eliminates the element of profit in the sale. After the farmer gets his
price it is to his interests that food should be increased in cost as
little as possible when the article is transferred to the consumer,
because if farm produce has to bear too many profits it will be
expensive for the consumer, and there will be a lessened demand. So
associations like the co-operative stores, which aim at the elimination
of the element of profit in distribution, should be approved of by the
farmers.

Now we come to the townsman again. Is it his interest to support the
farmers in his own country or to regard the world as his farm? The
argument on the economic side is not so clear, but it is, I think, just
as sound. If agriculture is neglected in any country the rural
population pour into the towns. The country becomes a fountain of
blackleg labor. Rural labor has no traditions of trade unionism, and
takes any work at any price. There are fewer people engaged in
producing food, and its cost rises. Food must be imported from abroad;
and there is national insecurity, as in times of war their is always the
danger of the trade routes overseas being blocked by an enemy, and this
again has to be provided against by heavy expenditure for militarist
purposes. The farther away an army is from its base the more insecure
is its position, and the same thing is true in the industrial life of
nations. International trade there must always be. It is one of the
means by which the larger solidarity of humanity is to be achieved; but
that will never come about until there is a nobler and more human life
within the states, and we must begin by perfecting national life before
we consider empires and world federations. So in this essay only the
national being is considered.

I desire to unite countryman and townsman in one movement, and to make