colored neckties and the tawdry jewelry he sells are cheap, but please the young people to whom he caters. The suits he sells to the farmer may be of a cut that is long out of style, but it usually has the weight and feel that indicates good wear, and that is the all-important quality for his farmer customer. He frankly tells his patrons that he is making good money at his business, explaining it in the economies due to the fact that he has to pay but sixty dollars license per year, and has no expense in the way of taxation on his stock, or rents, or clerk hire, or costly electrically illuminated show-windows, or advertising..

37% buy from peddler 38% buy from catalogue houses Diagram showing percentage of families buying from peddlers and catalogue houses.

This peddler, as already mentioned, enters very intimately into social relationship with various families who are his patrons. Among the children he has pets to whom he sends colored post-cards or little presents on their birthdays. Or if death brings bereavement into a family circle, he is pretty sure to know about it, and to express his sympathy by a note of condolence and a floral wreath. In the words of one of his patrons, "show me the town merchant who cares that much for us."

Another favorite method of buying for many farmers is by means of competitive bidding at auction sales. It is not very popular with many of the newer generation however. So, also, with the housewives of the older generation. They not only know their own business, but usually are better economists than their husbands, and it is they who call attention to the folly of buying "a lot of old, nearly worn-out machinery and truck that never will be used." In spite of this domestic difference upon the wisdom of buying at auction sales, these are nevertheless still very popular. This is so largely because a man's advantage in the market world is pretty well defined by his knowledge of values. The farmer is a poor judge of values, as a rule. At these sales he needn't trust entirely to his own judgment, but he can guide himself by the judgment of other farmers. Often an article will be "run up" away above what its market value should be, each bidder trusting, not to his own evaluation of the article, but rather to the thought that "if it is worth that much to the other bidder, it's worth fully as much to me." Hence the wrath of the buyer when he finds

out that the other party was not a bona fide bidder in the market, but merely a "bidder-in." In such an event he feels "done," because he has no confidence in his own judgment as to the value of the plow or horse that he bid up. If the other fellow had been an actual buyer, he would have been satisfied that he hadn't paid too much for his purchase.

It is stated by station agents and others who are in a position to know, that the amount of business done by farmers with mail order firms is decreasing. However that may be, the amount of business that thus escapes local merchants seemed to be but little. There were thirty-two per cent of the farmers who had ordered something from a catalogue house within the year. Nearly all of these stated that the orders were small. Only in a few places had they ordered goods to the extent of twenty dollars. In most cases orders were sent during the winter when the boys and girls put in some of their time studying catalogues and seeing for how little they might get a rifle or some knickknacks, and then perhaps father and mother would try to help cut down the freight or express charges by including a little order for a few dollars' worth of prunes, coffee, or herring, or pos

31%......

Sell eggs for cash at times

.69%

Always trade out eggs at store

Diagram showing method of disposal of eggs.

sibly a saw or hammer which could be had cheaper than they could buy it at home. As a general thing, however, it was admitted that catalogue-house service on the whole was not entirely satisfactory. "It is always better to see what you are getting." Others seemed to feel that it is hardly fair to "take your eggs to local merchants to trade in for goods in summer, and run your credit when you haven't got any, and then when you have ready money in fall or winter send it away to Montsears and Wardbuck." There were only twenty-six per cent of the farmers who ever sold eggs for cash, and with most of them it is only for a short while each year when they have a big supply of eggs that they sell their surplus for cash. Most farmers' wives prefer to take the eggs to their merchant, for he will usually give them one cent more per dozen than the local cash buyer pays. With the egg-trade goes a big amount of credit business. While fortytwo per cent of the farmers' wives maintained that they never ran any account at the store, there were fifty-eight per cent of the housewives who did and forty-six per cent of the women who transacted their business on credit with monthly settlements. Thus it will be seen that the local mer

chant looks askance at any scheme to put the farmers on more of a cash basis. It is by means of this egg-trading business that he insures himself against the competition of catalogue houses. He extends credit when hens are not laying well and gets even when the egg season is on, or when the farmer pays the balance from the cash returns of his monthly milkcheck.

