake off the de- stroyer and thus the most fatal of northern diseases be rendered innocuous. This would indeed be a consumma- tion in wiping out climatic differences and avoiding the baleful results of great changes of temperature. Such happy mortals would, as the fortunate idlers may now, avoid both boreal cold and tropic heat We thus arrive again at a north and south direction of trade which has continually forced itself upon our atten- tion in tracing the natural history of the trade of great territorial corporations. Both trade and travel should and will tend to those lines. They are the lines of the eter- nal differences that dictate exchanges and personal move- ments. After unnecessary trade has been reduced to a 160 . TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. minimum, the trade of the North with the South will still have greatly increased. The west of the Mississippi valley will probably, as we have seen, find it convenient to send its surplus wheat to the mouth of the Mississippi, there to be taken by the eastern customer, who is at the same time the greater cus- tomer of the southern region, in return and reciprocal trade. At the Gulf of Mexico the trade of the great west- ern valley will meet the natural return trade with the tropics as well as that of the easterly north with the same southern regions. And naturally and economically much of the trade of the West and East would go by way of this great meeting place of great commercial chanuels. The economy of trade along the lines of greatest commerce is well understood in the commercial world. But it is objected that the consumption of time from Iowa to Maine would be larger than by rail. But the real question would be whether the wheat would hurt or the cotton be spoiled in transit. Both associations would be independent. Then trade would not depend on specula- tive futures. It would not be conducted blindly. Time would be gained in the starting of the exchanges rather than by haste at the end of the transaction. It is only speculation and the feverish haste of robbers for their spoil, that hastens unnaturally the transportation of bulky and enduring products at an expensive speed. In the trade of associations, trainloads of wheat would not be started off at a few minutes' notice to respond to the exigen- cies of a bear speculator required to make delivery in a distant city within a few hours. Storage of wheat would be storage for transportation or consumption, not " elevat- ing " it for a football of the market through elevator cer- tificates. A TRADE CIRCLE. 161 § 112. A Trade Circle. — It is not of course to be said that all eastern and western commerce will go by the way of the gulf. Fish in ice, for example, might never go that way. And it must not be forgotten that there is another water way, by the lakes and St. Lawrence, from the West to the East, which though much obstructed will some day be open and free, as we have seen, and will be used for the exchanges between those sections. It may be imagined that trade will circulate around through these channels, say from Portland to Havana and to New Orleans, thence to Chicago, St. Paul, Duluth or Winnipeg, thence to Portland, and the reverse, all the way by water, single ships making the whole round, carrying parts of their loads only one station, and parts two and even three or more. But these ways are not to be imagined as inviting com- merce which it is the duty of men to provide for them. They are not fetiches, though such ways and poorer ones are now the places at which the fortunate among men have good easy jobs that pay great returns. Where their living is there are their hearts also. Commercial ways and means are simply to be used as necessity dictates. Commerce by the best routes is but a necessity, a means not an end. The imagination of the growth and decline of cities which has been conjured up by these statements, grows out of such fallacious thinking. Cities should depend upon the necessities of trade, not trade on cities, as is now the case, the cart having got in front of the horse. When trade is the instrument of a great class, congregated in great cities, to secure their wealth and luxury, both it and they are exalted. The necessities of peoples, nations, the world, are made to serve the interests of the non-producer. But this will 162 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. change. Then trade will be resorted to by producers to supplement tbeir productions by the needed productions of others. This is all there is of legitimate trade. It is to be reduced and the reduction thereof rejoiced in though cities fall. § 113. The True Use of Cities. — Again cities are not entirely excrescences. There are points at which trade branches, and where means are necessary to facilitate its changes of direction. But villages are sufficient for all legitimate commercial purposes, where whole cities are vulture like, gathered together over the corpses of indus- try and commerce. The trade that goes through them is killed and eaten, so far as the producers to whom alone it is legitimately necessary are concerned. The fair trade of industrial corporations, such as the plan under consideration would create, would be well done by thousands of fairly paid agents of the producers them- selves, where now millions of commercial men and their dependents, who know nothing of the necessities of people to trade with each other, grow abnormally wealthy, per- forming no real service to civilization or to mankind. Cities grew up when trade was carried on to benefit the traders, not because people wished to trade. They have educated the people to trade, but the lesson having been learned, the practice of those who have learned it will not be as though they were continually in the school. The trading city was a fair and the trader a fakir there. His trade depended upon making a display where people were passing. The latter were indifferent, but the former was entirely dependent upon making sales, frequently of things the buyers immediately wished they had not bought The fakir at the fair made the most who was standing where most people passed. The trader in the city did the CITIES NOT REQUIRED FOR TRADE. 163 same. A display made upon some streets or thoroughfares procured a fortune. A position a stone's throw away was absolutely valueless. This was because the people did not know any difference between the traders and hardly even knew that they wanted to trade with any of them. This is a blind and necessarily stupid trade. Even now most buyers for consumption trade according to the loca- tion of the trader rather than because of any real knowl- edge of his methods or his stock. § 1 14. Cities not Required for Trade. — ^But all this will necessarily change, and buyers through co-operation will be enabled to direct their trade to the person or corpora- tion they know they wish to patronize. Then traders being aggregate persons will go to that preferred seller, also a cor- poration, and it will make no difference whethsr it is on Thirteenth or Fourteenth Street, whether it or its goods are in New York, Portland, Eastport, Kalamazoo or Oshkosh. Furthermore the buyers being territorial corporations, cov- ering more or less exclusively cettain definite territory, will establish their retail depots of distribution among themselves where it is most convenient, and all that can be saved in buying in the cheapest of the big establish- ments in the largest cities will not be eaten up by the expense of going there to trade or of having the purchase transported to the buyer. The retail stores will be at the crossings of railroads or at any harbors that motor roads touch, and they will have back doors into which they can take goods from ship or cars. The wholesale warehouse of the producer will be situ- ated in exactly the same way. And they will not be so aggregated together that it will cost more to get goods from the transportation line to the warehouse than it costs to carry them on the thousand miles of space intervening 164 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. between the place of production and that of distribution. This is exactly what results in large cities. Truckage and cartage frequently is a heavier burden than railroad or freight charges. For most trade, retail or wholesale, a country railway junction should be a better locality than either New York or London. Further as to cities, it is not natural that industries should be crowded and cramped together in single widely separated spots. The natural way would be the opposite, that industries requiring many workmen should be brought near the fields where the bulky and perishable articles upon which the workers live are raised. The raw material of industries even bears no proportion in bulk to these, and is almost invariably durable matter, while its distribution throughout nature does not favor concentration, but separation of industries, to approxi- mate the greatest economies in the supply of raw materials. Then, too, the question of the easy distribution of the productions of industries to those requiring them, again dictates separation rather than congregation of industries in great masses widely separated. As in the case of stores it is essential that factories be strung thinly along the lines of water or land transporta- tion where they can have their own docks, and their own spur tracks, so that moving bulky raw materials or fin- ished product should be a mere unloading or loading of the cars or vessels. § 115. Cities not Required for Workshops. — Then in the case of factories and workshops they should be thinly dis- tributed so that the workers should have but a few min- utes' walk to get to them. The time and labor spent by workmen and workwomen in going to and from their labor in large cities is a shame and a disgrace to vaunted human CITIES NOT REQUIRED FOR WORKSHOPS. 165 intelligenca In New York the average of time so spent by those who will not live in the worst tenements probably exceeds three hours per day for each worker, and the expense is something enormous. People are reducing their hours of labor only to spend more time wearily walking the streets or riding in disagreeable and ferocious crowds to and from their homes. The morning and evening scramble to get across the Brooklyn bridge is a fight that is a disgrace to civilization. The crowding of the elevated railroads is to the last degree demoralizing of manners and of the character of all who have to use them with any frequency. In the early morning and at night Broadway, New York, for miles is a wearisome road for thousands of women going to and coming from all sort of factories, not one of which need be located in a city at all. None of them employ more help than can be found in any village, and few of them make more of their specialties than could be mar- keted in a county. That shirt and clothing factories should be located in high priced buildings in the center of three millions of population, at an average of five miles from the homes of the operatives, hundreds of miles from the factories that make the cloth, and thousands of miles from the people who raise the raw material and consume their product, is a most patent absurdity. These particular industries are huddled together there because there is a sort of waste labor in New York that can be obtained for less than it is worth, that of women and raw immigrants. It is very largely that industry is most completely exploitable, that it is forced into great centers and that industries are out of all reason carried to commercial centers. The further reasons are the habit of trade and the advantages growing thereout. It does not at 166 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. all follow that the best place for a commercial center is also best for an industrial one. In nine cases out of ten it is probably not so, even with things as at present. The growth of great aggregations of population entails an enor- mous waste of effort on the part of all producers and consumers. We need not deplore the loss of cities because they are pleasant to live in. More eloquent pens than mine picture their miseries. And the resources of civilization are now sufficient to facilitate intercourse and the circulation of knowledge and information, so that the village and the farm, if fairly treated, would be just as near the great puls- ing heart of civilization as the metropolitan centers them- selves are. The telegraph, telephone and the pneumatic tube, popularized and not monopolized, would make the unrobbed rural dweller stand on the highest pinnacle of enlightenment, besides allowing him the pure air and open sunlight of the mountain top. There is no more real gregariousness in cities than in villages, or even rural districts. City people in general are acquainted with fewer persons than farmers and vil- lagers. Those who live in solitude, and long for human associations without hope, are much more common in cities than in the country. The cities are great deserts of soli- tude and wildernesses in which poor human beings lose themselves from all human companionship, affection and love, for lifetimes. Hermits abound in New York, and recluses are all along the soHdest built streets. Would a criminal hide, be is more secure in London than in the Dismal Swamp. § 116. Oities not Required for Markets. — If it is questioned whether it is not rather to the interest of agriculturists that cities should go on growing and thereby furnish a FARMERS' INTERESTS AGAINST CITIES. 167 market for tlieir products, it is answered that the farm- ing population does not wish to produce for a market but for themselves. They will learn that direct production for themselves is the easiest way to secure themselves what they would otherwise buy with the product of what they sold. The farmers now really feel that the products they pour into the cities pay outrageous transportation expenses to get there, contribute while there to pay enormous city rents, interest on exaggerated valuations and capitaliza- tions, and profits to multitudes of middlemen and to com- petent and incompetent manufacturers before the farmers get the products for which the price of theirs is ex- changed. They feel and know dimly that the country and the tiller of the soil are kept in dependence upon and in- dustrial slavery to the cities. The despised countrymen see with many pangs of jeal- ousy the growth in wealth, power and arrogance of great classes of city dwellers that seem not to work at anything disagreeable and to serve no purpose except their own gratification. The farmers know that a larger proportion of men of their own class are capable and intelligent than of the mercantile and manufacturing classes and yet they arrive at no dignity or importance. They correctly feel that there is no real reason for the difference. § 117. Farmers' Interest against Cities. — But the growth of cities is of vital moment to the farming population in a different sense. By their unequal development and ab- sorption of all industry except that of tilling the soil and all the population except that engaged therein, the country is denuded of inhabitants and bereft of the means of the highest civilization. Whereas if the population were to be scattered throughout the country as the real needs of 168 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. industry and trade, and above all, of right living require, the whole country would be covered with a teeming popu- lation, and no farm would be without the modem improve- ments in living now accessible only in cities and to the very few there. Every township six miles square and containing a thousand of farming population should also have its village or villages containing as many more. And this should be almost uniformly so. And the county seat or the place most favored with power or the center of the trade of ten or twenty such townships should as uniformly be a city of some ten or twenty thousand inhabitants where the less common or larger industries were carried on for the supply of the county and for using up the raw material collected therein. The cities at a few of the more important points in a State would then need be scarcely larger on account of the presence there of the commercial agents and ware- house employees of the various industrial corporations of the vicinity and foreign parts. Even the presence of trading agents in cities is probably to be much limited. For each farming or industrial cor- poration will no doubt largely advertise its quotations of produce for sale, and upon this notice sales will be made by correspondence. In this trade the rule would not be caveai emptor (buyer, look out for yourself), but the seller would warrant the quality of his goods and the truth of his representations. Something like this result would be arrived at from the fact that industrial corporations, in starting industries not common to each town or county, would not take them to the larger places entirely, but rather to small ones, especially if they were as well or better placed with reference to supplies of raw material, of labor and the TRADE REDUCED TO ITS LOWEST TERMS. 169 supplies necessary to its sustenance, and to transportation generally. Those industries requiring power would go to where it could be had most conveniently if other things were equal. But the apparent rule of an association like that in Androscoggin, having no interest to subserve but the common interest, would be to scatter its industries, and bring them into close connection witb the basic in- dustry of all, the agricultural. Its interest would not be centered at a central point but would take in every acre of land it owned. § 118. TVade Reduced to its Lowest Terms. — The great economical object of association is to economise or save payments or charges for rent, interest and profit, transpor- tation expenses and all other charges out of which wealth is coined from producers by men under the guise of facili- tating production and distribution. Associations would, upon the same principle, avoid such charges, however legitimate. Much of the present machinery of exchanges is unduly complicated for the purposes of affording places where men may sit and fill their baskets. Changes in antiquated and wasteful methods of distribution are fre- quently opposed by such men, openly, as cutting off their supplies, denying them a living. Industrial association is for the very purpose of stopping the living of such per- sons, at least in that way, and shortening and straighten- ing the channels of trade, in fact to do away with most of the existing channels. Moreover it is not to the interest of the West to supply cheap wheat to the East, but to eat their own wheat. Then if the wheat is cheaply produced they are gainers. Their circles of industry would, from that fact, be stronger and more productive of riches in the shape of enjoyments. They do not live to undersell the East in ITO TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. wheat, or Russia or India, for tliat matter, but to eat cheap bread, and have other things that constitute wealth. To most safely have wealth is to make the things that con- stitute wealth for yourself, as far as practicabla It will take very decided differences in widely separated localities to produce any great trade between them, when industrial co-operation shall have brought out all the advantages of each section most economically. The trade charges and transportation expenses offset any merely slight differences. Trade is worshiped only by those who live by it Trade is the leech of industry. Trade does not make things or wealth in the last analysis, but it does intercept much wealth on its way from producer to consumer. Trade is to be avoided as an object, in and of itself. It is a necessary evil. It is on account of obstruc- tions of distance that trade is necessary between the pro- ducer and consumer, because of differences of location of such consumers and producers on the earth's surface. Trade of itself, I repeat, is to be reduced to a minimum. There is an economical argument for reducing trade to its lowest terras. Political economy, by the latest econo- mists, teaches that distribution is part of the process of production, that in fact the process of production is not complete until goods are in the hands of the consumer, produced to him. If this is so, the cost of this part of production is to be reduced to the lowest possible point, the same as any of the other processes are cheapened in every possible way. Then it is economically legitimate to reduce the number of handlers between producer and consumer, and to reduce the physical distance between them even to zero, or in other words produce at homa Again all work is moving things. Transportation over spaces upon the earth's surface is the most expensive of RETAIL PRICES. 