For a while I have been silent. Not that my interest and zeal for your interest has abated or cooled down, but because my thoughts lately have been so absorbed in your most vital interest just now, that I could not have time to give expression to them; but now, this beautiful sunshiny Monday morning, I want a heart to heart talk with you concerning what I regard to be your most vital interest at this time and in the days to follow.
The time has been when greater production was the paramount duty of the farmer, deep plowing, thorough preparations of soil and cultivation in order to produce larger and better crops was the pressing need. Farmers all know the importance of these things now, and their greatest need at present is the marketing of the crop after it has been produced. Up till now the farmer has been purely a producer of raw materials. He has paid no attention whatever to marketing his products, except in a haphazard manner by dumping them on what ever market there happens to be at the time. Blindly, all would dump at the same time on the same little local market, glutting the same at one point while their city cousins near by would be paying exorbitant prices for the same commodities.
What we want is to organize in such a way that we can make sale of our own hard earned products, just as the miner, the manufacturer, etc., make sale of their products. Why should the manufacturer depend on the farmers or any other class of consumers to sell their manufactured products for them? And what kind of a mess would they make of their business if they did? Now is not the business of the farmer identical? Who has ever made a specialty of looking after the business end of the farmer’s business?
The time has fully come, and much of it already gone to waste that the farmer must become a business man so far as marketing his output is concerned. Some will say it can’t be done, that it never has been done. Of course it never has been done in Polk county and never will until we make the effort, and a desperate effort at that. The very fact that it never has been done is the strongest argument that it must be done. There were no talking machines a few years ago, and Mr. Edison was laughed to scorn when he announced to the world that he meant to give this great luxury to civilization. A few days ago there was no such thing as wireless telegraphy and now even school boys have their wireless stations for their own amusement and improvement. The world is full of new ideas, new thoughts and new activities. So the time is coming and is now here that the farmers must take in hand the marketing end of their own business and conduct it themselves; not to make it harder on other classes to live; but to so put their products on a legitimate and fair market in such a systematic way that consumers every where may buy these products at living prices, and at the same time the farmer who produces the products shall receive a just proportion of the price paid by the consumer.
In an early issue of this paper will be outlined exactly the plan we are working out for Polk county. At this time we want every farmer, every merchant and banker, and manufacturer and everyone in Polk county who eats anything that grows out of the ground to give this matter earnest thought for a few days and then when we get this plan well worked out; let all interests get together, stick together and pull together, until the thing is accomplished.
From the Polk County News, Tryon, N.C., May 13, 1921
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