grain-dealers began to wonder if there was not something in the idea. A few of them at least were also influenced by idealism. The man chiefly responsible on the traders' side for what has been attempted said with some embarrassment when questioned closely: 'I have given my entire life to this business and when I pass out I would like to leave the industry a little better than I found it.' That is a characteristic Chicago attitude. Nowhere is business harder and nowhere is a generous public conception more likely to express itself in action. Fourteen years ago Joseph Shaffner, a clothing-manufacturer, at the end of a long strike, gave voice to a similar conviction, and already his industry has been revolutionized and the standards of living of hundreds of thousands of workers have been raised. Another Chicagoan, Daniel H. Burnham, put on paper an architect's dream of making his city beautiful and to-day Chicago is being rebuilt with the prodigality of a Napoleon. Unless idealism is conceded, it is not possible fully to understand what is happening in the West.

The organization with which the grain-dealers made their contract is the American Farm Bureau Federation. This is a large and representative body having branches in most of the states. It is dominated by the larger farmers and, compared with certain other agricultural associations, is conservative rather than radical. Still the Farm Bureau Federation actively supported the McNary-Haugen bill, which the Chicago business men denounced as diabolically bad. This measure, which failed of passage in the last Congress, would have established an agricultural export commission with an authorized capital of $200,000,000. Its purpose was to restore and maintain approximately the pre-war normal relationship between the prices of certain

VOL. 135-NO. 3

farm products and the general price level.' It would in fact have put the Federal Government in the business of marketing wheat and, had the scheme succeeded, the domain of those who have so long dominated the Chicago Board of Trade would have indeed been restricted.

The Farm Bureau Federation is itself the result of other Federal legislation. The Smith-Lever Act, which provided county agricultural agents, presupposed the organization of the farmers. To secure the benefits of the law, countrymen were compelled to form coöperative associations. Within two years the entire country has been covered by these coöperatives. County groups have been united into state associations, the states in turn bound together in a national federation.

Marketing problems were at once attacked, and already some important achievements have been recorded. The National Live Stock Producers' Association is a child of the Farm Bureau Federation; last year it did a business of more than $100,000,000. Likewise the vegetable and fruit growers in many states have been organized. Since its very beginning the Federation has been giving attention to wheatmarketing. When the grain-dealers arrived at willingness to compromise, it was an available buyer for those who would yield their control of elevator facilities.

The terms of the bargain have been criticized, but the statement of one of those immediately involved was probably fair when he said: "This is neither a sheriff's sale nor a hard trade; we have come together at a fair price.'

The contract called for the creation of a $26,000,000 company. The farmers paid out nothing in cash and the graindealers undertook to provide $4,000,000 working capital. The previous owners of the grain companies retained 500,000

shares of Class B stock at fifty dollars a share in effect a $25,000,000 mortgage on the entire business. The farmers have undertaken to sell 1,000,000 shares of common stock at one dollar a share and 1,000,000 shares of Class A stock at twenty-five dollars a share. As rapidly as the common stock and the Class A preferred are sold to the wheat-growers, the mortgage will be retired.

Moreover the profits of the business will be used to pay off the mortgage. It has been estimated that economies resulting from the merging of interests will be from six to eight cents a bushel. This will immediately redound to the benefit of the producers in accordance with coöperative principles. How large the earnings of the business will be is naturally problematical, but one of the companies involved has made an average profit of $1,250,000 during the past ten years. The same company's interest on its share of the Class B stock, or mortgage, will be but $400,000 a year. Manifestly it has yielded something and the farmers have been given a comparatively painless method of buying a large business.

Not less important is the fact that the executives and the personnel of the merged companies are now employed by the farmers. Good management is the key to all business success, whatever the system under which trade is conducted. Hitherto coöperation has frequently failed because the coöperatives lacked expert direction. The Grain Marketing Company starts with managers and a trained staff whose competence none disputes. In truth their very skill has in the past been the farmers' argument against them.