171 all moving of things. Therefore such moving, or transpor- tation, is to be avoided whenever practicable. This trade is to be reduced. This is especially so of the bulky arti- cles of agricultural production. The most of all the pres- ent transportation of such articles cannot possibly be of general advantage to the parties most concerned, the pro- ducers and consumers, but only to the middlemen. § 119. Retail Prices. — One of the greatest reforms that farming corporations would accomplish would be in mod- erating and equalizing retail prices. The result of the present practice is that virtually the public is at the mercy of a set of sharks, or of men so situated that they have to act the part of sharks. With the accumulations of profits to charge up for former middlemen and a rent set to collect all his business will bear, the lot of the retail dealer is indeed hard, and that of the consumer worse. The generality of retail prices are several times what good goods are worth and the goods are frequently not fit to be sold at any price. Usually where the prices are comparatively low the goods are systematically misrepre- sented as to quality. And where really first class goods are to be had and representations as to quality are to be relied upon, the prices are out of reason, exorbitant. For the matter of a small percentage in value of quality and truthful representations prices are doubled, trebled and quadrupled, and the last state of public robbery is worse than the first. This is but a mi id statement of the facts which every thinking consumer knows. All know that, if they wish to buy even the simplest article, they are compelled to go to a store where they will be cheated in quality or in price or both. Every member of the general public feels this daily and hourly in regard to even the minutest purchase. 1T2 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. It is the most painful duty of a sensitive, honorable man to enter a store where the goods are retailed and undertake to buy any article however trivial. If he selects a good article he feels that he will be imposed upon in the price, or if he selects a low priced article he knows he will find its quality miserable, and he chooses between the two in silence and humiliation. According to the " New York Times " of March 22, 1890, Mr. J. R. Dodge, statistician of the Department of Agriculture, says, in his March report for the current year : " Another serious cause of depression is the exorbitant share of the farmers' products taken by the middlemen and carriers. While growers receive twenty-five to thirty per cent less for beeves, consumers pay the same for beef. Milk is bought for three cents per quart, and sold for eight. The huckster often takes more for the hand- ling a product in a day, than the grower received for pro- ducing a season's growth. The seller's profits on fresh fruits is a suggestion of greed and extortion. The army of dealers in futures disturb the natural flow of trade, check exportation by a temporary rise to be followed by lower prices and greater fluctuations. Speculators depress prices when garners are full, and boom them when farmers have nothing to sell, as at present The community is infested with pestilent swarms of non-producers. The curse of speculation blights and consumes the results of honest industry. Leeches fasten on every product of labor and suck from it the life blood of profit They who produce nothing, who neither toil on the farms, nor spin in the factories, are absorbing the wealth of the country by combination without conscience, and service without equity. "It is suggested that farmers may be compelled to AMOUNT TAKEN BY TRADERS. 1Y3 retail their own fruits and vegetables, and manufacture their own flour." A London correspondent of tlie " New York Sunday- Sun" of November 29, 1891, on tbe agricultural distress in England says: "What is to be done? There is one remedy at least, but thej won't use it. They curse the American cultivator, but it is the English middleman they ought to hang. A greater human fiend has never breathed. Impoverished by this bloodsucker's doings the English wheat and corn growers have tried the fruit and vegetable culture. . . . But now they discover that while the Covent Garden middlemen make a more than usurious profit by selling their wares — competent economists and statisticians valued it in August, 1891, at 300 per cent — they (the farmers) do not make good their expenses. Farmers unless they are farming on a large capital are absolutely discouraged." § 120. Amount Taken hy Traders. — Few recognized authorities have yet promulgated any estimate of the enor- mous sums received by traders as their share in produc- tion. Probably very few have any rational idea upon the subject, but it is more than likely that aside from transpor- tation or any other function, except owning and changing, ownership in products, they receive over one-half of the amount of all the results of the productive energies of the people. This is a very consei-vative estimate when we consider retail prices, which are the only prices that have any relation to the public at large or which have any im- portance in economical discussions. For sitting in the ■ways of exchange a certain class of men get as much as all the toilers and spinners in the universe, rendering void the scripture which says: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 174 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. There is not nearly so great a grievance against what is received for transportation, although the total percentage is large and most of the transportation useless. Almost everyone has a fair idea what it costs. In the West it is next to the trader's share and probably over half what is left by the commercial men. The great English authority Acworth, in his boot " The Railways and the Traders," contends at length that great as are the admitted railway rates, any reduction therein would be pocketed by the middlemen. He quotes at page 144 with sympathy Mr. Albert Finis's testimony before a committee of the United States Senate: "The shipper is never satisfied as long as he has to pay anything. You will find this the case here and all over the world. The shipper's business is to get the rates down as low as possi- ble, and to get as much service as possible for the least money. The middlemen, the merchants and shippers, stand between the railroads and the consumers, and what- ever deduction in charges the railroads make the middle- man generally puts in his own pocket . . . That is the reason why he is so interested in getting the rates down. He generally represents himself, however, as doing it for the benefit of the people when it is really for the benefit of himself." This brings out in relief the fact that the producing farmer is almost never a shipper. Mr. Acworth at page 137 quotes approvingly a state- ment in regard to the price of codfish from Montrose, in the fish market of London. " The wholesale Billingsgate price of fish is \hd. per lb. Before leaving Billingsgate the three half-penny pound of fish stands at seven penca Out of the l^d. the railway takes d., the fish curer takes ^d. and ^d. are left to the fishermen who own and man their own boats." It seems that the curer is a middleman AMOUNT TAKEN BY TRADERS. 175 whose expenses for boxes, etc, are " very small." He makes 95 per cent of the wholesale price of the fish delivered at the quay by the fishermen. The railway gets a little less than he, so the producer of the fish, the middleman and the carrier fare nearly equally for very unequal services. Then the traders in the market itself take to themselves four times as much as the fishermen, the railway, and the first traders together get, and we may well believe that there are more traders' profits before the fish gets to the workingmen's frying-pan. Mr. Acworth is inclined to consider that the "public can do without the middlemen very much better than they can do without the thrifty investor " (in railways). And certainly it is in the interest of the public to make these traders either fish, cut bait, or go ashore It may be said that the state of affairs in the Fulton fish market in New York is almost exactly similar as to figures, except that the fishermen bringing in their fish get the share of the railway more than the British fisher gets. In New York thousands of tons of the people's food are dumped annually into the hai-bor so that prices may be kept up to two or three times its intrinsic value, and five or six times what the fishermen receive for it. A good illustration of this subject is in an article "Better and Cheaper Tea," in the "New York Times " of July 20, 1891, credited to the "Philadelphia Ledger." The article concludes thus : " The tea drinkers at home may revel in the fact that they will have better and cheaper tea in 1891-2 than they had for along time. They are the only Americans who derive benefit from the tea industry. At one time it poured a stream of wealth into our land, but somehow or other we grew careless and allowed the channel to be diverted to other nations. The 176 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. spectacle is very painful to a patriot The heavy capital with which the crops are raised, the experts who taste and the dealers who buy the leaf, the lead in which it is cased, the steamers in which it is carried, the companies which insure it, and the banks which attend to the financiering are all foreign, chiefly British. When we pay for it in money, we send the amount to be shaved in London, and when we pay in kerosene, flour, and manufactures, we pass them through almost the same line of hands from New York to Amoy. The American people will spend $10,000,000 for Chinese tea in 1891-2. Of this vast sum the planters will receive $3,000,000, the tradesmen and home dealers $2,000,000, and foreigners, with do interest in either land, the handsome balance of $5,000,000. Why cannot we have some of it ? There is the same field for American brains here to-day as in the time of Low, Grin- nell, Howland, and Train, when we were the owners of the trade. Why do not our business men take advantage of the opportunity ? " But it will be seen that the $10,000,000 represents the wholesale- price, not what the people spend for tea but what the retail traders pay for it In this case no one can doubt but that the retailer makes at least fifty per cent more, the trade in this staple being fully as badly exploited in the retail as in the wholesale department. And of the sum of say $15,000,000, the growers get twenty per cent doing about as well as the hardy British fishermen. Any one can figure up the other percentages to suit himself, though it can hardly be amiss for the present writer to say t!iat in his judgment $2,000,000 is all that is legitimate out of the remaining $12,000, OOO levied upon the cup that cheers but not inebriates. In all these instances producers could get twice as DAVID A. WELLS ON RETAIL PRICES. Ill much for their product as they now do, and consumers pay but half what they now do, and yet leave an enormous margin. That is about what the people could generally make trading for themselves. § 121. David A. Wells on Retail Prices.— Mx. "Wells's book, " Eecent Economic Changes," with 466 pages of text, might fairly be called an inquiry into the recent great decline in prices of commodities. It proceeds through a long discussion upon the theory that the great improve- ments in the instruments of production have caused an over supply, and that therefore the prices of almost all namable commodities have greatly fallen, and almost all important and many unimportant articles are named and prices given, making one long and conclusive induction to prove the theory. But the prices named are very remark- able. They are not the prices with which common peo- ple are acquainted, and their contemplation at great length and with particularity is a revelation even to an intelligent observer, to whom hardly any of them are really unknown or susceptible of the slightest doubt. In the course of the book many deductions intended to be soothing to the spirit of discontent are incidentally drawn. But these conclusions, though apparently logically deducible from the undoubted figures given, are not felt to be satisfactory because repugnant to common sense and common knowl- edge. The milk of the cocoanut is given in less than two pages, beginning at page 450 : "The fact that in no country do the masses ever experience as much benefit from a fall of prices as they would seem to be fairly entitled to have, owing to the great difference between wholesale and retail rates, and that this difference is always greatly intensified in the case 13 178 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. of the poor who purchase in small quantities, clearly indi- cates one of the greatest and as j'et least occupied fields for economic and social reform. Flour, in the form of bread, costs usually three times more when distributed to the poorer consumers in cities of the United States, than the total aggregate cost of growing the wheat out of which it is made, milling it into flour, barreling, and transporting it to the bakeries. The retail prices of meats are enhanced in like manner ; and investigation some years ago showed that, when anthracite coal was being sold and delivered in New York city for $4.50 per ton (costing something over a dollar at the mines), it cost people on the East and North rivers who bought it by the bucketful from $10 to $14 per ton. " While in recent years the cost of nearly all food prod- ucts in the United States has (as has already been shown) been so greatly cheapened that their competitive supply has reduced the value of land in Europe and impoverished its agriculturists, the results of the investigations of the Labor Bureau of Connecticut prove that the retail cost to the wage earners of that State of most of these articles of food-supply — which on the average represents one-half of their wages — has, comparing the prices of 1887 with those of 1860, greatly increased ; com meal by the barrel, for example, having advanced forty per cent, and butter from thirty-five to forty per cent " Similar results are noticed in all other countries. Out of £100 paid by consumers in London, Sir James Caird estimates that not more than £30 finds its way into the hands of the English dairy farmers who in the first in- stance supply it In the case of some varieties of fish — mackerel — the cost of inland distribution in England has been reported to be as high as four hundred per cent in TEE REMEDY FOR RETAIL PRICES. 179 excess of the price paid to the fishermen. Eggs collected from the farmers in Normandy are sold according to size to Parisian consumers, at an advance in price of from eighty-two to two hundred per cent " The experience of different countries in respect to the difference in retail and wholesale prices in staple commodi- ties is not, however, uniform, the most notable exception perhaps being that American beef, flour, bread, butter, and cheese are, as a rule, sold more cheaply at retail in London than in New York." . . . § 122. The Remedy for Retail Prices. — " The relation be- tween prices and poverty has long attracted attention, and nothing new in the way of theory remains to be offered. Three thousand or more years ago a certain wise man, who had sat at the marts of trade, and made himself con- versant with the nature of wholesale and retail transac- tions, embodies in the following short and simple sentence as much in the way of explanation of their involved phe- nomena as the best results of modem science will ever be able to offer : ' The destruction of the poor is their poverty,^ Proverbs, 10th chapter, \b1h verse." This really means, the destruction of the poor is accomplished through the ad- vantage taken of their poverty by the rich. This wise man, by the way, was of a race that has always been of a complacent mind in face of the poverty of the poor. This complacency culminated in that dis- heartening phrase: "The poor ye have always with you," and the admonitions calculated, like the beatitude " Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God," to make the poor contented with their lot These admo- nitions, it is needless to say, have had no influence upon the practice of the race of the prophet who uttered them, especially in its dealings with other peoples. 180 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. And strange to say, oiir author, in foot notes, goes on and quotes witli apparent admiration of the smartness indicated, a statement of the withering effect upon all nations of Jewish financial and mercantile ability in the race for wealth as the result of trade. But the world is getting sick of a Jewing trade and I prophesy will soon have no more of it And it is submitted whether modern science and prac- tice will not yet enable the poor to combine so that they may not be destroyed, and even so that they may become ricL All do not give up the problem so easily as Mr. Wells and the Jewish wise men. Several careful articles in the English reviews have set forth statements of the exorbi- tant nature of retail prices and the very inadequate prices obtained by the farmers even near London. In one of these instances a very rational system of advertising com- bined with a proposed small parcel delivery of goods at low rates by the railways, was advocated. § 123. Why not Co-operative Stores Alone? — It maybe objected that as we seem to trace most of the mischief in the present distribution to the traders, we might as well simply get rid of them and trade co-operatively and under- take nothing else. B\it it is to be remembered that there are very different grades of producers, and that the most powerful and commercial of these would be able to absorb what was saved from the traders. So that the condition of the weaker producers, the farmers, would remain practi- cally the same. In fact whenever a co-operative store is started, all other interests combine against it so that it is more difficult to make it successful alone than it can possibly be to run a business corporation combining industries and trade in such a way as to be proof against competition. NECESSAMY TRADE. 181 But the greatest difficulty is m the impracticability of running co-operative stores separately from the other func- tions of production. The store, being a small matter so far as effort goes, takes up no continuous attention on the part of the general producer, is straightway neglected and forgotten by the majority of those interested therein, and becomes a sort of delegated function. It is only when the people or so many of them as are concerned shall have all their productive functions in common, that they will bend their whole energies to their management. And in such a management the store will be but one of the func- tions of a well-ordered whole ; whereas separately it is a disconnected thing, like man's love, something apart from his existence, or the business of all, the business of no one. § 124 Necessary Trade. — Trade must be systematized and cheapened, the same as other processes of production. It is now in the utmost confusion, and managed with the least science and prescience of any of the processes of pro- duction, being about on a par with farming as at present conducted. Trade should be freely carried on with any persons and all parts of the world, subject only to natural selection as to the advantages to be gained. The trade of farming cor- porations should be directed by a much better policy than is that of individual traders. Such associations would be much more apt to look ahead and buy of those to whom they could directly sell their products and contrariwise. They would avoid roundabout trade involving ships going in ballast, and with unremunerative freights, and expenses for exchange in making settlements in such trade, when it had for a sole purpose the making of temporarily good bai^ains. As trade is not in itself a good, but a necessary labor. 182 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. SO it does not necessarily give any one any advantage over anotlier, or impart wealth beyond the labor involved, to any one whether seller or buyer. It is not so much for the purpose of selling as for buying. We do not produce what we do not want; and, without we wish something we do not have, there is no sense in selling anything, much less in producing things to sell. The Androscoggin asso- ciation would not grow bananas under glass without it could be done cheaper tban to patronize Central America. It would not make maple sugar to avoid trade with Cuba for cane sugar, without it could thereby save labor, or it desired to have some of the maple variety also. § 125. The Production of Surplus Products. — ^If the An- droscoggin association found that it could much more economically produce cotton cloth than any other people, it would not produce any surplus cotton cloth without it needed something for which it could offer cloth in return directly or indirectly. Cloth would not be produced for fun or to acquire dominion of the markets of the world, but to save labor in acquiring the amount of wealth that the members of the association craved. It would not be to the advantage of the Androscoggin asso- ciation to cover its beautiful land all over with cotton factories, even if it did have cheap water power, without it saw that it needed a corresponding amount of things in trade which it could not produce economically. It would much prefer using that power to run its cars, plow its lands, and heat and light its houses, than to throw cheap goods into every market in the world. Its circle of in- dustry would not exist to inclose or guard or monopolize markets, but to complete the circuit of trade so that the electrical current could warm, enlighten and vivify all the meiiibers of the association. THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS PRODUCTS. 