Any effort which assumes that labor must necessarily come to the old-type farm, is only temporary. The farm must readjust itself to meet the labor problem. In the meantime, through the labor bureaus, by looking long ahead, by organizing a labor club in the community, by some person acting as a labor agent and supplying farmers as they need, by trying to make a year-round activity in the neighborhood, the situation may be met more or less. THE MIDDLEMAN QUESTION To make farming profitable is no longer a question merely of raising more produce. We have passed that point. We now have knowledge and experience enough to enable us greatly to increase our yields, if only we put the knowledge into practice. _Farmer does not get his share._ But the farmer, speaking broadly, does not get his share of the proceeds of his labor, notwithstanding the increase in the price of farm products. A few farmers here and there, producing a superior article and favored by location or otherwise, can be quite independent of marketing systems; but the larger number of farmers never can be so situated, and they must grow the staples, and they are now at the mercy of many intermediaries. The farmer's risks, to say nothing of his investment and his labor, are not sufficiently taken into account in our scheme of business,--risks of bad years, storm, frost, flood, disease to stock and crop, and many things over which he has practically no control. A merchant in a small city may want as much as twenty per cent commission to sell produce, and then retain the privilege of returning to the grower all the product that spoils on his hands or that he is unable to sell; he invests little capital, takes no risk, and makes more than the man who buys his land, prepares the crop months in advance, and assumes every risk from seed-time to dinner-table. I am citing this case not to say that it is a subject for public control nor even to assert that the merchant's commission is intrinsically too great, but only to illustrate the disadvantage in which the farmer often finds himself; and the farmer may even have no escape from this disadvantage, for all the merchants within his market region may agree to sell his produce only on such terms, and he may be obliged to accept these terms or not to sell his wares. The manufacturer knows the cost of his products and charges his price. The farmer usually does not know the cost, and in general he makes no selling price; the prices of his staple produce are made for him.