the price of wheat? Thirty years ago David Lubin, by nativity a Pole, by religion a Jew, by adoption an American, began asking himself that question. Graduated from the ghetto of New York, he had drifted to California, developed into a wealthy merchant, and became inspired with the purpose to serve his fellow men.

California was the finest wheat country in the world, yet it could not raise wheat at a profit because "the market" was against it. Lubin wondered what "the market" might be, and why it prevented California from raising wheat that millions of people needed.

He set out to answer the riddle. Other men had been asking the same sort of questions from the dawn of economic science. Lubin went about it in a new way, and found the answer. That made him different.

But he did more. Having his answer, he determined that the thing he had discovered should be of service to the whole world. So he carried his riddle and its answer to the kings and parliaments of the world, convinced them that he was right, and founded the Parliament of Man, the first Federation of the World.

The International Institute of Agriculture is the formal title of this ambitious child of David Lubin's practical imagination. It is with this Institute and the remarkable man who founded it that I have to deal.

The International Institute has undertaken, with the backing and co-operation of fifty nations, to solve the cost-of-living problem in thoroughly practical fashion; to free agriculture and its products from thralldom to the powers of speculation; to make the soils of the world just as

All, that is, save Americans. Truly, the prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. America, the greatest food producing and exporting country, has been last to realize and recognize the importance and potentiality of the Institute which has been established at Rome, and in which every first- and second-class nation and most of the third-class ones have united together. Never in the world's history has a like purpose brought so many of them together in a great common purpose.

Properly to describe the great project of co-operative supervision, extension and improvement of agriculture, is impossible without telling of its conception. The man and his work must be presented together.

Therefore our story opens upon the boy in the Ghetto. His father had died in Poland when David was a child, and his mother had brought her children to America. The boy learned the tailoring trade in a New York sweatshop, and when his sister married Harris Weinstock, and went to San Francisco to live, young David presently followed.

At seventeen we find him alone in the desert, a gold seeker. There, under the brazen sky by day and the stars by night, everything introspective and contemplative in this child of Israel was brought out. Always mystical and self-analytical, he now became fascinated with the thought of being alone with God. The idea that God and One make a majority became strong in him. He even dared hope that he might be the One. No conception of a mission had yet reached him. But those months of solitude burned out of his nature everything trivial or selfish. He became imbued with thought of a

very lowest rates could always be assured; uniting together in selling through common agents, to whom all the shipments should be made. In short, Lubin laid before Huntington the rough outline of what has since grown into the California Fruit Growers' Association, the biggest, richest and most powerful cooperative society in the world, controlling the vast fruit product of California, shipping it to the ends of the world, dominating markets, maintaining its own financial arrangements, and dealing to the extent of many millions every year. It brought prosperity and stability to the fruit industry, and vast wealth to the state.

So he bought fruit lands, planted the best varieties, and convinced everybody that he had gone stark mad. While others were getting out of fruit, Lubin was getting into it on an unheard-of scale.

In due time the ranch produced such a crop as the valley had never known, and Lubin went to the Southern Pacific and learned its rates on shipments to the east.

"Too high," said he. "I can't pay such rates and sell my fruit, except at a loss." "Well, they are the rates; you can pay them, or keep your fruit."

Then Lubin went up to headquarters; to the mighty Huntington, California's master of highways and gateways. gateways. "You're killing the goose without even giving it a chance to lay its golden egg," he said. "Reduce your rates, give the fruit raisers a chance to consolidate their shipments, help them to organize a big co-operative scheme to market their products, and this fruit business will become the greatest revenue producer the road will have."

Huntington listened. Lubin outlined the plan on which he had long been studying, of bringing the fruit-growers of California together in a great cooperative association; getting them to syndicate their shipments so as to make up carload and trainload lots, so that the

Huntington saw that it was good. He joined Lubin, encouraged him with promise of favorable rates if the business could be consolidated into big instead of small shipments; and in the end the project was carried to a splendid success.

Lubin had done his part. He had found a way to get California's excess of fruit to the markets that wanted it. He lost some money in his fruit venture, but he solved the problem for the rest of the state. That done, he disposed of his fruit lands, and went back to the big merchandising business in Sacramento and San Francisco, that persisted in growing greater and more profitable year by year.

But not for long. The flood of prosperity gave him pause. He was not doing his share for other men. Casting about him, he saw that the California wheat growers were not prospering. The world needed the wheat but something was wrong. Between the grower and the user, there was somehow or other so

much difference that the grower generally lost money, and the user had to pay very high prices. So Lubin decided to find out; and again he began at the bottom; he bought wheat land and raised a crop.

At that time California wheat was almost unknown in the States. It was

grown on great ranches, and shipped through Port Costa, on San Francisco Bay, to European markets. The excessive rates of the Southern Pacific, the competition of wheat-growing countries nearer the great markets, the high cost of shipping by either rail or water, and especially the uncertainties of speculative markets, were ruining the Pacific coast growers.

So when his first crop of wheat was ready-and it was a magnificent oneLubin set out to locate and analyze the World's Wheat Market. He took samples of his wheat to the Port Costa dealers, and demanded to know what they would pay for it.

"Sixty-seven cents a bushel."

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"Is that all? Why don't I get more?" "Because that's the market," lucidly explained the dealer. Lubin wanted to know what the market was, where it was, and who made it.

That was too much for either the good nature or the risibles of the dealers. They assured Lubin that he was displaying all the evidences of insanity.

"No, I'm not crazy; but I want to know who makes the price on my wheat," he persisted.

"Well, we don't know; but that's the price, and you can take it or leave it. Can't tell you who makes the price; probably the Chicago Board of Trade; we get our quotations from them.

An hour later, our boy of the Ghetto and the desert was en route to Chicago, to see the Board of Trade and find out who made the price of wheat. He found the president and secretary of the Board of Trade, and demanded:

"Why don't I get more for my wheat?"