183 Such considerations are necessary that the first farming or industrial corporate associations, and those that follow after them, shall not fall down and worship false idols, and be carried away from their true welfare. The car- dinal point of industrial association is not to produce one- sidedness, but many-sidedness; not abnormal development, but healthy growth. The inequalities of the different portions of the earth's surface upon which different asso- ciations found themselves, would in all cases be obstacles to be overcome, not industrial sand-bags with which to waylay commerce and rob through trade. It would not be purely to the advantage of an associa- tion having an iron mountain, that it was there. It could only itself use a certain quantity of iron. The cheap sur- plus iron would be a good only that it might be exchange- able for more desired articles. If the country around the iron mountains was sterile and worthless, that would be a disadvantage which its cheap iron, bj' exchange with those who lived in a better country, would partially offset. It would not be equal to the advantage that would be derived from having just iron enough in a more fertile country, for the transportation both ways would in such case, at least, be avoided. But if the land about an iron mine was as good as anywhere, the ore might be almost a curse to those living about it, as is now so frequently the case with mineral deposits, because the good land is neglected and even blasted, as in the black district of England, for the too exclusive development of a comparatively sterile industry producing but one kind of wealth, besides entail- ing a very disagreeable occupation that nullifies all the benefits of wealth to those who pursue it under ordinary conditions. The associators located about an iron mountain should 184: TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. not exist to mine iron, but to produce the constituents of wealth and comfort, and if to mine iron were the only way to do so, it would indeed be a misfortune. They should mine iron temperately with that in view, and not madly obey the bequests of King Iron or of iron barons. The industrial superstitions that impel people to such abnormal results, are among the most destructive influ- ences that plague society. They accentuate the physical inequalities of the earth, and involve a thousand fold greater inequalities in the social condition of men. They necessarily tend to the wealth of the few and to the poverty of the majority. Industrial pride goes before the fall of the masses into slavery to the rich. § 126. Abnormal Development of Localities is never good for the mass of the people living therein. The peo- ple of none of the most operated and congested districts are so well off as those of more evenly developed localities, or as they might be in places, if there were any, where there was just a normal regulated employment of the forces of nature. Under association the patchy distribution of some of the raw materials of wealth would be counterbalanced to an extent by making them of a size sufficient to neutralize the one-sidedness of productions, by the simultaneous practice of some other extensive avocations. No asso- ciation should unduly develop any particular natural advantage simply because it, compared with other natural developments of the same kind, seems to be superior ; or because, compared with other natural opportunities of a different kind, it seems to offer greater profits. The savings from developing all opportunities evenly are far more substantial than the profits the people can ever derive from one kind of production. The more essential DECENTRALIZATION OF EASTERN INDUSTRY. 185 gifts of nature, or substitutes for them, are, too, very much more evealy distributed than the captains of industry, interested in the abnormal development of trade exchanges, admit, or lead people to suspect Heat producers are every where. In New England, noted for want of coal deposits, power that can be turned into heat is unlimited. The evil to be avoided is great. Oue-sidedly developed communities, coal mining counties and towns, iron dis- tricts, factory cities and even commercial cities are corre- spondingly one-sided in the distribution of wealth. Some are very rich. The most are very poor. The average of the whole is not high. Abnormal industrial development tends to put the people's whole plan of industrial salvation and hope of the heaven of wealth at the mercy of those over whom and whose circumstances they have no con- trol, and whose interests are antagonistic. All men are selfish. Trade for any people's surplus is not engaged in by any other people except for their own benefit. The predatory in human nature is not developed away and will not be in long ages. It is necessary to remember that in trade it is every one for himself and the devil for us all, especially the hindmost. Association into corporations has been for mutual protection and individual advantage, and has not helped those not corporators and those not so much as it should have. So it will be with associations complete. They must work by one interest the same as persons. They must be a more com- plete and stronger lot of corporate persons than ever yet devised, who will be able to work out their own salvation in spite of the devil of trade competition. Each must therefore reduce its contact with trade as sucli to a minimum, and help every one correspondingly. § 127. Decentralization of Eastern Industry has even 186 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. now commenced. Eastern plants are constantly being moved to the West and South, and to a still greater extent eastern capital is flowing into industries in those new localities. A rather suggestive and interesting approach to the idea of decentralizing the present indus- trial development of the East is embodied in the printed invitation on the folder of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy E. R. Co. of July 8, 1891. It says, " Move West with your Manufactory," and gives "the reason why." " Profit on machinery in the New England States is very small ; profit on agriculture in the far Western States ia also small. The Western producer is too far from the Eastern consumer ; he cannot give sufficient to the East- ern producer in exchange for his product Business is based on an exchange of products, not on money. The farmer in Nebraska has a standing offer of so many bushels of corn in exchange for a good stove; the Massachusetts stove-maker offers his stove for so much corn. The two producers are far apart. Long haulage and speculative centers are between them. The stove-maker wants to eat the corn, the farmer requires the stove to warm his home ; both must work very hard to pay the intermediate costs of the exchange, hence both complain that the profits are small. Exchange of products is the fundamental prin- ciple of all business ; the nearer the producers are to each other, provided they produce diametrically opposite neces- sities, the greater the proBts or the leisure. All the rami- fications of trade do not alter this principle one iota. The farmer cannot move his farm to Massachusetts, the factory can, however, move to the West. On the fore- going positive economic principle, that factory located in the West must pay, always provided that the enterprise baa been undertaken primarily by the man who thoroughly DECENTBALIZA TION OF EASTERN IND USTR Y. 187 understands his business; that the location has been selected with prudence after earnest study of the country, both in regard to the supply of raw material and the tributary territory available for the disposition of the manufactured product ; that sagacity and judgment per- vade every movement concerned in the creation of the factory, and that a comprehensive business intelligence guides it towards the highway of success. . . . " Nearly every manufacturer in the West is doing an ever-increasing and profitable business, but capital is scarce for the development of all the resources of the West All these towns are seeking to trade with indus- trial establishments located near them. The West will trade with the West. . . . " There are towns surrounded by coal and raw material in the West right in the midst of the customers of Eastern factories, and others that have inexhaustible water-power. Is it consistent with that energy which has made this great country a success to wait until others have filled the field, and then, by force of economic exigencies, to have to follow to secure what remains, or should this matter be given earnest consideration ? " The field for manufacturing in the near future is the West. Immense establishments, doing a prosperous busi- ness, are already located there. Let timely action be taken." The author of this notice has a very clear idea of the very far reaching economical advantage in the direction of more perfect association between the producer and con- sumer. It may well be doubted whether the East has more good manufacturing plants than it would need to satisfy the demands of its own people under a better dis- tribution of wealth. But at any rate the West should 188 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. have tte industries it desires, either by removal thither or by new creation. § 128. Decentralization of English Industry. — As in the Eastern States, English plants are, to a less extent, being moved to the United States and the Colonies, and to a greater extent English capital is flowing into the industries of newer countries, and old countries with a new develop- ment of industry. Yet the nearest to a radical change through the growth of farming corporations would take place in England. The present one-sided development there has changed her to an industrial hell for all who labor. But even she could not resist a tried and proved method of association by which workers would receive the due and full reward of their labor. And possibly there would be no help for some of her present establishments by any terms of association they could offer to the producers of their raw material who live elsewhere. Probably the future England will be embellished still further by ruins, not of abnormal feudal and religious development, but of abnormal industrial works, and we may well mourn that the new ruins will not be nearly as picturesque as the old But remaining as she will, the industrial developer of Asia and Africa, for ages yet, by judiciously and reason- ably giving way to the new order, she may save many hideous blots on the landscape, caused by industrial ruins. The alternative is not only ruins, but hideous ruin uni- versal, to the island. As America joins in associations, having complete circles of industries, and Canada and Australia follow, to say nothing of European countries which must soon follow, England will have to hasten to organize her industries on the principle of justice, or the great god Trade will prove a Moloch, and the present trad- ers be sacrificed to him, as up till now producers have been. DECENTRALIZATION OF ENGLISH INDUSTRY. 189 The civilization to which England may attain by- association would be far greater than she has attained, not relatively, perhaps, but absolutely. The island is perhaps more favorable to human existence than any other part of the globe. "When all the English work to live and enjoy the wealth produced by them, they will be more highly developed than while as now they live to trade, and trade, and overreach and overpower, and dazzle by great accu- mulations, entailing as they do the great poverty and misery of the vast majority of the people. The people of England are not interested in the commercial supremacy of the world. They are mightily interested in the aban- donment of that false aim, the means by which they are exploited by a few dominion loving and cruel industrial kings and conquerors. The English people wish to make themselves pleasant, comfortable and even luxurious English homes. This they can all do if they all unite for mutual advantage. The prodigality of nature will second them magnificently. Industrial dominion as well as military and political dominion has reached its zenith. They will all declina The great accomplishments of the future will be social and racial rather than individual. The majority are not interested in hero worship. They do not expect them- selves to become gods, and they do not purpose to worship at the feet of great masters, whether military, political or industrial, for the mere purpose of basking in the sunshine of their fame or presence. They do not believe their own civilization is advanced a peg by whatever culture these attain. They do not believe civilization will perish if these are not carried forward therein, far ahead of the rest in splendor. They propose to let the present leaders help themselves while they, the people, take the opportu- 190 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. nity to catch up witli the procession. The people will, with equanimity, see the kings and barons of coal, cotton, iron, wool, copper, wheat, oil, and all the other exploiters, fall into the limbo of the robber barons and political kings who believed, and perhaps even now believe themselves the State. The industrial superstition that has been utilized to give England her present industrial position, is just as degrading to the masses, and just as profitable to the beneficiaries of the superstition, as political superstition has been to the politicians, and religious superstition to the priests. And one and all are equally superstitious, false ideas founded upon lies and ignorance, the false ideas themselves being the foundation of injustice, tyranny and robbery. § 129. Money is now occupying the attention of the political farmers to a quite abnormal extent. Their cry for more money and cheap money is probably really based upon a desire for more property and greater facility in obtaining credits upon property already owned. Now money is merely a part of the mechanism of exchange, of trade, itself a part of the function of pro- duction. Money is most to be regarded from the stand- point of the producer and his complement, the consumer ; and not from that of the banker, the trader or the capital- ist, though the latter are most in mind when we ordinarily speak of money issuing. If we think of money as the tool of the producer and consumer, our thoughts take quite a different turn from the usual ona For it then occurs to ask, if any one should have the power to issue money, why should it not be the producer who needs to use it in his business? If the producer wants money, it is to facilitate his production, and if the consumer, it is for the BANKING. 191 purpose of buying products. The producer needs it to pay for raw materials, tools, and labor. Did the producer issue his own money in payment for these, it would be redeemed mediately or immediately as his products were bought by the consumer with the very money he had put out to enable him to produce them, a most desirable cir- culation. But economists do not investigate the matter as to whether producers should not have the power of issuing money. Tbey discuss whether and how the banker should be given such privileges. And why the banker ? So that he may make interest. But why should not the producer who needs money, issue it and save interest which he has otherwise to pay the banker ? If it could be as well so, the banker is superfluous ; and the producer and all other people are paying their money to afford him a useless liv- ing. But it is said the banker is necessary to prevent the issue of wildcat money, and to provide sound credit. But some producing corporations are even now the soundest of institutions, and all are fast outstripping the banks in this respect They will soon become universally large and well known concerns, in the natural course of develop- ment § 130. Banking. — See how it would work if those using money issued it and saved the interest, instead of having bankers make or procure it and loan it, and loan it for the mere purpose of receiving interest upon it. A producer, say of cotton cloth, now pays his help and buys his machinery or his cotton with his promise or some one else's promise to pay, or indeed, in intrinsic portable value as gold, stamped at the government mint, according to the preference of the creditor. Whoever takes whatever it is, can get no interest on it while he holds it It is only of 192 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. use to him to buy sometliing with. So it is indifferent to him which kind it is so long as it has purchasing power. The workman spends the money in the neighborhood of the factory where the corporation is known and transac- tions with it frequent. The sellers of machinery and raw materials are mostly within the circle of the manufac- turer's operations, and could have no difficulty with its personal money. Thus all are indifferent what kind of money it is which is received, until it is paid back to the issuer for cotton cloth by the one hundredth holder of the money in question. And in point of fact, at present, the last two receivers of money from the manufacturer take its personal bills or notes or checks drawn against a bank account, perhaps of borrowed credit ; while the workman is alone paid in legal tender procured at the bank. But during the time the bank money or credit has been out no one has drawn interest on it by holding it, though the manufacturer has been paying interest on it all the time, to keep the banker rich and solvent. Probably, too, all the holders were, by distribution of cost, affected by this constant payment of interest. This was to their dis- advantage, whereas the possession of the money should have been an unmixed advantage. Again at intervals of the circulation the money was put in the same bank that issued it, or another bank, and the banker loaned it over again, and got another interest oa it But why should not the producer who had paid the money out, receive it on deposit if aay one wished to de- posit it with him instead of paying it to him ? He would tlius be saved the cost of further loans from the banker, and he would become completely his own banker. And why not? If the producer could thus issue his own FARMING CORPORATION BANKING. 193 money and receive it, either on deposit or by way of pay- ment, and of course it would be valid tender for the debts and goods or services of the issuer offered for sale, he would be freed from the banker, and his production would be cheapened and one of the ways of getting a living with- out producing anything would be cut off. In such case money would be just as cheap as printed paper, an enormous saving over the expense of furnishing intrinsic value as a mere means of exchange, and it would be as abundant as occasion demanded and the capital and credit of the issuer justified. If over abundant, or issued upon occasions of pressing or unusual need, it would sooner fall back to the issuer, its mission being accom- plished, and would longer stay with him before being issued again. Instead of mere blind confidence, knowl- edge of the ability of the issuers is what is necessary to this beautiful mechanism of production. Instead of a third thing of equal value being necessary to be used for the purpose of exchanging one thing against another, the use of so much capital would be saved in this branch of produc- tion, being supplied by a by-product of the other branches. § 131. Farming Corporation Banking. — ^Now if farming corporations should pay wages in bills of the company promising to pay dollars and agreeing to receive such bills for all debts due the company and for all its goods offered for sale, would it not be a perfectly safe money to take? Certainly the stockholders of the company would be good judges whether such bills would serve their purposes or not. And so far as we can judge, it would seem that they would be taken and pass current among all the stockholders of the issuing company, especially as they would be taken at the company's stores where practically everything that the holders wished to buy would be obtainable. 13 IW TRADS Am> TRANSPORTATION. But whj should not such monej be good among those persons within the boundary of the corporations, who were not stockholders or members thereof? It would pass to the members all around, and to the company for its prod- ucts, and to its stores. Circulation could hardly need more support Then why should not a fanning company pay other such companies and corporations and individuals generally in such money? Why, indeed, would not such money be recdved by all neighboring sellers having knowledge of the issuer's liability to pay, and having daily opportunity in trade to return it back to the issuer? The limit to which such money would circulate would be the almost world wide extent to which the issuing corporation's credit was known, or so far at least as its traffic extended in sufficient volume to make the return circulation of the money rapid and convenient It is needless to contend that if farming corporations should i^ue money they should be allowed to have a place for its redemption or for its deposit with checking privileges to the depositor. That the other banking func- tions follow that of issue is plain. That they would be secure banks is hardly worth arguing. The only com- plaint would probably lie in the fact that the banking they would undertake to facilitate their business and that of their members, would be more closely restricted to Inti- mate business than would suit the speculativa Beceiving deposits and paying interest upon them would be but an extension of the farming company's practice to take contributions to its capital from members and pay interest thereon, and allow the same to be withdrawn practically at demand. The banking arrangement would be but a simplification of the general corporate practice, CORPORATE MONEY. 