Factory, and a
1550-acre plantation. We are able to undersell the market about 20%.

"People anywhere can make a cooperative store if they take it
seriously. There should be about 200 members and $2000 in cash to
start with: then get an honest and intelligent manager; start with a
grocery, buy and sell for cash, either on the Rochdale plan of
selling at full market prices and dividing the profits periodically,
or on my plan of selling as cheaply as can be afforded. In either
plan it works out into producing a large part of the goods sold,
thus eliminating entirely the superfluous middleman.

"Three acres and Liberty is the correct way of producing a living;
with the adjunct of a cooperative store to do the selling of the
surplus produced and the buying of goods needed, the small farmer is
free from all the waste and trammels of trade."

Now what's the matter with your helping your county and country and
humanity by organizing those two hundred waiting buyers in your own
town? You can be the "honest and intelligent manager" at a decent
salary. If, later, the cooperators want another manager, why you can
easily organize another store. The best information on this subject
is the Cooperative News, Manchester, England; subscription two
dollars.

Evidence is daily accumulating that the food and farm problem is not
so easy as many thought it to be a few months ago. This is made
clear when economists say: "The really important question in the
food problem is not distribution, it is production." It is
unfortunate that this statement should gain belief at this time,
when those who prey upon the producer are watching for any support
from whatever direction.

Passing by the obvious fact that production must precede
distribution, notice that, with all the energy that has been devoted
to production of farm products by the government experts, it is
clear that not only is there a shortage, but that it has required
all kinds of inducements, from the President down, to get the
farmers to increase their output, the most potent of all being the
cry of patriotism.

Some explain this by showing how land monopoly prevents men going
back to the farms. While this is perfectly true, it does not answer
the question why farmers now in possession of farms are not working
them near their capacity.

The answer of the ordinary man to this is inefficiency on the part
of the farmer, and up to the present this idea has passed as
sufficient to