What may be called the religious spirit of the gathering was not confined to this general ideal of co-operation. There were well-attended and enthusiastic conferences on the opportunities of the country church. Without dissent it was assumed that the church is concerned with every agency which makes for the finer development of country life—with better schools, better system of land ownership, better health, better recreation, a closer knit and happier society. It was recognized that the country minister, as a natural leader in his community, has an almost unequalled chance to promote co-operation for community good. He must be, as one speaker put it, “a man of piety walking with God, a man of humanity walking with men.” During the conference there was an exhibit in the old high school building. Here the kind of progress in rural education which the speakers in the conference had talked about was visualized by pictures and charts and whole rooms full of the work turned out in the manual training and domestic science classes. EDITORIAL GRIST MARKETING AND FARM CREDITS HERMAN N. MORSE Though little that was new on the subjects under discussion was brought forward, the First National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, through the papers presented and the official resolutions adopted, called attention to certain highly important facts. The conference agreed that a number of conditions detrimental both to the farmers and the general public are prevalent, and that certain constructive remedial policies are necessary. One proposition to which there was general agreement was that the margin between the price which the producer receives for his product and that which the consumer pays for it is too great. The farmer receives too little and the consumer pays too much. The market for farm products is too unstable and the fluctuations and variations in price are too great and too uncertain. Competition has failed adequately to control and regulate prices. The present marketing facilities, it was stated, are utterly inadequate to bring the supply and the demand together. Quantities of farm produce rot in the fields because they cannot be gotten to those markets in which there is an active demand for them. This is partly because of the lack of properly distributed shipping facilities; partly because the producers are not sufficiently in touch with the markets; partly because storage firms, commission men’s associations, etc. interfere with the normal operation of the markets; and partly because certain kinds of products are not provided to the mass of consumers at prices which they can afford to pay, though that price would give the producer an ample profit if exorbitant middleman’s profits were eliminated.