196 and the applying it to small, quick and informal trans- actions. It would be a legitimate use of its business credit. And if it did this for members, why not for any one who wished to avail himself of the convenience ? § 132. Corporate Money. — Money is in essence a prom- ise to pay or serve in the future. If a paper promise to pay silver or gold may be said to represent them, this is not its object. .The intrinsic value of the silver or gold is not the object. The ultimate end is what can be bought with the gold or silver. And it is thought that they are more certain to exchange for service or goods at some future time because they possess a known intrinsic value and are generally taken in exchange. The paper is as good as the gold or silver if there is knowledge of the ability of the issuer to pay, and confidence in its passing current, based upon such knowledge. If the ability to serve or to pro- vide is lacking, temporarily or permanently, as in the case of the Arab languishing of thirst in the desert, away from any promiser or means of supply, neither the one nor the other currency can procure the desired water. Some active ability in this direction is very much to be desired in issuers of money. Historically governments have coined money and issued paper, and made them legal tender for taxes and dues to the government ; and, by fiat, have made them legal tender for debts among the people. But governments have proved poor maintainers of currencies, and their failures have been many and disastrous, while their successes have not been at all brilliant, and they are always a source of agon- izing apprehension. We may believe that their failures are due to their want of capacity to redeem at all times and -many places and in the desired articles. Moreover government is disconnected from business in which money 196 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. is used and should be issued. Its methods in the issuing of money are irresponsible, uneconomic, and always and universally distrusted. But if farming corporations, associations of industrious peoples, with wide circles of industries, should issue promises to supply product or service in the future, they would inspire confidence, as the utmost ability to fulfill would be acknowledged. Is it not then certain that such corporations would be the best kind of bankers and money issuers for themselves and any with whom they would trade? Would not their promises be subject to daily trials of the faith and ability of the issuers, from the fact of their universally forthcoming products and instantly commandable services? Not only could taxes be paid with such paper, but most things the holder could want could be instantly procured from its issuer ; and the least sign of approaching inability or unwillingness to respond to all demands, would automatically and ail- powerfully check further taking of such paper before complete bankruptcy could supervene. § 133. Corporations as Money Issuers. — Considering the things some of the farmers' alliance and greenback finan- ciers seem to think money can do, it might seem that they would be anxious to create farming corporations if but for the purpose of having such admirable money issuing agencies. Those who can soberly say that greenbacks and the National banking system crushed the rebellion of 1861, built the Pacific Eailways and thousands of miles of other railroads, and did most of the other things which have been accomplished in the United States since 1861, must certainly feel drawn toward such good money mak- ing and money honoring machines as farming corporations. The apparent money honoring ability of such corpora- CORPORATE CREDITS. 19Y tions as tte Standard Oil Company, the American Sugar Refining Company, the Manhattan Elevated Railway or the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and their compeers in Great Britain, is well nigh comparable with that of Uncle Sam and John Bull themselves. And it seems a pity that such power should be allowed to go to waste unused if it could be beneficently exercised. So, too, it is hard to believe that the treasurer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company would lend a more willing ear to the money sharks of "Wall Street than does the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, even if he had parallel power to do injustice and mischief. But the honor and power of these corporations does not seem firmly rooted enough for our feeling of their use in issuing cheap and good money to become very overpowering, as compared with that of the future farming corporations completely enlisting the honor of the people of a sufficiently large area to imply ability, and a sufficiently small area to insure both general and individual responsibility. These supply all the elements that are now lacking in indi- viduals and in corporations, and even in the governments themselves as money issuers. To prepare the way for such corporations would be a most beneficent mission, and result in financial reform that would dwarf into insignifi- cance any mere governmental financiering propaganda. It is not insignificant, either, that the very instrumen- talities now indicated as the means for increasing the cur- rency so much desired, are those best fitted, as we have seen, for the creation of the increased amount of property which has been hinted to be part of the real basis of that desire. § 134. Corporate Oredits. — Credit, the other real thing desired by our financial malcontents, would also be obtained 198 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. bj the issue of money during the period of its circula- tion, starting in production, lasting till the consuming function was compieta But credits are something more. They are substitutes for capital, and their use goes further than that of money. They furnish the highest refinement and the farthest extension of the system by which present service can command future service. Credit is the system by which capital or the accomplishments of present labor may be carried down to the aid of future labor upon more or less equitable and economical conditions. It has become at once the representative and instrument of cap- ital. It is the life giving principle by which wealth breeds wealth. By credit in its simplest form the owner of capital, pledging it, obtains as much more with which to carry on his enterprises. Probably the one form of credit which is the most important of all, and which has been brought within the reach of all, is corporate stock. It is absolutely necessary to the existence of corporations, being the means by which the capital belonging to the multitudes of mem- bers, is represented. Strangely too, it is the only means by which producing capital is continually renewable by immortal corporate persons, which, far from having no souls, will become possessed of the fully developed soul of humanity managing the infinite powers of the universe. Essential to the machinery of the corporate organization, stock is, from its very nature, a form of credit, a paper system of representation of capital. It is the one perfect mode of credit. It represents an actual equivalent of actual capital in actual productive use. It is perfectly negotiable, and very divisible. A single certificate may represent but one share, or a majority of the whole capital of a great corporation. The owner of this kind of paper FARMER'S CORPORATION CREDITS. 199 may obtain money upon it as collateral, the very simplest method of giving security. The moment he has a thousand dollars in stock he is a two thousand dollar capitalist. His stock brings in its dividends and his borrowed thousand its varying rewards, according to the use to which it is put. It is thus readily seen that corporate stock gives at least twofold power to capital, to say nothing of the re- duplications and multiplications of credit by successive pledgings of stock bought by means of pledges of other stock, borrowings, and buyings of stocks upon margins, which are the sources of the power of the Goulds and Vanderbilts and the rest of the stock exchange gentry in railway manipulations. § 135. Farmers Corporation Credits. — Now considering the increased power of property the moment it is converted into the stock of a reliable corporation, can any one fail to see the argument for converting all property, as far as practicable, into that form, and putting it under such man- agement ? If such organization is practicable in agricul- ture, instead of farmers mortgaging their farms through an expensive legal process and obtaining an inadequate sum upon extravagant interest, they may, with the stock their farms are represented by in the farming corporation, obtain their loans upon collateral like gentlemen. Another advantage of the corporate organization of the masses ! The rich have the advantage now, but the comparatively poor may obtain corresponding benefits if they will pattern by success. The value of stock as a credit would be very much enhanced by the simple expedient proposed for farming corporations, of removing the restrictions upon the amount of the capital stock of corporations, and their assumption of the duty of keeping it at par by a standing offer to 200 TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION. redeem it at its face upon presentation. Such a reform is a crying need of the present corporate situation which entails the rascality and villany of stock dividends, watered stock, and ground floor manipulation. It would keep a corporation diligent in business and register its permanent gains and losses with unerring precision, to the substantial benefit of its credit. It would be an advantage to have for collateral a stock kept constantly at par. But it would be the value of such a stock as a common circulating medium which would be of the greatest consequence, for a stock kept at par for a number of years would get to have a currency that would be a very great convenience to the commercial world. It is plainly evident that if the farmers go into farming corporations the money question is solved. Their corpora- tions, if they are not allowed to issue regular money, will do as their interests dictate in issuing their warehouse receipts, which a large business will render feasible as to almost all products, their bills, notes, orders and all other forms of commercial paper according to the demands of their exceptionally varied business. While other corpora- tions get along without the issue of more than one or two kinds of personal money, the farmer's corporations, with their enormous productive and supply departments, would be forced to circulate much paper of a monetary charac- ter ; and this circulation would Cover the ground which now requires the largest amount of money in the most varying quantities. The farmers are fully aware of their needs in this direc- tion. But their solution of the problem will not be in the manner now expected, but in the same way that their sub- treasury plan is effectuated, by their own business organiza- FARMER'S CORPORATION CREDITS. 201 tioD. It goes without saying that our farming corporations would have their warehouses where not only cotton and wheat would be deposited so as to justify advances, but almost everything else that is raised. And all these would be represented by warehouse certificates to their full amount, which would be negotiable without the payment of even two per cent interest, a much more beneficial financial plan than that of the government sub-treasuries. It can but be a very strong inducement to the farmers to themselves take up the matter of the organization of agriculture upon a business basis, that both the creation of wealth, and its most scientific representation and circula- tion, must be accomplished by the same undertaking. That the making of wealth and the creation of credit to represent it should be done by the same instrumentality is not only natural but providential. That the whole must be accomplished by industrial rather than political methods is a further source of gratification. CHAPTER V. Results. § 136. Transitional. — It may have occurred to conserva- tive farmers that after all, though it would be well to organize farming corporations, yet they would do little besides farming. They might consider with David A- Wells that farming is inevitably going to be conducted upon the factory system, and that it would be very busi- ness like to get in upon the ground floor o£ the new cor- porations, and so avoid being forced out of business only to be hired by the coming powers as mere laborers. They might not care to consider what indirect results would be obtained. And there is nothing to be said against this attitude of mind. So far there could be no suspicion of innovation, of ad- vanced and impracticable ideas, but just the mere anticipa- tion of the inevitable change that has already taken place in other branches of industry, and the natural effort of the intelligent to be in the van of the new movement, and to avoid being crushed by a new industrial Juggernaut It may hardly be worth arguing the point whether all farming corporations would go further than mere agricul- tural operations, and it may be admitted that some might not. But the agricultural industry itself is of wide scope and would lead to the practice of many different roles, Nothing would be more natural than that such a company should sell what it produced at wholesale and send it to the ultimate market directly. It certainly would have no need TRANSITIONAL. 203 to deal with resident speculators, and plenty of its mem- bers would crave the chance to serve it as selling agents. When the goods were marketed thus in the ultimate mar- ket, the agent and those who sent him could not fail to see the advantage of buying in that primary market the supplies of the company and members at home. Those supplies distributed or retailed to members could bat bring about a corresponding retailing of the company products. Just as inevitable as is farming by big corporations, is co-operative trading by farmers either separately or through the corporations. The co-operative stores in England are increasingly successful each year, and in this country the great farmer's organizations are commencing to act in earnest upon the idea that the producers must do their own trading. And as the exactions of the traders, such as we have seen them, become more audacious, the end will be hastened. But however this comes about, the great army of the commercial class will be without occupation. Few have any adequate idea of what a vast multitude this is. On each little stream of trade is built a city with a few neces- sary traders and a vast aggregation of dependents and barnacles, people who have attached themselves to every point where any of the life blood of production can be reached. The majority of the denizens of most cities are directly dependent on these useless appendages. The cities are built on trade, but they are inverted pyramids. Only the narrowest layer is really fundamental and neces- sary. The rest will fall off the moment the farmers begin to trade for themselves. When the supplies of the traders are thus cut off as they must be in either case of such trading by the pro- 204 RESULTS. ducers, they must become producers themselves instead of consumers. Then too much of the volume of the present factitious market will be lost, and production will have to be reorganized. ITo longer able to sell so much as here- tofore to others, producers will not be able to buy so much of others. Then they will have to themselves consume what they, produce, and consequently produce what they wish to consume. And then the industrial corporations as above outlined will be necessary. If they have been established from the beginning they can absorb the newly discharged multitudes by virtue of their very method of organization, and in the regular course of their functions. And all this is desirable. It is not so much home mar- kets that are wanted as home production and consumption. Cities, no matter how near, are not now home markets to the country, but places where the productions of the coun- try are consumed with mighty little return to the producer. They control and dispense the farmer's productions. It is time the farmers took up this job themselves. The position of all wage laborers, whether in the coun- try or city, is the same as that of the farmers, but with a reverse aspect. Their interests are identical. § 187. Association of Inditsiries would therefore be effected by the farming corporations just as certainly as they would trade for themselves and for the same causes, i.e. the great saving to be made, and the pressure of cir- cumstances and competition. We have seen how natural it seemed that a large terri- torial farming corporation should become engaged in a circle of industries. And it can hardly be doubted that in any case such a corporation would tend to sell flour in- stead of wheat, meat instead of corn, that it would sell its products in cans where practicable, and make the cans, ASSOCIATION OF INDUSTRIES. 205 and tbe boxes they were put in as the canning factories do now, and the barrels the flour was put up in as the flour- ing mills do now. From this to tanning its hides and selling leather instead of hides, and even to working the leather up into shoes is no change of industrial principle. So in the case of all the industries to the last one enumer- ated in this book, or which can be imagined, there could be no limit to the economy of comprehending them in the activities of a sufficiently large corporation except the capacity of the corporation, and there would be no limit to its capacity short of its natural powers of growth. The exigencies of competition would also force farming corporations to take up allied industries without limit, but the cause noted in the last section, the advent of a new army of unemployed, would be decisive of the matter if no other incentive or compulsion had dictated the policy. The constitution of these corporations gives them inherent capacity to employ the unemployed. Or rather the whole matter is an employment of the unemployed, and unsatis- factorily employed, by themselves; an organization of employment, a combination to work together and make a a living. In considering the effect of a general development of farmer's corporations on the lines above drawn, upon the constitution of industry in general, it will be apparent at a glance that such associations would tend to supersede all other methods of industrial organization. As the agricultural industry is the absolute basis of the whole economic life of the people, its independent organization into associations practically complete within themselves, would remove the basis of all other industries. Moreover agricultural association would have a direct tendency to draw all other industries therein, as we have seen. City 206 RESULTS. organizations having adequate and complete fanning branches in view would have precisely the same tendency. The introduction, therefore, to any considerable extent, of such associations, would produce a transitional period in industry. The presence of the new organizations would not be a merely neutral addition to the present establish- ments. They would also be very powerful magnets to draw to themselves the unattached and more minute par- ticles of industrial material, by reason of the profit sharing method of distribution to workers. By reason of the economies practicable by the big diversified associations this profit would undoubtedly soon make their distribu- tions more attractive than any wages that could be offered elsewhere. Thus would the diversified industry be enlarged, strengthened and perpetuated. § 138. Profit Sharing. — Among the various schemes of industrial reform being urged in these later days of dis- contented labor is that called profit sharing. Starting with the actual fact that capital now receives an increment called profits, this plan urges upon the capitalist or employer the duty of sharing part of these profits with the work people. This I must characterize as partial profit sharing, because it purposes to share but part of the prof- its here proposed to be given entirely to workers. It may have been remarked that this method of dis- tribution here proposed for farmers or industrial corpora- tions is really a profit sharing scheme carried to its logical conclusion — the sharing of all profits by those whose efforts made them. It assumes the fact that capital being an instrument, merely, is worth but its use value or rent, and that that rent is adequately represented by interest. If it cannot be seen that reason and results would PROFIT SHARING. 