So it has happened that the farmers are in possession of sumptuous offices on Chicago's La Salle Street, the financial centre of the Middle West. There, within earshot of the pit of the famous

Board of Trade, they direct a business the very volume of which would arouse criticism and perhaps Federal prosecution if it had not the immunity from antitrust suspicion which attaches to agricultural coöperation.

It seems that something of almost revolutionary significance is happening in the West. Power appears to be passing from one group to another. The grain-dealers say they have given themselves five years more in the business. Within that time the wheatgrowers should have learned the intricacies of the market place, trained their own merchants, and become prepared to displace those who are now hired to carry on the business. In the process they will have become accustomed to an environment they have long viewed with suspicion. Likewise the business men with whom the farmers associate so closely will have reached a better understanding of agricultural problems.

Already local coöperative societies in many states possess elevators; added now are storage facilities in the terminal cities, and a marketing-agency with national and international ramifications. The wheat-growers' business is different, however, from that which it may supersede. In producers' coöperation there are no profits in the ordinary sense of the word. Interest must of course be paid on borrowed money and, if the management continues to be as successful as the same men have been in the past, ample net earnings should be shown on the balance sheet. But these earnings will be returned to the coöperators. The wheat-grower will obtain rebates in accordance with the number of bushels distributed for him. What is earned will thus be scattered over the farming-country and not accumulated in the cities.

This is on the assumption that the

plan succeeds. There are those who profess to believe that soon enough the farmers will be glad to abandon the wheat pit, where so many speculators have waged their spectacular campaigns, and return to their ploughs and tractors. Such pessimism ignores too much. The farmers who have sponsored these adventures are universitytrained and acquainted with financial methods. The contract they negotiated is the expression of their intelligence as well as that of the lawyers, bankers, and grain-dealers involved. The scientific methods they have long applied to growing their products they would now direct to the distribution and sale of the fruits of their labor.

Excessive enthusiasm is not needed to conclude that this effort or one like it is apt to strike root and to flourish. A little while ago, throughout vast areas the wheat farmers, on the verge of bankruptcy, seemed unequal to the struggle against an economic system which tended to reduce them to a condition of economic serfdom. If there were not intelligence enough in the agricultural regions to master the problem of favorably disposing of such a commodity as wheat, then in fact American farmers might be expected to sink to the level of a peasantry.

Fortunately, however, from many directions comes the assurance that the men who plant and harvest the crops are able also to dispose of them.

The Chicago grain-dealers offered no treaty of peace until the farmers persuaded the leaders of the pit that the Government was likely to take over their business. They accepted coöperation because they dreaded governmental operation. The McNaryHaugen bill, which implied Federal domination of the grain market, was close to passage at the last session of Congress, thereby proving that the farmers could wage aggressive warfare in order to win back the relatively high standard of living they once enjoyed. It is interesting to the nation, however, that in an elemental industry, producing and distributing the chief food article of the world, men should agree and seek to work together. Coöperation, honestly and wisely administered, avoids some of the inherent disadvantages of a bureaucratic service. Assuredly this trial of large-scale coöperation is better for the nation than that scheme for bringing the United States Government directly into the grain business, a measure seriously considered during the recent sessions of Congress.

My neighbor has many broad acres upon which he pays the taxes and over which I ride and walk an admirable arrangement. He likes to pay taxes and I like to ride where the footing is soft and the paths shaded. This is only one of the many advantages that I possess in having so amiable and excellent a man for neighbor.

To be sure, his orbit is a bit more extended than mine, and we meet but seldom. He, nevertheless, adds enormously to my pleasure, for his manner of life is ornamental and leisured. He does things suavely and without hurry. His surroundings suit him admirably, and when he takes tea in the garden, dressed in spotless riding-togs, he is every inch the picture he thinks he is.

