DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE


 As far back as 1913 George W. Russell, Editor of the
Irish Homestead magazine, said to the American Com-
mission when meeting in Dublin:
 "Economic power means civic power. A dual control
of agriculture is intolerable. Farmers must control agri-
culture by business cooperation. Farmers are manufac-
turers and should enjoy the advantages of industrial
transactions."
 In keeping with these ideas we would say that a
democratized civilization is impossible with a totally de-
pendent class. Any vocation whose financial livelihood
is so precarious as to have no power of appraisal cannot
hope to prosper.
 No civilization has ever been destroyed when its citi-
zens were home-owners. Therefore, it is the road to a
cataclysm to ignore the welfare of the material sup-
porters of the nation.

 Too great a drift from the farms to the cities is a
baneful advertisement that there is something radically
wrong with agriculture. The best way to obviate that
trend is to utilize the protective power of coordinated
agricultural functioning.

 As an illustration of the extent to which farmers are
cooperating m this country herewith is submitted a re-
port of the Farmer Cooperative Service, U. S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture.

 Current figures of net worths of all cooperative as-
sociations, both purchasing and marketing, are available
only in the form of a statement of figures indicative of
farmers' financial interest in various types of coopera-
tives. Attention is specifically directed to the fact that
m these figures effort has been made to avoid duplica-
tion of net worths of overlapping associations.

 Estimates by the Farmer Cooperative Service, based
on financial statements of the cooperatives available in