If this ideal of
the organized rural community is accepted there will be difficulties, of
course, and enemies to be encountered. The agricultural middleman is a
powerful person. He will rage furiously. He will organize all his
forces to keep the farmers in subjection, and to retain his peculiar
functions of fleecing the farmer as producer and the general public as
consumer. But unless we are determined to eliminate the middleman in
agriculture we will fall to effect anything worth while attempting. I
would lay down certain fundamental propositions which, I think, should
be accepted without reserve as a basis of reform. First, that the
farmers must be organized to have complete control over all the business
connected with their industry. Dual control is intolerable. Agriculture
will never be in a satisfactory condition if the farmer is relegated to
the position of a manual worker on his land; if he is denied the right
of a manufacturer to buy the raw materials of his industry on trade
terms; if other people are to deal with his raw materials, his milk,
cream, fruit, vegetables, live stock, grain, and other produce; and if
these capitalist middle agencies are to manufacture the farmers' raw
material into butter, bacon, or whatever else are to do all the
marketing and export, paying farmers what they please on the one hand,
and charging the public as much as they can on the other hand.
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