My somewhat covert admiration of his sartorial perfection has been a bit marred, however, by a suspicion that his life was not one of full-flavored and perfect rusticity. It seemed too perfect in detail, just a bit studied. A tumbledown stone wall separates my entire estate from one corner of his domain. It is not a well-preserved or suburbanlooking wall. I know it is my duty to repair it I mean to sometime. Over this wall on rare occasions we hold conversation, and it was while thus engaged that I unwittingly discovered his secret.

I had said something about pigs, and, not wishing to appear superior

I turned and walked sadly away. There are times when people reveal themselves so shamelessly and in such bland innocence of the awful revelations they make that the kindest thing you can do is to leave them in ignorance of their guilt.

Then a disquieting thought came to me. If Midas dislikes pigs so much, perhaps he dislikes mine, and wishes them removed. Perhaps he meant to go on and make the suggestion. It was well that I left him. I hastened my step lest he call me back.

Presently I found myself in earnest contemplation of the creatures held in so low esteem by my neighbor. I looked tenderly at them. I recognized the mood. It was the familiar one that is experienced when you hold in your hand a most unflattering report from your eldest's preceptor and the tiny culprit stands before you waiting the utterance of reprimand or sentence. This mood, by some strange twist in my mind, always prompts immoderate and boisterous laughter, which must be restrained in the family circle, but to

day I was safely out of hearing. My neighbor was taking tea by now in an ornate and inaccessible garden, and I found myself shaken with Homeric laughter as I leaned over the low wall and shared my merriment with two most astonished pigs.

Of course Midas would not keep a pig. I might have known it. Midas chops trees in a silk shirt. That in itself is not inherently base or sordid. But he grunts- it is not a pretty word, but he does - when his axe strikes the tree or log he is manhandling in an utterly inaccurate imitation of a real chopper with a real axe striking real blows. He fails to synchronize properly and betrays the amateur. I have even heard him describe a pack of hounds as dogs!

I was not thinking pleasant thoughts of Midas. I did not try to. I knew I was through with him. Our wives might continue to exchange biennial calls; we might even exchange a word or two over the wall; but for all intents and purposes I knew I was through with Midas. How silly I had been- of course Midas would not keep a pig.

And what a pity! By one of those wise provisions of a benign Providence this crowning glory of rusticity is within the reach of the humblest, except those unfortunates who dwell in congested districts where a perverse public opinion has legislated against this highly useful animal. But then, no selfrespecting person would live in such a place anyway.

There is no need to enlarge upon the economic value of the pig. The billboards and the press are radiant with tasteful illustrations of the appetizing final state of this succulent animal. It is in other ways and for other reasons that I admire and love him.

He is the one animal with whom man can ever hope to be on intimate terms,

who is an incorrigible wag. He is the humorist of the farm. It seems strange that it should be so. Bred for countless generations for nothing but culinary purposes, daily approaching an inevitably tragic end, he has preserved inviolate the comic tradition.

When opportunity presents, my friend, look attentively at those little glittering eyes and you will see a waggish twinkle that will convince you that you are in the presence of a humorist.

To get the very best out of ownership of a pig, thought should be given to his habitat. An enclosure is necessary. Now, have the enclosure of such a height that your elbows rest comfortably upon the top, arrange a soft and agreeable footing on the windward side of the enclosure, and all will be well. Your relation with a pig is not an intimate one pigs are not to be handled except in early infancy, and you will find that merely to contemplate them as you stand in a comfortable and relaxed attitude with some support to the body will yield a rich reward.

They should be secured young there is an innocent joyousness in a very young pig, which will amuse you in the early stages of your acquaintance and will give you food for thought as your intimacy grows. And then the pleasure of seeing them grow! If you have a low and commercial type of mind you can calculate daily your profit, even after deducting the interest on your modest initial investment. The upkeep is not a heavy item. One of the most charming things about a pig is his heartfelt gratitude for the delicacies that a wasteful and ignorant generation regard as inappropriate for human consumption. And to beneficent use he puts them, returning literally a hundredfold.

But it is not these sordid consider