Of course, it is necessary to teach every farmer how to grow more crops, for this is his business, and it also enlarges his personal ambition and extends his power and responsibility; but merely to grow the crops will not avail,--this is only the beginning of the problem: the products must be distributed and marketed in such a way that the one who expends the effort to produce them shall receive enough of the return to identify him with the effort. Thereafter, social and moral results will follow. _The middleman's part._ I recognize the service of the middleman to society. I know that the distributor and trader are producers of wealth as well as those who raise the raw materials; but this is no justification for abuses. I know that there are hosts of perfectly honest and dependable middlemen. We do not yet know whether the existing system of intermediary distributors and sellers is necessary to future society, but we do not see any other practicable way at present. In special cases, the farmer may reach his own customer; but this condition, as I have suggested, is so small in proportion to the whole number of farmers as not greatly to affect the general situation. We do not yet see any way whereby all farmers can be so organized as to enable them to control all their own marketing. Therefore, we must recognize middleman-practice as legitimate. _A system of economic waste._ But even though we yet see no way of general escape from the system, we ought to provide some means of regulating its operation. The present method of placing agricultural produce in the hands of the consumer is for the most part indirect and wasteful. Probably in the majority of cases of dissatisfaction, the person whom we call the middleman does not receive any exorbitant profit, but the cost of the commodities is piled up by a long and circuitous system of intermediate tolls and commissions. _Coöperation of farmers will not solve it._ It is commonly advised that farmers "unite" or "organize" to correct middleman and transportation abuses, but these troubles cannot be solved by any combination of farmers, because this is not an agricultural question. It is as much a problem for consumers as for producers. It is a part of the civilization of our day, completely woven into the fabric of our economic system. The farmer may feel its hardship first because he must bear it, while the consumer, to meet higher prices, demands more pay of his employer or takes another stitch out of somebody else. But it is essentially a problem for all society to solve, not for farmers alone, particularly when it operates on a continental basis. This also indicates the futility of the arbitrary control of prices of the great staples by combinations of farmers (page 126).