will be looked upon as the first to establish harmony between spirit and matter in the world of "fact" and "business"?

Material prosperity is much harder to endure than material poverty. We prayed through many hard years that we could be poor gracefully. Can we endure prosperity so well? In a word, Can we afford to be rich? We must look well into our consciences before we answer this question, for the loss of our spiritual grace is too high a price to pay for any material gain, and if we cannot prosper commercially without paying that price, we shall have to face the fact that we cannot afford to be rich. If we lose our true southern spirit we will retrogress, no matter how great our commercial development. Such development is not only right but inevitable. It is unavoidable; it is in the direct line of our march; but without the spirit it is deadly.

Coöperative Production and the Economics

of Agriculture

S. D. CROMER AND BRYCE EDWARDS

The University of Missouri

The problem of agriculture at present is so to organize it as to be able to make it function properly in a new world of specialization and large business. Coöperation is necessary to place the farmer on an equal footing with organized business and labor. Coöperative enterprises are limited, however, by physical laws and by the laws of human nature. People do not coöperate, in general, unless they are driven to it. In agriculture the fact of distance and the immovable condition of land, make the nucleus of coöperation a local affair; hence to be successful the interests of the local community must be in common. Differences in soil may cause differences in quality of products that would prevent handling the products coöperatively. The irregularity of time in production, such as different ripening periods of varieties of apples, makes for differences in interests of growers. There are many barriers in physical nature to voluntary coöperation, yet it is in the diversity and peculiarities of human nature that the most serious draw-backs are found which have been the cause of most of the futile efforts and failures in coöperation.

To get at the fundamental principles underlying the limitations of coöperation in agriculture imposed by the facts of human nature that will operate under the competitive-individual-initiative system, it will be necessary to analyze the human equation of production.

Does man strive to produce for utility or value? Obviously a farmer producing wheat would only have to produce a very few bushels to produce sufficient for his own needs. Then the utility of the balance of his wheat is measured by him only in those other needs he can fill by exchanging that wheat. It is of no use to him unless he can sell it, and the degree of utility of the wheat is determined by the price he gets for it. Then he produces for value in the main.

What is value? Value implies a comparison and a preference. A thing has value when one values it more than something else and is willing to give up something for it. What has value to one person may have no value to another, however, for each man has a standard of his own which cannot be predicted, for it is as variable as human nature itself. An article must be useful to have value, and yet the air and water are the most useful and have no value. Then in addition to being useful it must be scarce. It must be something that someone else wants also, and that one cannot have for the asking. That competition for its possession determines its scarcity and makes value.

Any product that has value presupposes labor to have been expended in securing it. Labor is an expenditure of effort to secure some form of wealth, for no products of value can be obtained without labor. Even bounties of nature, such as fish, game, and fruits are secured through the labor of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Though all products of value entail labor, it does not follow that all labor produces wealth. A thing must be useful to be of value, and, since a surplus production above human wants is useless, it has no value.

In any production there are a number of phases of human energy expended. Some form of labor directed by intelligence is necessary in securing the product, in changing it, or in the rearrangement of its component parts. Labor is helpless without intelligence, as much so as intelligence is helpless without labor. The engineer and the laborers are both indispensable in the construction of a bridge.

The labor of invention is largely intellectual and all production is contingent upon its ramifications and efficiency. The simplest process must attribute its existence to invention; all that human beings have or live by are the fruits of inventive intellect. No productive enterprise should disregard the hope and need for inventive research.

The labor of supervision is necessary in all productive collective enterprises. For collective enterprises to be without supervision is chaos and anarchy, and will result in the dissipation of energy. The larger the scale of production, the more important complete supervision and coördination become.

Then in so far as agriculture lacks supervision, just that far it is running amuck blindly. A big problem of agriculture is to secure supervision in the grading and marketing of products. The assembling and redistribution of the more important agricultural products are immense tasks, yet, in most cases, this work is done without any comprehensive supervision. It is a collective enterprise operated by many independent-acting agents; hence it operates with confusion, conflict, and waste.

Labor, as it is here used, implies the suffering of pain,the suffering from exertion or denial. The accomplishment of anything implies foregoing some alternative. Mankind does not generally work except under the pressure of necessity. A man may desire to suffer a greater tonnage of labor, working independently, rather than to have lesser pain that might be secured through compulsion or coöperation, and farmers of all peoples are so predisposed.

Time is an element of labor, for time is life itself, and to give up time for production is to suffer the pain of foregoing the pursuit of pleasure. A man cannot work every hour of the day, or every day of the year, or every year of his life. The time element in the use of capital is a service to the distribution of labor in time and deserves payment therefor. Coöperation in agricultural production saves labor by less painful distribution as to time. The actual working hours are reduced and cheaper capital is secured by more elastic credits. It makes the farmer a more efficient worker and powerful in bargaining.

Originally a man performed all of the phases of labor, more or less, independently. There could be but little division of labor for the man who ran around through trees picking up his food as fortune permitted and sleeping where night found him. The benefits of intellect, of invention, of time, of capital, of communion with other men were to him denied by his own narrow personal knowledge and skill. It is division of labor and specialization that have helped pull mankind from this mire of incompetence and ignorance.

Division of labor presupposes conscious association and this is the age of association. Of the thousands of processes of our everyday life, eating, sleeping, homebuilding, production,

pleasure, all are contingent upon innumerable acts of association. These associations take the form of competition, communism, coöperation or compulsion. The degree of associations into specialization, is the degree of economy and efficiency of society. Agriculture by its very nature is restricted in associations and integration, so that the benefits of division of labor have not been and cannot be very far extended.

The association of mankind is instinctive. Very early in the history of mankind there was the association of the family when the man did his special work, the woman hers and often the children still another special task. When asked why he had a family, an American Indian replied that he had a family because his wife cooked his meals, carried his loads, made his wigwam, and his children gathered fuel. These associations were carried further in the clan and tribe where some men made spears, others caught fish, and some caught animals and tanned skins, according to their abilities and desires, and practiced exchange.

Another and later form of association was coercive, as in slavery. There were many forms of this group labor, as the galley slave of the Romans, and the Egyptian regal slaves who were chained and worked in unison as so many teams of horses.

We find a milder and more pleasant association for the division of labor in the serfdom system of Western Europe, where the master furnished the protection and intellect, and the man performed the manual labor. Under this system labor was an obligation and though it brought rewards in greater production and protection, it was in time supplanted by the more equitable guild system.

Under the guild system it was only those of merit who could labor and secure the benefits of labor. The obligation of labor was changed into a privilege. Here association and division of labor was a process imposing a hardship on those who were not permitted to participate, whether it be manual or intellectual labor.

This guild system of association has evolved into our system of master and man of industry. Barriers arose between the units of the division of labor. They became dissociated and separated. As the life of manager and workman became less