etition with his
neighbors to gain a possibly better price. Instances of such successes
as come to certain family groups are endlessly discussed by farmers; and
the highest ideal that one meets among farmers who sell apples
throughout the Eastern States is expressed in the instance of some
family who have improved their own farm and their own orchard, so as to
win for the family or the farm a reputation in some particular market
and thus to gain a higher price.

Contrast with this the marketing of apples by the Western fruit growers'
Associations. Among them, as for instance in the Hood Valley, Oregon,
apples are packed not by the farm owner with a view to competing with
his neighbors, but by the committee representing the whole district. The
individual farmer has no access to the market. He cannot hide his poor
fruit in an envelope of his best fruit, so as to deceive the buyer. The
committee has a reputation to maintain on behalf of the association, not
of the individual. The apples are marketed on their merits in accordance
with a certain standard. The impersonal demands of the world economy are
kept in mind. The individual farmer and farm are forgotten. The result
is that these far western growers, whose fruit is said in the East to be
inferior in flavor to the apples of New York and New England, can sell
their product in the eastern market at a higher price per box than the
New York or New England farmer can secure per barrel.

The transition from farming to exploiting has brought out in full view
the wastefulness of the farmer economy which is being succeeded by
exploitation. The whole doctrine of conservation belongs in this
transition. Economy means, literally, housekeeping. The same meaning
appears in the word husbandry. It is a principle of saving. Its
extraordinary value at the present time is due to our sudden sense of
the wastefulness of farm life in recent years. Edward van Alstyne, an
agricultural authority in New York, says, "We farmers think we are most
economical, but we are the most wasteful of all men." The wastefulness
of American farming begins in the tillage of too many acres. The farmer
prefers wide fields even at the cost of poor crops.

The New York Central Railroad, which is carrying on a propaganda of
husbandry, has appointed a man as expert farmer who increased the yield
of potatoes on his land from sixty to three hundred bushels per acre.
This brings out clearly that his neighbors are stil