The business done with banks is limited pretty largely to loans on real estate. Farm machinery is usually bought for cash, or credit is granted by the firm making the sale. It is said that three months' time is usually given at the same price as a strictly cash sale. Keen farmers are known to have received a five-dollar discount on a sixty-dollar plow for spot cash. Thus it may be inferred that the on-time buyers are paying a pretty high rate of interest in many instances. To practically all the farmers the credit situation was satisfactory. The prevailing rate at the bank is six per cent for a long-time loan with a good first-mortgage security. Short-time loans are seldom demanded, only a few isolated cases being noted and then money was hired for three or four months at eight per cent. It seemed that not one farmer had ever heard of the new Agricultural Credit agitation. They did not see any need for any more credit. Only three farmers seemed to be free from the notion generally held that the use of credit by a farmer in his farming business is something to be avoided, something to be gotten rid of as soon as conditions will permit.

Only a few women had ever availed themselves of a day's trip to the Twin Cities to do any shopping. In sixteen per cent of the places, the wife or husband had done the buying of clothes or other supplies either at State Fair time, or some other occasion.

It is difficult to generalize about the farmer's attitude toward the world of business in general. There are a number of farmers in every community who have a practical insight into affairs and who understand markets and business in general quite as well as any other well-informed business man. Indeed, it seems that with the spread of daily newspapers, whose market quotations are being studied more and more by the young generation, the views held by the majority of the farmers of to-day will be supplanted by a clearer comprehension in the next generation.

To-day, with many farmers "prices are what they are simply because town men won't pay more." To these farmers there is but little meaning in an attempted explanation of how world-wide crop conditions are weighed against an estimated demand in order to facilitate marketing at steady. world prices. Others, while they have the idea that crop conditions elsewhere contribute towards a fixing of prices, do not understand that one or two localities alone have but little influence on such a staple as wheat. One farmer in boasting of how shrewd he was last year to hit the highest price on wheat, very generously admitted that he "had gotten some inside.

information from a brother-in-law in California." That fellow wrote that "the crop was poor out there, too." Putting these two personal observations together, he felt that he had a good line on what the price would be.

The typical farmer's notion of marketing is that here is a world in which one man's gain is another man's loss, where sharp wits, unscrupulous representations, and masked thievery reign supreme. As long as he is selling locally, and the thing he is selling is used or consumed in the community where it is sold he feels sure of himself, confident of his own. shrewdness, and his ability to hold his own with the man he knows. He readily sees for example how the local butcher must needs sell for more than he pays in order to make his living and provide for his family. In deals of this kind, where the buyer is known to him personally and where the thing sold will be used locally, he will indeed bargain and haggle to his best ability, but he never gives his word or hand on a bargain of which it can be shown that he stooped to dishonesty. When it comes to selling in a wider market, however, if, for example, a carload of supposedly highgraded milch cows are being bought to be shipped out of town, or a horse is bought for a distant party, then his business ethics is strained and stretched in direct proportion to the scope of the market. In such dealings the old saw seems to be twisted into something as follows: "Be honest as long as it is the best policy." Such matters as selling veal only a few days old, when the law requires it to be six weeks old, and dumping in a poorer grade of grain than the sample on which the contract was based, readily suggest themselves as a few of the common practices in regard to this matter of "uncommon honesty." It is not to be inferred from this that the farmer has become morally degenerate and unscrupulous beyond other business men. Not at all. At least a partial explanation for this ethics is found in the fact that in face of a world market, with the various agencies and machinery of distribution between him and the ultimate consumer, he loses that sense of personal responsibility which he feels in dealing directly with the consumer. The workings of boards of trade, and chambers of commerce, and the function of deals in futures, are all an utter mystery to him. Somehow he feels that he is completely at the mercy of some power, some system, which controls this market. Why should he feel compunctions about some little misrepresentations, when, as he puts it, "that is the way of the business world"?

FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS

In the preceding chapters we noted the prevalence of the opinion that through the machinations of some system the conditions of the market and of the business world in general are against the farmer. "A man with

all his family may toil the whole year around, digging and scraping together as much as he can, and then when he gets ready to sell what he has, he must take whatever is offered him, even if that is less than what it cost him to produce the thing." It is felt that "this is not just," and yet "a man would be a fool to hold out against these conditions; everything is against the farmer." This conviction has led a few to keep out of the