Clearly marketing is one of the most difficult problems confronting the farmer. It will continue to be difficult for years to come, and in all probability will never be entirely settled. One explanation of the difficulty is the fact of the human relationships involved. When any worker on the production side of agriculture goes out to fight for humanity against the leaf hoppers or the San Jose scale, he is cheered on the occasion of every success and encouraged in every effort. All society is against the San Jose scale. In the marketing world the offenders are human beings, with the same rights as the rest of us. It may happen that the supposed offenders are as efficient and honest as the people who criticize them. Even so, the system in which they are involved may need change. It may be imperative that a change be made, and the very fact of a change may hurt certain individuals. These individuals and their friends will not welcome the innovation. During these times of high prices the middleman comes in for a new scrutiny. His margins are the subject of suspicion. The justifica tion of his very existence in the capacity of a merchant is questioned. The concern of those interested in marketing is whether the market ing machinery is reasonably well adapted to the work it has to do, and the manner in which it operates. We might take up much time with the history of marketing, but it will be necessary to pass over this very interesting phase of the sub ject with a few words. The marketing problem is new because it is but a relatively short time back to the self-sufficing farm and the neighborhood when farm produce, with few exceptions, was able to make its way into the national and world markets. For years after farmers were producing for the great markets they were completely out of touch with the forces governing such markets. Following the Civil War the center of production moved toward the west more rapidly than the center of population. Within a few years production outgrew its markets. Corn was worth five to twenty cents a bushel, oats about the same, and wheat fell below a half dollar locally in many districts. Transportation systems were new and badly planned from the standpoint of economy, with the result that 194