But when crops began to mature we were confronted with another and more urgent problem. Just as soon as the green peas began to come along we realized that we were face to face with the problem of distribution. We had killed the local market, which was decidedly a good thing. In one sense we hadn’t killed it, for now every man was supplying himself, but we had killed it for our surplus. It didn’t take me long to see that this would be wasted, for all that a majority of the individuals themselves might do. The farmers were helpless partly because they had no selling knowledge and partly because it was almost impossible for them to get produce to the market and sell at a profit in small lots. Holt and I made a round of the commission merchants in town and the very best we could do with any of them was at a price forty per cent. below retail. We figured that transportation would eat up another ten per cent. which left the man who raised the crop some fifty per cent. This was dead wrong on the face of it, but we didn’t have any time to argue the point and it wouldn’t have done us any good if we had. As we were now situated, fifty per cent. was better than nothing. However, this opened my eyes to some of the reasons why in the suburbs we couldn’t make both ends meet. I called a special meeting of the club and told the members what I had learned and outlined the plan Holt and I had devised to save what we could. The situation had come unexpectedly and was due of course to our ignorance. We didn’t realize it at the time but as it happened this crisis was the best thing that could have come about. It forced us on the spur of the moment and at the psychological moment into a plan that promised to develop big things in the end; the coöperative selling plan. I proposed that every member of the club should gather early each morning such things as were fit for the market over what he couldn’t use himself and bring them to my barn. There the produce would be measured and sorted and each man given a credit slip. A committee of three was to be appointed by the club to oversee without pay this work for a week. The committee would hire a team to transport the goods to the early train which left at five fifteen. At the end of each week an accounting would be made, the cost of transportation deducted and profits distributed pro rata. I offered to look after the bookkeeping myself if the club so desired and at the next meeting this task was delegated to me.