207 justify the adoption of the profit sharing method of dis- tribution by the farmers in forming their corporations, it may be plainly shown that no other method would be attractive to them, as was assumed at the opening of this essay. The average investment of clear capital by farmers would be less than $1,000. The dividends upon that amount, even at the high rate of six per cent, being but $60, would be almost nothing in comparison with their wages, at the lowest possible calculation. Their principal interest would therefore be in the question of earnings rather than dividends. It would only be those farmers who had $5,000 or over to put in who would have an equal interest in dividends and wages, and most of those would be those most capable of earning the highest salaries and so still more benefited by the method of dis- tribution proposed. And they would be at one in uniting upon it as opposed to one which would give all the advantage to larger capitalists. Inseparably connected with the profit sharing distribu- tion would be the personal suffrage, for the farmers would see that by suffrage by shares their profit sharing could be nullified by the enlargement of dividends at the expense of the wage distribution. They would understand that their opportunities in the corporation would depend, like their political liberty, upon personal and universal suf- frage. Here the farmers would be well aware of the dis- advantages in a one man power in corporations, which is now very well appreciated by the business world. They know that the great capitalist in a large corporation is seldom at one in interest with the corporation and its general shareholders. The result of personal suffrage would be to insensibly change the nature of corporations, so that instead of being oppressors of the people, they 208 BEBULTB. would be organizations of the people, by the people and for the people. § 139. Partial Profit Sharing. — It must be understood, however, that the complete principle of distribution be- tween capital and labor could not be forced all at once upon present industries. If an established industry was of a sufficiently specialized nature, and so well established as not to be interdependent, it might keep or attract its work- men by an adoption of only partial profit sharing. As long as standing alone, it could make the returns to its workers commensurate with those received in associated industries, it could so continue. Before complete associa- tion of industries was fully or widely developed, many such single industries would have a lease of life of some length. It would be simply a matter of expediency, not of principle, when they should join in more complete association. When such concerns could not make enough to pay dividends equal to interest and the same wages that associations were paying in wages and profits, they would have to join the latter or fail. The evolution may be expected to proceed something like this : As soon as pure capitalists, money lenders, see, in the new associations, the staple aggregate industrial persons of the future, they will be in a hurry to put their money into them and get interest thereon. In other words they would gladly loan them mone}' at the lowest rates, or according to their reputed security. It is the teaching of practice throughout the economic world that interest is the full value of the use of capital, and at any rate capital can be had for that, and that ends the discussion. The investing class get nothing but interest and expect nothing besides. It will be obviously different with employers, whether PABTIAL PROFIT SHARING. 209 owners or onlj managing owners of existing industrial and commercial establishments, than with capitalists. While, to the latter, lending to associations, and thereby really participating in association means no loss of income, to the owning employer association means a sad curtail- ment of all profits beyond interest, and to the employer on borrowed capital entire loss and reduction to the ranks of labor, for his income was pure profit. But the associations' need for capital has been seen to begin small, and fast grow smaller from their great capa- city to create new capital. The offerings of capital to them would greatly accelerate their increase in numbers and importance, and in independence of capitalists, and conse- quently reduce the rate of interest upon pure capital or money, until those outside of them were glad to let them have their money for the mere security of a promise to render it back to them undiminished whenever wanted. The pressure upon the older industrial organizations would of course be increasingly felt. Their first refuge would obviously be to offer to share their profits with their working force if that should perchance make labor satisfied it could make as much as by joining associa- tions. Whether in fact this could be done by the em- ployers would largely depend upon the nature of the business, its capacity to make profits large enough to be diminished by a very appreciable portion, and still leave enough to keep the employer in separate existence, and its capacity to resist the competition of association. Proba- bly there are, and long will be, many establishments producing notions, articles of fancy and specialties gen- erally, that will come up to this standard. Perhaps, for instance, it may be hard to say why a publishing business or newspaper property should be associated with other 14 210 RESULTS. industries. And probably there are conclusive reasons why associations should not undertake anything in that lina Partial profit sharing may therefore be expected to become developed during the period that it takes com- plete association to become fully developed. The part of the profits that workmen are enabled to procure in every such case will continually increase until it approxi- mates and in most cases becomes equal to their fair share, that is, the whole. And as associations work more easily, exactly and scientifically, the reward of labor in them must be expected to continually increase ; and of course that in unassociated industries must keep the paca In- dustries may continue outside of any circle of industries, but they will be governed by the same distribution of profits as is practiced in associations. Of course it is obvious that any approach to profit sharing from this direction will be a continual struggle on the part of the employers to keep as nearly the whole profits derived from the labor of their employees as possible. To the employee profit sharing reads in the opposite moral and economic sense to what it does to the employer. Instead of its sounding benevolent when the employer offers to share his profits with the workers, it will seem that he really offers to share with those who have made the profits, or in other words, that he invites poor work- men to share their profits with him, the rich capitalist So when profit sharing is approached in this light it will not be the question how small shall be the share allotted to labor, but how small the share of capital. Instead of ten per cent to laborers fraudulently tendered to stimu- late extra labor to make it all up again to the employer, CAPITAL BEGINNING ASSOCIATIONS. 211 it will be ten per cent, to the capitalist to keep him from withdrawing his capital already fairly paid by interest or his services already adequately rewarded by a high salary. § 140. Capital Beginning Associations. — While some of the stronger captains of industry may be expected to be able to keep ahead of the demands of labor as measured by association standards, and to maintain an independent separate existence, the general refuge of capitalized indus- tries would be in association. This might happen most naturally by their joining associations as we have seen that the stores and smaller industries were expected to do from the very first in Androscoggin. Possibly during the growth of associations and during the transition period, already organized associations will find that capitalistic enterprises in the vicinity of some- thing like equal magnitude to them or even greater, as for example a cotton factory, iron works or even railroad, would offer to coalesce, adopting of course the association rule of distribution and policy of complete industrial in- dependence through a circle of industries. In such cases great difficulty would arise about equalizing the respec- tive capitalizations. In many cases the present enterprises are so ill-conceived, ill-placed and over developed that there is little economic advantage in their existence. The capi- tal of the proposed ally would have to be reduced to a strict basis of productive capacity tempered by the cost of building an equally good plant anew. All the water would of course have to be squeezed out of the stock of the candidate. And mnch account would have to be taken of incompetent location and construction and gen- eral inadaptibility to the new system. The most unproductive of present enterprises would not 212 RESULTS. be able to offer any advantages to induce association. A naturally productive industry like farming would well fight sby of over-developed railways and ill-placed fac- tories. It could not afford to ally itself with moribund concerns which could only absorb the life blood of the healthier industry. Capital is so easily and quickly created by independent effort, and the new creations are so much more generally valuable in use, that the utmost caution would have to be exercised to evaluate it in concrete forms low enough to make the bargain fair and advisable. It will be far better for the future of association that it assume an attitude of excessive caution, and even distrust of establishments that have existed under conditions that have kept labor and small producers in industrial slavery. Association will, moreover, as we have seen, take up rather with the weaklings of the industrial system than with the abnormally strong competitors that have been proved able to drive the former to the wall. Their ability has frequently not been strength in good, but in evil; sur- vival, not of the fittest, but of the most selfish industrially, and the most unscrupulously managed. That an industry is now successful and at the top of a whole list of indus- tries does not necessarily show that it is best adapted for its work, and most workable upon a basis of equity. Indeed the conditions will be so changed that when it comes to a calculation which will serve the people best, the under dogs in the present fight will very likely be found the fittest They will be the ones best located to serve the people, most sizable and locally available. The great industries have not been developed in the interest of the people but of those who run them to serve indi- vidual interests. Concentration has gone much too far ASSOCIATION BY PRESENT INDUSTRIES. 213 with them. So far that the advantage gained by division of labor has become overbalanced by distance from raw materials and markets. The idea that great enterprises serve the public has grown to be unnatural since they have been so long seen to so much more serve their own- ers' interest. The feeling has ample foundation in fact A most obvious deduction from the doctrines herein enunciated would be the conclusion that associations were never to take directly or indirectly any property in cities at any such valuation as is now current in American cities. Whatever real property they had occasion to use in cities would of course be rented, and then not used when, as in most instances would be the case, country property would answer as well. Except in the case of stores and warehouses for city supplies, city property could not be absolutely essential to the uses of associations. And in those cases rented buildings would of course be taken, and those would hardly need be in the regions of the highest rents. City real estate values are pure water in industrial capitalizations. § 141. Association hy Present Industries. — Therefore, the moment the battle turns, upon the retreat of capital, its enterprises not already associated with associations will probably, adopting the principles of association to some extent, and with modifications, set about associating others, especially farmers, not already in associations, with themselves, to complete a circle of industries about them- selves. What a comparatively healthy combination the cotton factories of Lowell or Fall Eiver might make if they invited neighboring farmers to make associated market gardens for the supply of their operatives, now members of a new association. Then they might associate farmers in different parts of the country to complete the 214 RESULTS. supply of the productions of the soil. How satisfactory it would be to associate some neighboring shoe factories and minor industries sufficient to supply the operative members. This would enable them to produce a surplus of muslin without any further degradation of mill opera- tives. Fall River and Lowell might then become cities prosperous in all their citizens. They would, of course, invest in great cotton plantations and grow their own staple. Why not ? And of course the black man that hoed the cotton would be associated. He would become a member and entitled to his share of the profits and to take his share in the management of the branch of the industry in which he might become expert. Thus might men of Massachusetts, as has been imagined in the case of men of Maine, do much more for their colored brothers than they ever have yet There would be an especial fitness in re-emancipating the black man from the greater slavery of poverty at the same time that the white bondage to industrial misery was broken in Massachusetts. Any one can carry applications of the association prin- ciples and plan by capitalistic initiative to almost any extent. Modifications of the pure association idea might very probably here be seen. The amount of interest on the large capital of established industries might be fixed at one rate, and on that in more or less productive industries in the same association at another rata Profits might possibly be computed and divided in sections of associations of this character, which would never become necessary in more homogeneous associations. Such varia- tions, especially as they involved extra and complicated and expensive bookkeeping, would be to be avoided however. Though many industries now organized can be seen to RAILWAY ASSOCIATIONS. 215 be strong enough to procure modifications of the system of association, and by alliances to lead to much variety in the associations of the future, still, as we have seen, many will fail utterly, never having had any reason to exist Many industries have been improvidently and sinfully started, their promoters never having had any rational idea that fair returns could be paid to the workers in them. Indeed the only object has been to figure a profit squeezable out of poor material, low wages and a manipu- lated market It has never been any part of the moral code of trade that one could not rightfully engage in any industry or business in which labor could not be paid living wages. But those who cannot pay fair wages are just as culpable as those who will not Neither have any right to exist. Association will put all necessary opera- tions and occupations upon a living basis by a division of profits corresponding to the division of labor. § 142. Railway Associations. — There is no reason why, when association starts, and distribution leaves the lines of the great railway systems, and they begin to feel the ab- sence of products moving in their arbitrarily made chan- nels of trade, they cannot, by conceding the principle of association, induce a healthy production of freight for their roads, especially from districts far from the free water highways. The capitalization and organization of farming and industrial districts of any magnitude would anywhere produce sufficiently large interests to make weight with those of the greatest of the present railways. The practi- cal difficulty facing the proposed new allies would be to avoid the fate of the young lady of Niger. Possibly many think they are already inside the tiger and only want to get outside again. If at one end of a great line it organized agriculture, at 216 RESULTS. the other it might organize industry to furnish return freight. Then the railroad, say the Pennsylvania, would become an attenuated but possibly very strong industrial association. Its farmer members in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois would be not unnaturally allied with the coal and iron industries of Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. The railroad, now supplying itself with coal and ice, might, by extending that principle, supply its dining car tables as well as those of its operatives directly from the farm. The railroad now has its own carshops as all rail- roads do and locomotive works, and might well have rail mills. Other railroads, and especially the capitalists interested in them, look directly after the supply of freight for the road by direct production. Many railroads build hotels for the accommodations of their passengers. The railroads are even now quite far advanced towards association. The coal roads, for example, are almost as much producers of freight as carriers. Suppose now the Beading Eailroad and Coal and Iron Company became an industrial association by inviting the farmers within the reach of its vast industries and lines of road to capitalize up with a fair valuation of the railroads and the existing industries allied with it. Would it not make a great wealth producing and saving machine ? Would it be hard to suppose that Philadelphia, in part, and nearly all of Reading and Pottsville and all the district between Williamsport and Atlantic City, would accommodate an economically powerful circle of industry? After it had allied with, or acquired, a patch or two of the tropics, that association would be able to show a surplus product of coal and iron, smaller relatively than now, but produced at low cost, and by thoroughly comfortable workers at one of the hardest of occupations. BAILWAYS TRANSITIONAL. 217 The first object of that association would be to satis- factorily provision and supply the miners rather than to raise just such a quantity of coal. The members would be first prosperity producers for themselves and then coal producers for others. And there would be no masters in the association who would be enabled to ignore the one in the ignorant and wicked pursuit of the other. Perhaps the most striking example of probable inability to catch on under the association regime is the New York Central Railroad. It can hardly bring itself to face the issue in time. How can it fairly capitalize with new associates? Would keen farmers join their solid capital and productive farms with the doubly watered stock of a six track road where two tracks would do the business better ? § 143. Railways Transitional. — In the case of railways, the development has been ephemeral and is now in a tran- sitional stage. One of the greatest improvements in the history of the world, they have made in this country ; but they have been carried to an absurdly undue develop- ment in some directions, while in others they are in a very rudimentary state. In the matter of reaching and serving localities they are hardly beginning their mission, but trade centers they make and serve with intemperate zeal. They have killed off or put into a trance canal transpor- tation which they can never equal for heavy freight, and have jn consequence been impeded in their growth as passenger, express and mail carriers. When the specula- tion they have fostered is dead, and the slow, cheap and capacious water ways are again busy with heavy and bulky freight, the railways will be readjusted to their real place in the world's permanent economy. Probably the present railway plants will become largely 218 . RESULTS. valueless or will require remodeling at an expense little short of the total cost of new construction of the roads of the future. A special line of new railway for electric cars from Vienna to Buda-Pesth is even now projected. There will be no trains, but single cars running at ten minutes headway 120 to 150 miles per hour. The road will avoid curves, and not need to avoid steep gradients because the power will be abundant and cheap. Better than this is indicated in a recent editorial in the " New York Sun " : " Travel at the rate of a hundred miles an hour may soon be no longer a dream, but a commonplace fact, for articles of incorporation have just been filed in Illinois by the Chicago and St Louis Electric Kailroad Company, which proposes to build a road on which wedge-shaped cars, driven by a novel form of electric motor, will make the distance between those two cities in two hours and a halt At first only a double track will be built, but ulti- mately there are to be four tracks, of which the two out- side tracks will be reserved for local traffic and high class freight, and the company's plan includes the laying out along the line of broad avenues, facing which will be neat cottages and houses with long, narrow farm lands reaching back into the country. " The electric cars are to be long, low, compact, and light, with two pairs of driving wheels, each operated by a motor. Each car will weigh only ten tons, and the wheels will be capable of making 500 revolutions a minute. A wedge-shaped projection in front, sloping upward, will diminish the friction of the air and will serve to keep the car steady. Light and heat will be provided by electric devices, and neither conductors nor brakemen will be needed. Safety is to be secured by dividing the road into ELECTRICAL ROADS FOR FARMERS. 219 twenty-five sections of ten miles each so as to constitute a complete block system. One central power station, six or eight miles from Clinton, De Witt county, 111. , will fur- nish the electricity required for operating the entire road, and will also provide additional electric power to be let to farmers and residents along the line for their special pur- poses, and provide for an electric light plant and a tele- phone line the whole way from Chicago to St. Louis." § 144. Electrical Boads for Farmers. — Under this title the " Scientific American " lately said : " The use of electric roads for farms is destined, says the ' Electrical Engineer,' to be enormous. At the present time the state of the vast majority of our rural highways is such as to render trans- portation a frightful tax upon production. But nothing is easier than to track and wire these roads, furnish them with motor trucks upon which the farm wagons can be run fully loaded, aad then turn on the current at stated intervals from the power house in the nearest town or at the nearest water power. These electric roads will con- tinue running through the winter and spring months when the ordinary dirt roads are utterly impassable, and when the multitudes of draught horses kept by the farmers are simply eating their heads off in idleness. In 1880 there were 200,000 such horses on American farms. The bare possibility of getting promptly to market will stimulate the farmer to cultivate crops that now he dare not dream ol Moreover the speed made will effect a most tremendous economy ia the farmer's time." In the case of these last farmer's roads, the rails would be simply laid upon the association's stone roads in the East, already noticed, or upon the substitutes for them made by associations in other localities. The through lines would likewise be laid out over the important asso- 14 220 RESULTS. ciation lines ttat coincided with the general directions of travel and commerce. The greater association highways will, from the first, be planned for the part they are to take in general inter-association and interstate communi- catioa We can easily see that with a combination of such roads as the above, the farmer would be brought into the full sunlight of civilization, and brought into an equality with his city cousin. The branch roads would go to the confines of every farm. The vehicles upon them would make frequent trips to and from the trunk lines, passing all residences whether isolated or in groups. Traveling would be revolutionized. Parcel delivery would be made perfect. The desideratum of the last and most exacting of these services is that of carrying newspapers. It requires that papers should be delivered at all the houses within the circles about the principal centers, in six hours. This should easily be done. Three or four hundred miles by the trunk lines, and twenty or thirty miles by the branch lines, would easily be accomplished in that limit of tima Any one can figure it out that few hamlets in our country are even now further distant from those centers of infor- mation which have instant communication with the whole world. Thus would the morning newspapers get to agri- culturists before breakfast, not from small places them- selves as far out of the way as the farmers should be, but from important centers of large, naturally contiguous territories. § 145. The Post Office of the Future will, however, not be entirely served by the railroads under even the most excellent management, but by the telegraph and telephone largely. Present capitalistic interests are now visibly THE POST OFFICE OF TEE FUTURE. 221 retarding progress in this direction. They cannot hold back the car of progress much longer. Farmers and those in the rural districts and scattered towns will soon begin to know that they can be as well served with privileges of communication as those in metropolitan centers. Letters can really be sent cheaper by telegraph than by mail even now. Talking over telephone wires is cheaper yet. The only trouble is that present monopolists would not make so much money out of it, and that some of their material would become useless. When the "Western Union Telegraph and the Bell Tele- phone monopolies, now in cahoot to rob the public, will let a real extension of the telephone system come into use, the people will first really find out what advantage lies in the discovery of that capacity of electricity. By the use of the best copper wires all the longest distances in this coun- try could be covered. By popularizing the service with frequent public telephones and central stations and charg- ing only a fair rate, say five cents or even less, for the privilege of conversation, with connected messenger ser- vice for hunting up persons called for, the bulk of the letters would remain unwritten and people would more satisfactorily communicate verbally. But farther, even the telegraph by popular, and still well paying rates, could be made to do much of the letter business. The improvements in sending and receiving that are now invented, but not in use by the present monopoly, would, with the use of better wires, make five cents an extreme price for the telegraphic transmission of the con- tents of an ordinary letter of say two pages of notepaper. Every post office should be a telegraph office and cen- tral telephone station as well. The service should all be consolidated so that at small stations one person might 322 RESULTS. perform all the functions, while at any, no matter how large, these related services might be availed of together, without loss of time and expense. The letter carriers — and all offices in city, village oi county should have them, as is now being proposed— should also be telegraph messengers. In fact they should find themselves very soon very much more messengers than carriers, from the change in the character of the mat- ter conveyed. The force should be organized so that the delivery of a letter, paper, package, or telegram, should be equally speedily delivered and through the same channels. § 146. Post Office- Telegraph- Railway. — "Whether the con- solidated service should be by a country-wide Western Union Telegraph association, by a governmental post office department developed, or whether territorial associ- ations should each take up the matter for themselves, there is little need of discussing. Either way would do exceedingly well. It would be perfectly feasible for the associations of the country, as they extended their power, heat and light systems of wires and their improved roads to each house, to perfect such a service as this and make a Western Union Telegraph association or a post office department unnecessary. This is undoubtedly the best way of doing the thing. The associations would, of course, so arrange the service that the through or long distance inter-associa- tion service would be just as well managed as the local, and as well as though done by a government department or separate association. Still the existence of a great association doing perhaps but this service, and having no complete circle of indus- tries, but governed by the association idea otherwise, POST OFFICE-TELEGRAPH-RAILWAY. 223 would not be an unwelcome member of the circle of asso- ciations. And a consolidated post office department, well managed, as it would have to be to resist the onslaughts of the associations in their desire for the best service, and their conscious ability to give good service themselves, would be not disadvantageous, at any rate, by comparison with the present Whether, if the railways do not develop associations of their own by their own initiative, as has been discussed, they would be, or tend to be, parceled out among the dif- ferent geographical associations may be a question. This last would not be an undesirable consummation and would be strictly within the nature of the things the associations will be most calculated to do and do well. Local traffic, now the most important, under association would be still more so relatively. A co-operative arrangement among the associations would feasibly and well provide for through traffic. The great highways throughout associations will really be well made railways for private usa They would be simply a part of the highway system, and perhaps might, as highways are now, be kept up, at the expense of the associations, for the free use of all. The associations would of course use their own cars, vehicles or trains over their own roads, and might be allowed to continue their journeys through all other associations, conforming to some simple time schedules. The business would of course get into regular courses so that the cars or trains of other associations could have their regular times, and be kept to them by the local telegraphers of the stations they passed. Trains are now run from station to station by telegraph, and the operators are not even the employees of the roads, but of an independent telegraph company. 224 RESULTS. It would therefore make no difference whether the telegraph service at the local post office stations were in the hands of telegraph company, or government, or local association. Trains, or single cars, could be run with its help as well as now. But any one can imagine that the greatest economies would be possible, and the best service rendered, if all three, post office, telegraph and railway, were in the hands of the local associations. The federal government might then regulate the maximum rates at which letters and telegrams and telephone mes- sages should be sent to any part of the country, and each association might receive what it collected from messages sent at its own stations for its share in the general service. There could be no difficulty either in the inauguration or carrying forward of this magnificent improvement. And it is highly probable that it would be the inevitable, but insensible outgrowth of the development of associations. § 147. Oanal — Railway — Highway. — It will be remem- bered that the idea seemed to develop when we were con- sidering canals, that they would become great inter-asso- ciation water highways. It is well known that great highways and railroads follow along the same topograph- ical lines as canals must, ie., the lines of the flowing waters. Now we are prepared to imagine the state of these works as they would grow up in large territorial associations. Parallel with the canals, sometimes side by side, sometimes separated by the exigencies of the grade, and liability to floods, would run the great highways, carrying rails upon one side for the iron horse, securely fenced off except at well guarded crossings, while a smooth stone metaled surface presented a road for less pretentious motors, and animals, and pedestrians. At the parting of these ways, where the rivers branched CANAL-RAILWAY— HI0B WAY. 225 or emptied into lake or ocean, where highways from other directions converged, and at the principal changes of level where the larger locks and dams were, there would be aggregations of interests, stations, villages and cities. But furthermore, at every country road crossing and even at the junction of every important farm road would be the places where the principal association farm buildings ■would grow to be located, at least as fast as new build- ings were made. Along these great combination roads the whole indus- tries of the people would be thickly strewn, and the agri- cultural with the rest. It may well be considered whether these ways would not present the appearance of fairly well built up streets throughout the whole country. With the powerful teams and farm motors of the associations, and good farm roads, going back from the highway, one or two or even three miles to the land, would not be difficult or wasteful of energy, especially as all the best land is that upon the lowest levels, lying therefore nearest the high- ways. Then such great ways would naturally be located within five or six miles of each other, and not much nearer. So the result would be a beautiful street, usually with a fine body of water upon its margin, alive with craft, com- bining all the beauties of the country and all the life and activity of the city. Upon both sides of the wide combi- nation thoroughfare would stretch back the lawn like cul- tivated acres of the people, merging into orchard and forest. At intervals would come the cities and villages as now. All along this street upon which the lightning car glanced and the slow barge crept, would be a perfect administra- tion of interdependent affairs. Crossings of the canals and of the rails would be subject to precise regulation and made perfectly safe, while practically unhampered. 15 226 RESULTS. People would gladly look out for the engine for its service in keeping them in touch with the world of the outsida § 148. Assimilating Country to Oity. — It is the annexation of the idea of a circle of industry to that of a farming corporation which thus insures the decentralization of the population and all the advantages flowing therefrom. Without it powerful farmers' corporations would, if any- thing, still further denude the country of inhabitants, although those left would be much more prosperous. But a large farming corporation doing its own trading would never stop short of a more or less complete circle of sub- sidiary industries. We have seen how naturally it came. Competition would force its adoption. Economy of waste and surplus products and labor would dictate to a large and powerful aggregation of people this use of their oppor- tunity. The happy result would be doubly welcomed because it required no struggle for itself, but was presented as the efflorescence of a healthy and vigorous economic organization. The full use of nature as her forces are distributed, where it is most strictly economical and convenient to use them, would distribute the people over the country so thickly as to assimilate country life to city life and city to country. None would be isolated or deprived of any of the modern conveniences of life in the most thickly popu- lated centers. While on the other hand the inconven- iences, discomforts and privations necessarily incident to overcrowding would be avoided. It would save all the advantages of both, eliminating all the disadvantages of each, as the result of assimilating agriculture to manufac- turing, and the consolidation of allied and mutually sup- porting industries both in space and interest. Just as many people can profitably exercise their activi- TEE FARMER'S ISOLATION. 227 ties upon any ordinary section of land in the country as can agreeably live there. Any section properly utilized locally, will provide for a crowd of people who will be closely enough massed for the most intimate social inter- course and all the amenities of modern city life ; and so widely scattered that the earth, air, water and sunlight will not be polluted, covered up and shut out, and human nature itself outraged by being deprived of all. privacy, seclusion and silence. The country fairly populated will nowhere present a neighborhood where there are not enough within con- venient distances to furnish adequate assemblages for all lectures and entertainments. And when the population is fairly dispersed and not overcrowded the rise of speakers and entertainers is facilitated by a more thorough neigh- borhood acquaintance with the capacities of the people who live there. If cities are the fields of some talent they are the graves of much more. Even now the country devel- ops much more than its share of talent and individuality. § 149. The Farmer's Isolation. — From the " New York Sun " of August 9, 1891, I clip the following taken from the " Chicago Herald " : " It is not alone the hard work that is driving our young men from the farms to the cities," said John W. Bookwalter, the millionaire manu- facturer, to the " Herald " correspondent. " It is the intense loneliness, the complete isolation of life on the average farm. It drove me from the country just as it is driving thousands of others. Do you know that the percentage of population found in the cities has gradually increased from the foundation of this republic to the present day ? Young men are glad to escape from present plenty and even prospective wealth on the farm to' earn a mere pittance in a city. I was born in Indiana on 228 RESULTS. a farm along the Wabash, and never shall I forget the awful loneliness and desolation of life in a small farm house on a big farm. Why, up to the age of eighteen I had never seen a locomotive. I left the farm at the age of twenty-three and never felt like returning to it." The same gentleman has an article in the " Forum " for September 1891, in which he says : " To the serious inquiry as to this inequality and consequent discontent (of the farmers) and as to whether they are permanent or temporary, and therefore capable of removal or ameliora- tion no general answer will be given, nor can it be reason- ably expected. ... To my mind the chief difficulty of the farming class arises from the lack of united effort and co-operation, the diffusion rather than the concen- tration of energy. Not only does this lack of organized effort result in much misdirected energy and consequent economic loss, but it works a more serious injury by placing the farming population at a disadvantage in the great industrial contest with the other and co-ordi- nate industries, which by virtue of their capability for thorough concentration and organization have a superior advantage. " It seems to me that the American farmer has not yet mastered the problem of combined action, and conse- quently he has not yet fully ' realized ' upon his energies. Under the system now practiced, each separate farm house is an isolated community and a law unto itself. The economic loss is but a trifle compared with the woeful waste of social energy. From this waste comes the hunger of the heart and too often the atrophy of the intel- lect. From this, too, comes that abiding soul-weariness suffered by so many farmers, and still more by so many farmers' sons, and most of all by so many farmers' wives." LABOR SHIFTS. 229 After a patlietic sketcb of a young farmer's life in the " new lands" out West, the writer continues : " The causes are no doubt many, but the main one in my opinion, as I have previously said, arises from the difiEusion instead of concentration of energy. There is isolated and individual toil where there should be and might easily be associated effort. Families might work together and secure enor- mous gains both by the lessening of toil and expenditures and by an increase in product. " It is the general law of evolution and growth that like units segregate into special groups and bodies, making an organic structure. So in the world of labor we find a marked tendency toward specialism and subdivision, the marvelous results of which that have already been gained, point to the still greater benefits yet to come from a little more perfect adjustment and relation. We have but to look about us to see numberless proofs of the vast extent to which human happiness has been increased and misery lessened by this crystallization and grouping of the crude elements and materials of human life and society. In manufacturing and corporate enterprises, the subdivision of labor alone has almost worked miracles. Now must we believe that in American agriculture alone there are such conditions as to prevent its crude elements from adjusting themselves in a like natural relation from which like benefits may be expected." This seems to be a good enough diagnosis, and the remedy for the disease is, I submit, in farming corpora- tions. Mr. Bookwalter's remedy is to form agricultural communities like those in Europe, without organization or cohesion, and he expects co-operation to follow. But the casual principle is lacking. § 150. Labor Shifts would be a potent means of avoid- 230 RESULTS. ing isolation among tliose carrying on industries widely separated and those tending to separate their operators. Two shifts double the number of workmen working in the same locality ; three shifts treble them ; and four, which are quite practicable in many cases would throw four times the population about the same plants than are now con- nected with them. The question of the economical use of capital by asso- ciations would have been paramount from the beginning. The attainment of adequate capital for carrying on the industries required by civilization is yet one of the great- est of problems. To farming corporations beginning prac- tically anew and creating their capital as they go, there would be great necessity of making the most of what they obtained or created. The associates would soon see that expensive plants were disused half of the time each day, and were sub- jected to daily startings and stoppages, which are very damaging to machinery, thus enhancing the heavy cost of maintenance. They would see, also, that though the machinery was still a great part of the time, the users of it worked for hours longer than they could be efficient, and much longer than was to their comfort or physical or intellectual advantage. They would figure as to whether hours could not be reduced, and the machinery worked to its full capacity by reasonable labor shifts. If it were found that four shifts of six hours per day took about all the practicable labor out of the operatives, and kept tire- less machinery up to the highest efficacy, the experiment would be continued. It is submitted that that is just what would be found. That such shifts, even the most undesirable, would be preferable to any practicable working day without shifts, LABOR SHIFTS. 23t is believed. The economy in effort in making and keep- ing up capital would be immense. And the six hours' work would probably be fully equal to any twelve hours' customary accomplishments. Not only industrial capital as it accumulated in the hands of its creators would make labor shifts necessary, but agriculture would likewise. The more valuable became the farming interests, the more imperative, for half of the year, fourteen to sixteen hours of active culti- vation of them would become. The association could not afford to let any hour of the fruitful summer sunshine go unoccupied. And it goes without the saying that no man can be expected to work such long hours. The agricul- tural day is fortunately as naturally divisible into two or three shifts as the industrial. The morning laborers might work till noon, and the evening ones finish the day, or there might be a midday shift between these upon the longest days. Such a result is inevitable if farm laborers are not to be slaves. It has seemed a "wonder to me that no labor philanthro- pist has advocated short hours for them. But it is here as elsewhere, advantages are claimed and enforced for city dwellers only. They may have their eight hour day and big pay while farmers work sixteen hours and get next to nothing. But the country people are waking out of their sleep. They will order their industry so as to have short hours, and so as to mass their numbers, as a consequence, that they will have all city advantages. They will then no longer travel for their mails while postmen carry lamps to deliver city letters. They will not be denied a fair education while city free high schools outrank acade- mies in the quality of the training given scholars. And labor shifts in farming corporations will be one of "232 RESULTS. the first of the methods employed to bring about such results. § 151. Insurance. — The positive results of association into farming or industrial corporations would be an insur- ance against losses by failure to efficiently manage and carry forward their enterprises. But negatively the com- bination of interests would distribute unavoidable losses and so act as an insurance against desperate misfortune to individuals. Corporations to insure individuals would not be necessary if the individuals were properly organized into corporations themselves. Large corporations with varied interests, like railways, insure themselves. They cannot be crippled by any one disaster. Their interests are extensive enough so that the losses are evenly distributed one year with another among the whole assets and members so as to be imper- ceptible. No corporate interests are extended enough until this result is attained. Then only is chance elimi- nated from business and foresight made impregnable. Farmers have always been impelled to form mutual in- surance companies in townships, but they have been of little benefit, because, in the first place, the township is not a sufficient area through which to distribute losses, and secondly because the business not conducted in the course of the general business of the members has to be a secondary delegated business, everybody's business and nobody's business, like the co-operative store. The farm- ing corporation owning the houses and land in several or many townships would be a perfect insurance against the disheartening results to an individual farmer of the de- struction of his buildings. But the need of insurance in agriculture does not lie entirely in the liability of buildings to fire. Farming is LIFE INSURANCE. 233 itself the most hazardous business followed. Losses in stock and in crops are many and discouraging to individ- uals. Accident, disease, rain, drought, flood, blight, wind, insects and hail afflict localities every year, and always will in spite of the best management. And here the cor- porate organization would distribute the force of the blows no human ability or foresight can altogether avoid, and no science classify so as to be economically insured by outside companies. Provision for concerted action in the face of a calamity suddenly falling upon any part of a territorial corporation would be of very great advantage, though the concerted action would have itself avoided nine-tenths of the calam- ities now annually scourging the country through forest fires, floods, insect pests, frosts and storms, and would go far toward preventing irremediable damage. This would be particularly the case with that peculiarly American scourge, forest fires. So, too, insect pests can only be successfully fought by concerted action. Such loss as the farmers of North Dakota and Minnesota suffered in the autumn of 1891, from the closing in of the winter before the threshing of the wheat was done would not have found farming corporations in those localities unprepared and helpless. Nor would losses of cattle through cold, snow and blizzards upon the ranges be tolerated for a moment by such companies. In the presence of all such calamities organized action usually might avert much of the loss, and quickly repair that which occurred. None but a practical farmer can realize what relief such organ- ized foresight, reliable and relied upon, would give to people wearied by overwork and worn out by worry and disappointments through losses and the fear of losses. § 152. Life Insurance. — There would be something very 234 RESULTS. akin to life insurance, too, in the workings of farmers' corporations as we have traced tbem. The means of accumulation in a safe, popular and permanent investment would be placed before every person, whether insurable or not. The inducement to acquire shares in the compa- nies would be ever presented in such a way that one, while able to work at all, would have to perform positive acts of refusal to avoid becoming a stockholder before his working days were over. The making up of a stock account and its easy availability and permanency would compare most favorably with either private or govern- ment insurance. There would not be any restrictions by reason of rejec- tion by the doctors, no lapses by reason of temporary inability to keep up payments, and no loss of the use of the fund, when overpowering misfortune should overtake one before death. The stock fund would take payments in varying amounts equal to the whole surplus income each year, combining the advantages of a bank account, regular life and tontine policies, making a popular adjust- able life provision for all contingencies, as well as for old age and a family after death. This fund would have the incomparable quality of car- rying the means of earning a living to the children of the dead provider. They would be his successors in the company with claims of the treasury for the amount of the stock, and on the management for life situations as descendants of their stockholding ancestor. Such insur- ance of a chance to earn a livelihood, all men owe it to their posterity to provide by means of the incorporation of business that civilization and modern science have developed. No argument need be advanced that government insur- TEH PRESENT ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 235 ance can never be so satisfactory in any respect. Gov- ernment insurance is an anomaly. Pensions it may give, and tax for the means of payment But not being engaged in industry, but in policing, it has none of the attributes of a company for the insurance of the results of industry. The people have no claim on government for such an insurance. They have not formed governments for such purposes. To attain such end the people must create the appropriate agencies which will perform the functions in the course of their normal operation as a natural function of their existence. § 153. The Present Androscoggin Valley. — To take now a material look at the results of association we may premise that the present Androscoggin valley, where our typical association was started in imagination, does not now pre- sent a particularly favorable contrast with the appearance it presented to the former Androscoggin tribe of red men. They roamed in a free but precarious and comfortless con- dition through its woods after game, not realizing the roughness and poverty of the soil. They fished its waters, and, if not with later fishermen's luck, a wet foot and hungry gut, suffered often from cold and hunger, and little heeded the many cascades and waterfalls which did not then ameliorate the rigor of the climate, as indeed they do not yet. Not one-tenth of the water power of the best valley in the world for power is utilized. And what is developed runs mills owned by people living no nearer than Boston, so that the greater benefits realized are not for dwellers in the valley. The mill hands are not natives, even in the sense of being the earlier immigrants, but they are late arrivals who take what their predecessors disdain. Not one-tenth of the agricultural capacity of the valley 236 BEBULTB. is brought out. The fathers going into the wilderness single handed, and each for himself, selected as situations for their first farms the hilltops where it was temporarily the easiest to procure crops, where only it was possible for them to obtain sustenance before starvation cut them off in the midst of their labors. They thus cleared much land that was of no permanent value except for forest growths. But all the best land situated in the valleys was rot then, and, except in the case of some intervale lands equally easy of cultivation with the hilltops, has never been claimed for the uses of men. This policy located the first houses upon the hills and of course the roads all go over them to connect the houses, so that now communication, transportation and intercourse are hindered, foredoomed to remain primitive and expensive, whereas the valleys between the hills are continuous, of easy grade, frequent enough for all rational purposes, and generally well dis- posed for the convenience of men. The valley has a very poor, a very patchy, and it must be confessed, a very undeveloped appearance. The pict- ure it presents is certainly not over alluring. The sons of the marvelous white men who crowded their red prede- cessors out of it, now find it a good place to emigrate from. May they yet find it a good place to return to and fully populate with the sturdy race there now almost discour- aged. § 154. The Future Androscoggin Park. — It does not re- quire a very constructive or prophetic eye to see great changes wrought by the Androscoggin association as a result of the labors I have outlined. How much like a great inhabited park their domain would develop I How would the clearing of the unsightly valleys and swamps into the most productive fields, and the partial recrowning of THE FUTURE ANDROSCOGGIN PARK. 237 the hills with copses and forests of fruit trees and maples, change the appearance of the landscape 1 What a relief to the eye would he the disappearance of the division fences hetween the little farms, and those between the little fields of the individual farmer, with their rows of brush and bushes and tumble lines of stones and worse fence comers filled with all the abominations that have accumulated on eastern farms I How favorably the winding gentle slopes of the ribbon-like stone roads would compare with the angular, precipitous and fenced-in roads, which are the best that can now be afforded ! To show how much greener the green fields and past- ures of the old Pine Tree State would be than they gener- ally are now, I have only to indicate the comparison between the acres of the richer farmers, and especially the lawns of the real rich, and those of the ordinary single- handed farmer. The rich farmers' acres and the rich men's lawns are not richer in elements of green than is profitable in any prosperous farming. The postulated richness of association farming would make the face of the country shine in green. The initial improvement out- lined for the association would carry the carpet of green into the woods and copses, and grass that luxuriates in shade would profitably enable the greatest beauty of park lands, the melting of fields into woods, and woods into pastures, to be fully realized. What a transformation so simple an expedient as sowing the beautiful orchard grass and others like it clear up to, and into, the edges of forests, and through the thinner parts of wooded areas, would make, can hardly be imagined. The superlative greenness of grasses that grow in orchards and around and under scattered trees is well known. The increased fat- ness of the soil, and what with irrigation and drainage 238 RESULTS. would be early practicable, would make the glorious New England hills more than rival the rural beauties of Old England. Above all, the searing and browning of the hills, once annually, at least, which now desolates the country in dry times, would hardly ever occur. The greenness of the sward would lose none of its loveliness, that the grasses would be allowed to mature in sections to be, by the pict- uresque operation of hay making garnered for a useful purpose. Indeed clover is not most beautiful until it flowers. In the well cultivated fields rejuvenescence would soon follow to cover the dismantled stubbla § 155. An Agricultural Park. — In such a great park as whole counties together, variety would be necessary, and great agricultural parks would afford it. A field of grain is beautiful from the time the delicate green blades appear above the buff or yellow or gray or black or red colored soil until its yellow heads are nodding, bowed by the weight of grain within them. Corn, as its martial little green spikes appear in regular rows until each spike develops into a narrow green plume, should be a joy to a Dutch gardener, in itstrimness and regularity; and as its foliage becomes, with marvelous speed, a thick bank of luxuriant green vegetation surmounted in time by yellow flowering spikes, it is in the far North a dream of tropical luxuriance, when raised by such a rich husbandman as the association would be. Even the modest and retiring potato sends up from its subterranean place of growth, such sturdy dark green leaves to drink sunlight and azure air, that its variety is pleasant, and its carpet of green seems sometimes to have the longest and springiest pile of all. To right minded persons, the fact that this great park was also a field, an agricultural manufactory of good, AN AGRICULTURAL PARK. 239 needed and valuable things, should make it lovelier by comparison with parks with no use but that, though great indeed, of showing off a sterile beauty of form and color. Though our park would have flowering shrubs, as such, around the buildings therein inhabited by the park residents, still for flowering shrubs and trees, there would be those which also bore fruit. And how would they compare with ordinary flowering trees and shrubs ? Are any such earlier, or more beautiful and fragrant, than the apple, pear, cherry, and plum trees of the orchards of our park? And besides, all these have a second and even more effective efflorescence. A green leaved apple tree full of red or golden fruit, or a cherry tree with its smaller red or yellow fruit, in the middle of the summer, are the most beautiful floral objects in nature. A tree laden with any colored fruit, whether in summer or autumn, is a truly beautiful object. If the shrub sized bushes upon which our smaller fruits grow are more modest in their spring flowering, their dis- play of fruitage is fine enough to give them rank as ornamental shrubs. Raspberry bushes bearing red, black and yellow fruit can be massed so as to be as effective in color as in lusciousness, and so of the blackberry, and of the currant in its fine masses of reds and rich straw colored whites. In no respect would the utility of the employment of our future park compare more favorably with ordinary park effects than as regards ornamental animals. Herds of Jerseys, shorthorns or any other well kept cattle, are in no wise less beautiful than herds of deer. This those who know the beauties of English pastoral scenery can vouch. Flocks of sheep outlined against vivid green pastures are poetically beautiful. Even piggy in a 240 RESULTS. pasture is a pretty creature, especially in his younger daya Not the least attraction in future rural scenery should be the sleek and valuable animals, with that most beautiful of all, the horse, at the head, grazing over green pastures and beside running and still waters. And here we come to the crowning beauty of the future Androscoggin, her beautiful hill-set water gems. The morning sunlight reflecting the enhanced beauty of the hillsides will, in the future, paint on the silver surface of every one of Poland's beautiful lake mirrors unapproach- able pictures. Brooks and rivers such as abound in New England, and water scenery, are essential to set off any landscape, but the glory of all are lakes. In Scotland, in England, in Switzerland, lakes are glorified. There are none finer than those Maine will show in her jewel casket of the futura And Maine not only, but almost all northern associations, will have lakes with which to set off their increasing charms. § 156. Association Architecture. — If it would not be wearisome, I would try to vindicate the probable beauty of the highest utilities of all, in this park of ours, the habitations of men. Those who will say that the build- ings men will live in under all these circumstances of association, and with surroundings ameliorated by com- bination for the advantages detailed, would be unsightly, uniform and without beauty, can hardly be patiently reasoned with. They can only be told that the architec- tural embellishments of this park, will, perforce, be worthy of prodigal surrounding nature, and of a prosperous peo- ple given a new liberty, or opportunity, to have dwellings according to a refined taste, and corresponding with a situation more exacting of building harmonies than any former one. They may be told that the houses in which ASSOCIATION VILLAGES AND CITIES. 241 will be brought the association's wired light, heat and power, will be cleaner, finer and larger than those using oil and wood and coal, and wanting anything but hand powei-s. Can they deny that the barns and farm buildings made to house sleeker and finer and more valuable cattle will not themselves involuntarily be made more conven- ient and comfortable, larger and handsomer? These things are always so. They do not live in unlovely and uniform houses, that are engaged in the unintellec- tual and uniform pursuit of cutting the coupons from bonds of companies, the operation of which they know nothing. The much more intellectual co-operation among farmers and artisans will not have any such bad effects, that are not even seen growing out of co-operation in owning and managing the Standard Oil Company or the Pennsylvania Railroad. No 1 the inhabitants, associators, who live in this park will have tastes, and will gratify them all the more, and correspondingly with their increased prosperity. But who would forego the hope of a bountiful country, because, forsooth, her architecture might become uniform, even if the communists would deliberately have it so ? § 157. Association Villages and Cities. — Confident as we may be in the future of rural architecture to harmonize with the enhanced beauties of rural landscape, it cannot but be felt that there is little argument necessary to show that the stigma of ugliness and uniformity would not apply to association villages or cities, shops or factories. The inhabitants of cities and villages that remained outside of the associations would of course not be affected in their tastes, and the parts of cities and villages occupied by those in situations better than could be offered by the associations are already made very comfortable and taste- 16 242 RESULTS. ful and even artistic. The most carping aiid insincere critic would not urge that those •who by association bet- tered their condition could go on living in more miserable and uniform quarters than they now do, as tenants of those paragons of taste, the rich. In fact villages and cities as parts of, and affected by, the associations, would grow aesthetically as they grew in material prosperity, and the collections of houses would be affected the same way as we found the separate houses were throughout the parkland. They would tend to become more uni- formly ornamental to the general landscape than they now are, because tbe poor are not now at liberty to be ornamental. But having in mind the marvelous highway streets before pictured in our minds, and considering them stretch- ing their ever beautiful and ever changing length through all the pretty valleys of Androscoggin along her brooks and beside her fine lakes, we cannot stop short of saying that association villages and cities would outrival any thing the world ever saw. We would say the continuous village street or the great community highways would present a combination of the rural and urban that would delight the world. That these streets would not be tedious or monotonous we have only to consider the multitudi- nous uses of the street and the buildings situated thereon. No such varied scenes are to be found anywhere now as would be presented by any section of such a street in a prosperous farming corporation. Barns and warehouses would be there and indistinguishable. Farm-houses and their surrounding groups of buildings, running back from the street, residences, shops, factories, stations, school- houses and all would be scattered along the whole length of the road while at short intervals would be a larger AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES WEST AND SOUTH. 243 group of industrial and commercial buildings, and ever and anon, cities as we now regard them. Whoever may not be pleased with the picture he can make of this kind of community, I am sure the American farmer will not be found among the objectors. He will be willing to have his business so ordered that he may have the advantage of a city continued to his very door. He will not object to bringing his occupation into touch, shoulder to shoulder, with all the others which now have many advantages denied to him. If I mistake not he will labor diligently to bring himself into such an organized community, which shall not be merely an agricultural community, but a complete industrial community. § 158. Agricultural Communities West and South would present features similar to that in Androscoggin. In the West would be greater flatness and fatness in the land- scape. But the transformation would be almost as mar- velous as in the East. The greater sameness would be a sustained exuberance of natural riches, and regularity in orderly and economical arrangement The great wide spaces there will be the play ground of the steam plow and cultivator, the steam digger, steam farm locomotives carrying great broad wheeled cars of seed and manure out upon the fields, and returning with crops to the barns and warehouses. Picturesqueness will be given by these operations, by windmills filching power from the high prairie - winds, and by many wide and slow irrigating, drainage and navigation canals. The transformations of the South that await general association are to be more entrancing than those of the bleaker North. A beautiful park in the Androscoggin valley or a greater Holland in Iowa, would be a veritable paradise in South Carolina. The capacity of the south 214 RESULTS. land for beauty and sensuousness has always been the theme of poets. Flowers that are ever blooming in full sunlight in the South are under a blanket of white in the North for long months. Products that are ever ripe there, must be preserved by more or less imperfect means through the period of nature's northern sleep. No one could doubt that successful associations in the South would make their attenuated villages wondrously beauti- ful, and that nature would be trained to perfection. § 159. Opportunism. — "Would it be a disadvantage that the people were working together so that they could have a chance to feel the beauty of their landscape, and profit by its increasing beauty ? Here, indeed, would the beauti- ful face of nature as it grew lovely but indicate and mirror the increasingly good heart, kindly disposition, and pro- ductive capacity of mother nature, and these qualities would be reflected in the people. Every one of the improvements contemplated by the Androscoggin associa- tion would beautify her lands. Every one of the prin- ciples of economical action which it would adopt, con- trary to the present industrial tendency, would save her land, her air, and her water from desecration, from impurity and pollution. If she built mills on her coast, she would not insist on making her lovely water border a miserable line of brick walls, even though they would not be dominated by unsightly chimneys belching forth smoke. She would desire no black districts, no tenement house, districts, and she would see to it that her towns, her villages, and her cities had no poor quarters. Black- cat and Hardscrabble in Poland, and Lincoln street in Lewiston would, in their disagreeable associations, be forgotten, as will the East side in New York and White- chapel in London. OPPORTUNISM. 24-5 All tbis would be accomplished without the loss of one particle of liberty. Many would live in individual action as before, outside of the association, for many years after its complete development. If the poor felt compelled to join the association, it would be an agreeable compulsion, that of the presentment to them of a new and greater opportunity. That the association worked upon a more uniform principle and with more unity of action, would not stifle individual invention, nor circumscribe individual initiative, but would mightily increase the opportunity for both. Ideas of improvements would not be, as now, only held by the farmers in full consciousness of the impossibility of ever seeing them carried out The bale- ful influence of the feeling of powerlessness that now dominates eastern farmers would be thrown ofi. The drainage that they can see so plainly should be done could be put upon its accomplishment, where now they can only regret that they will never see it accomplished in their lifetimes. The feeling of impotence is comparable in bitterness with that of slavery. This the well to do farmers in this country feel in a superlative degree. They will welcome a call to throw it off. Individual cravings for the beautiful and assthetic in their lives would find that a liberty had been accorded them to live, to grow and to be satisfied. In this last is the principle dishonestly concealed or ignorantly over- looked by those whose opportunities, and consequently whose liberties, correspond with their desires ; and who teach, from fortunate conditions of life, a miserable liberty to an enchained people. It is nothing that one is at liberty to go to Chicago if he has nothing to pay for a ride there. His liberty to walk is nothing less than a prohibition to go. It is all 246 RE8ULTB. the same to him. He would rather have the opportunity of riding there, even if imprisoned in a car all the way. Liberties amount to nothing without opportunities. It might almost be said opportunities are liberties and that there are none besides. Freedom is a mockery with- out opportunity. Having freedom to eat if one can, he may still go hungry. Having liberty to buy a suit of clothes, he may wear an old summer suit all through the winter. Freedom and liberty are nice to Mr. Vanderbilt and Mr. Astor, but they are mighty small potatoes and few in a hill to most of us. We should be more free in the Androscoggin industrial association. § 160. One Sole Association. — But there will be a tend- ency in many minds to anticipate and promote a single type of association, and even to develop one association to cover the whole country, or by consolidation of sepa- rate associations once started accomplish the same object It is fortunate that this is impossible. It would never be desirable that there should be one universal association for the whole country. Beyond the objection going to the feasibility of management, that has already been noticed, without competition among associations at least in kinds and quality of products, production might get into a groove and invention and progress in such associations slacken. If all production were in the same administrative hands, they might have produced what they got into the habit of producing, and therefore supply the unhappy members according to a stereotyped unprogressive idea of their wants, rather than according to an enlightened progressive increase in their necessities. A management unstimulated except from within its own association might soon make it almost impossible to get what was not most generally ONE SOLE ASSOCIATION. 247 supplied. Demand would' then have no power over supply. Supply according to custom alone would be sole monarch and an unmitigated curse, a greater despot than has yet arisen, with a tyrannical power never before seen. A sole individual association would cut off freedom. For what is freedom except an opportunity to move, to get out, to quit ? And if there were but one association country wide, there would be but one master short of ex- patriation. That one might be accorded general liberty to change from one set of officers to others of the same asso- ciation would not do, as custom might settle and harden into uniformity through a single association. There would not be sufficient variety for all men in one Eden without there were an outside in which those having partaken of the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of the good and evil therein, or having become discontented, might migrate. It would not do that those cast out of one Eden, and the Hagars and Ishmaels and even Cains, could find freedom and opportunity outside in other human association and not be cast into the deserts and wildernesses without liberty to live, because without opportunity. No, it will be just as important for those who stay as for those who go away, that the discontented can have their accumulations paid over to them, and that they can then seek and find others in association with whom they may unite their fortunes and perhaps be better satisfied. With such a diversity of associations as should spring up through clannishness and pride of locality, the different capacities of different places and different kinds of people should be given full opportunity to develop. And with, such a fierce competition without desolating power, as would exist between associations, the greatest variety of opportunity would be afforded to every one. 248 RESULTS. § 161. The Butter Factory Problem. — The Eastern farmer has lately run afoul of an unexpected difficulty in market- ing his private dairy made butter, since the uniformly excellent article made by the butter factories or cream- eries has become common in the market. The uniformity of the latter is one of excellence and is fancied by dealer and consumer alike. The result is that in this present year of grace the farmers in Maine at least are finding that no one will buy their individual butter as of yore at any price whatever I They see, however, that the butter factories, co-operative associations, sell off their product regularly month by month, and make fair returns to their patrons. So in this particular all the farmers who keep cows have got to asso- ciate willy nilly. This involves to the conservatives the fundamental objections they raise to general co-operative or associated farming. Their old methods have to be given up. They have in the first place to provide themselves with creamers instead of the different forms of pans in use at present for setting milk for the cream to rise. These creamers are more ex- pensive in first cost than the former utensils. Besides the creamers require ice, and the farmer must hustle out some more or less cold day in the winter and cut some of the rather disagreeable thing to handle, and must provide a place to store the very elusive crystallized water. All this is new and troublesome to the old-fashioned New England farmer who follows in his grandfather's footsteps and wears his hat. Now this states the additional trouble connected with the butter factory, and it is this which has kept many back from making the new departure To offset this, the cream collector for the factory stops for the cream that is simply THE BUTTER FACTORY PROBLEM. 249 drawn ofi from the milk by turning a faucet instead of being skimmed off laboriously by the overworked house- wife. And the same good angel, the agent of the com- munistic factory who takes the cream away, takes away the terrors of the churning which took from half an hour to three or four hours of the most miserable drudgery a man ever did, but which was more often, however, done by a weak and overworked woman. The further work- ing of the butter, its packing, the care of it, the market- ing and its more or less unsatisfactory return, varying according as the conditions about the farm varied, all went away also with the agent carrying around barrel-like arrangements in a wagon. The returns that follow monthly from the agent's principal are invariably better and more regular than the best of that now received by the gen- erality of farmers. Now here is an example for the consideration of our much vaunted intelligent and independent farmer in his sturdy freedom. Any objection to this is on a perfect level with every objection to extended co-operation or association. This one study is an object lesson which may be positively held to conclude discussion upon every point, and our farmers will see it. For, is a co-operating butter maker more or less inde- pendent because some one else takes charge of the making and selling of his butter? Ask him this way, whether he has more or less opportunity to do other work, whether he has more or less freedom to quit work occasionally and rest? Ask his wife this latter question. Ask her if she is sorry her dear liberty of making butter has been ruth- lessly snatched away from her and her hands forever manacled as far as working over butter is concerned? Ask her whether or not she expects to have the opportunity of 250 RESULTS. life more or fewer days, and whetlier her freedom from aches and pains is greater or less while she remains above the sod? And it must be said in extenuation of the farmer's atti- tude to this improvement that the progressives were a good and active moiety from the first and that there is little but inertia in the position of those who have not joined the procession. And it may be said, too, that for some, even the small necessary preliminary expenses are a serious obstacle, so closely is their independence of action now circumscribed by the circumstances of their poverty. § 162. Butler Factory Argument Extended. — ^It may be put down as a fact that the uniformity and excellence obtained by the butter factory for its product will soon be required for most of the other products of the farm. In all things produced by the farmer in which there are differences in quality, and they comprise every one of his products, the poorer grades will soon have to be weeded out. The scrub cattle do not produce good enough cream even now for the factory butter makers, and they are making vigorous representations to that effect Soon they will refuse to receive the milk of stock less than grade Jersey in quality. Nor does the scrub make good enough beef. And this is one reason why the eastern farmer now finds he cannot market to advantage any of his common beef stock. To remedy this requires expensive blooded stock. Some kind of co-operation is necessary to procure it. Not one farmer in a hundred can afford it alona Common mutton and common coarse wool can now hardly be given away. The farmer must buy expensive stock again. The same is true of horses at one end of the scale and poultry at the other. THE FARMER'S INDEPENDENCE. 251 The common hay and badly cured corn fodder is not good enough feed to make a good quality of creature or creature product. Neither good mutton or beef nor the highest quality of butter or cheese can be produced from such feeding materials. Fields have therefore to be ex- pensively improved and expensively kept up to the stand- ard of improvement, so that more and better hay, corn fodder for ensilage, and roots and grain for feeding, such as the farmer until now has not regarded as necessities, have to be grown. One farmer spreads himself very thin in trying to accomplish all this by his own work. In fact he cannot do it in the majority of instances except he does it in company with others, either in association or working for wages with many others hired under the capitalistic factory system of farming. § 163. The Farmer's Independence. — The fact reached then is that the farmer cannot possibly longer continue in the independence, if he has chosen to call it such, that he has enjoyed until now. He has come to a stone wall and his independence does not give him the liberty to do anything except butt against it, because it does not furnish him the needed ability to scale it Freedom to butt his poor life out against the wall he has. But means to scale it will only be found in the opportunity he has to combine with his fellows in raising a living stairway, with living steps, every one a layer of farmers, that shall reach to the top, which once reached, those who have constituted the way up will, like the living bridge the monkeys make in Africa, be pulled after, giving every living section the desired goal and the needed liberty. As the co-operation in the butter factory makes not less independence but more, so the complete associations of the farmer and everybody else with each other will not cur- 252 RESULTS. tail the independence of any, but enlarge that of all, and moreover make it of a far better quality. In fact real opportunity to accomplish anything worth one's while will then have been for the first time obtained. And with that opportunity is found a freedon of action, a liberty for the pursuit and attainment of happiness, and an independence from the oppression of untoward circumstances, that man- kind has never yet attained. § 164. Freedom. — Acting in concert is not necessarily constrained action, except in the case of the company using the lock step and wearing the striped uniform. A procession may march with military precision and still there may be no coercion of a single marching comrade, as in case of conscripted soldiers. And even in the military service volunteers, and especially those who should have the liberty of quitting at any time, would not be deprived of any freedom even if severe discipline were the rule of the service. The great crowd that go to a circus, that even the whole power of the State would be taxed to its utmost to collect in case of unwillingness to go, is not wanting in freedom. They were free to come and can go when they please, but if they will see the circus and the whole of it, they must come and they will be compelled to stay till it is finished. It would be depriving them of liberty to say they should not come. It would be depriving them of opportunity if there were no circus to go to or if there were no wherewithal to attend. What is the difference? Thus it is with the butter factory or the organized associa- tion. Neither forces anyone to join, though circumstances may and probably will force every one to join. The fact, however, of the existence of the factory or the association is an added opportunity, an avenue of escape from im- pending danger, and all are at liberty to go therein. The FREEDOM. 253 providing the avenue is not a deprivation of freedom but a free provision of the most valuable kind of liberty, and the pursuing it is true independence, though everybody else also take the same avenue of escape from the troubles ahead. Again, acting in concert is not degrading, belittling, unmanly, or in any way unseemly. It is only poor and mean spirits who will not go in comradeship that is volun- tary, pleasant and profitable. It is the selfish and hoggish who wish to get to the bountiful table first, and gorge themselves in unneeded abundance and waste the viands so there shall not be enough to go around. The good, the true and the beautiful, yes the brave, the just and the honorable, will go in pairs to the table, and being seated will await the seating of the last and the least at the foot of the table before lifting a napkin. Again, to take more obvious ground, making cotton cloth in disciplined co-operation, governed by formal rules previously agreed upon and freely assented to, that is voluntary co-operation, though it is that of thousands of workers. And it is different both in degree and in kind from making cloth in concert, but for the benefit of, and under the direction of an employer, however wise, how- ever able, and however just. In the one case the worker is as independent as the whole concern is solid, or as is the employer himself in the other case, with the difference only that the voluntary co-operating worker has not the powers, most of them illegitimate and unfair, that the latter has by reason of his wealth, and the license he has by means of his power. In case of the employee as dis- tinguished from the associate, the only dignity he has is the negative one of quitting, and the exercise of that is precluded by circumstances over which he has no control 254 RESULTS. But the associate is an equal among equals even as respects the managemeat of the concern. His interest in the results of the operations both of himself and his fellows, is in a fair proportion with that of everyone else, and his negative freedom to quit has the additional opportunity of obtaining and keeping a share in the capital of the concern that he has been given the previous opportunity to obtain, upon free incentive furnished. Finally, making butter in concert is to be preferred, if a better and an hon ester product is made, and a greater return for less work obtained. The interdependence in the factory and in the organized association, as long as it is equal and not compulsory, does not denote any lack of freedom. And the immensely increased and more stable independence of the association is not reduced to any individual voluntarily sharing it because others also share it. The independence is not a quantity of something that is made smaller by being divided around, but it is a con- dition that each and every one may have in the fullest measure, and the fuller and more secure because guaran- teed to all. Perhaps this argument directed against a pernicious use of the pride the farmers have in their independence may be unnecessary. Farmers have never been selfish about sharing with all others their new and advanced ideas of cultivation. And the more prosperous farmers, writing in agricultural papers, have always been unselfishly anxious that all others should advance to their stage of prosperity. Farmers seldom patent new ideas, and yearly many patentable discoveries are freely published in their papers. They are the bright exceptions to the secretiveness and underhandedness prevailing in trade and industry. Their practice has been for ages to share new methods and FREEDOM. 255 higher aspirations, and it is only now to be feared that interested men will cry down any new method involving productive combination among the farmers, by an insin- cere appeal to an ideal independence in the interest of the classes that pro6t by its being cherished as a phantom while being non-existent in reality. The farmers will be independent again only by combining as the independent classes now do, and by vigilance in supporting and guarding their opportunities. PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. Correapondenoe is solicited with those desiring to promote Farming: Corporations. Blank forms and blank books for the use of promoters, and of the corporations after organization, furnished at fair prices. We will prepare such blanks upon careful study, and their use will secure uniformity and efficiency of management. We will arrange for the services of Mr. Wilbur Aldricb in the promotion of farming corporations at merely nominal rates above expenses. Send us your names for notices of any literature upon the subject that wo may desire to call to your attention. We shall secure and circulate useful appreciative criticisms and additions to the doctrines contained in " Farming Corporations," and adverse criticisms calling for replies. Mr. Wilbur Aldrich has in a forward state of preparation a book developing the economical facts and laws upon which "Farming Corporations" are based, which will be announced when ready. W. ALDEICH & CO., 120 Bboadway, N. T.