When one speaks or hears of coöperation among farmers, it seems the
natural thing to think first of Denmark or Ireland. These and other
European countries have made so much greater progress in the business
organization of farmers and farm life than America has, that it is
almost inevitable that they should be held up to us as examples of
what we might but do not accomplish. Various reasons are advanced for
this American backwardness in what is unquestionably one of the great
economic movements of our time. The American farmer’s individualism
and dislike of restraint is often given as the reason. Professor G.
Harold Powell goes so far as to say that “the investment of the farmer
must be threatened by existing social and economic conditions before
he can overcome his individualism sufficiently and can develop a
fraternal spirit strong enough to pull with his neighbors in
coöperative team work.” There is no doubt much truth in this, but I am
inclined to think that lack of knowledge as to how to coöperate has
been almost as much a hindering factor as has lack of desire to
coöperate. The attempts at coöperation among farmers have been
sufficiently numerous, if they had been successful, to have made
coöperative effort in rural communities a familiar form of activity to
us all. As it is, instances of really successful coöperative ventures
among farmers, while rather impressive as an aggregate, amount to very
little indeed compared with the vast volume of yet unorganized
business carried on by them.
Europe seems to have had wiser leaders in the coöperative work, as
well as more docile followers. The American passion for bigness has
largely ruled both leaders and followers. Where the Old World peoples
were content to begin with small organizations for a definite purpose
and let these organizations grow and develop into powerful
institutions, the farmers of America have thought in terms of a
continent, tried to organize nationwide societies to transact every
kind of business—and failed lamentably. It has been only a few years
since a great noise was made by a society which proposed to unite all
farmers in one great society which should fix a minimum price on all
farm products and so settle matters out of hand. Just a year or two
ago Farmers’ Union leaders in the South were telling the cotton
farmers that only a great national organization could be of any real
help in the marketing of their crop. The disastrous failures of the
big organizations which were going to “finance the cotton crop” and
the successes along various lines attained by some local and county
organizations have discredited these leaders who mistook rhetoric for
business sense and possibly also taught them a few things they needed
to know.
The great trouble with farmers’ coöperative organizations in this
country has been that they were too loosely organized and attempted to
do too much. It is just beginning to dawn on the mind of the average
farmer that a coöperative business must be conducted on the same
general lines as an individual business and that he cannot secure the
benefits of coöperation without giving up some of the privileges of
individual action. He is learning, too, not to despise the day of
small things.
The lesson has been learned by some, however, in the long years of
struggle for fair prices and fair treatment by the commercial world,
and here and there all over the country are to be found groups of
farmers who have found out the principles of business coöperation and
put them into action to their own decided profit. These organizations
are interesting not only for what they have done, but also for what
they teach.
Take the Southern Produce Company, of Norfolk, Virginia, for example.
This association was organized in 1870 and now has 400 members. It
handles most of the truck grown in the vicinity of Norfolk, handling
for outsiders—at a fixed percentage—as well as for its own members.
It not only sells the truck the members grow, but buys their seeds,
fertilizers and other supplies. It has bought and equipped an
experimental farm near Norfolk, turning it over to the State to run,
and lately has erected a six-story office building in the city,
building and lot costing $135,000. All this has been done without
putting in a dollar except for the capital stock which is limited to
$15,000.
Equally notable successes have been attained by the Hood River apple
growers and the citrus fruit growers of California. The organization
of these growers has not only resulted in better prices to the
growers, but in a standard quality of goods and less fluctuation of
prices in the retail markets. Since California growers learned to
market their oranges and lemons through organization, there has been
brought about a uniformity of distribution which “has resulted in a
lower retail price to the consumer and gives a larger proportion of
the retail price to the producer.” These very successful organizations
have one definite purpose—to sell the fruit their members grow. They
are organized on strictly business principles. Each member’s crop
virtually belongs to the association, and is picked, graded, packed,
and sold as the association directs. Details of cultivation and
spraying which may affect the quality of the fruit are also looked
after by the association, and the grower has no right to sell his
fruit except through the association. In the case of the California
Fruit Growers’ Exchange this right to the privilege of handling the
crop is claimed in the first place by the Local Exchange against the
grower, next by the District Exchange against the Local Exchange, and
finally by the General Exchange against the District Exchange. It is
an up-to-date business organization these men have; the grower belongs
to a Local Exchange, the Locals form District Exchanges, and these, in
turn, the General Exchange. Each is independent in matters that
concern it only, but all must submit to the general voice in matters
which may be of concern to all.
Fruit and truck crops seem to be especially adapted to coöperative
marketing; or possibly the uncertainty of profit in their production
and the big share of the final price absorbed by the middlemen have
forced fruit and truck growers to coöperate to a greater extent than
farmers in most other lines. At any rate there are quite a few
successful coöperative associations among these growers. In Texas such
an association does a business of $1,500,000 annually. The Grand
Junction Fruit Growers’ Association, of Colorado, is another notable
success. California nut growers market their product through a
coöperative organization. Florida citrus growers claim to have raised
the net price received by growers for oranges from $1.15 in 1909-10 to
$1.96 for the season 1912-13. Western North Carolina fruit growers
have organized, as have Georgia peach growers, and fruit raisers in
many other sections. In an Alabama town a truckers’ association with
190 members has standardized its products until it obtains prices
considerably above those secured by individuals, and from a small
beginning has grown to be the most important business concern of its
town.
These stories might be duplicated many times; and it is not too much
to say that the fruit growers and truckers are rapidly coming to
realize the benefits of coöperative organization. I do not believe it
any wild prophecy to say that within a dozen years the trucker seeking
a location will inquire into the marketing organization conducted by
his fellow truckers just as he now inquires into the locality’s
shipping facilities. And some time all the local coöperative
organizations marketing perishable truck and fruit will unite to
conduct a great central marketing exchange. Then the present-day
scarcities of certain fruits and vegetables at one town, while in
another these same products are decaying and going to waste, will be
avoided.
Coming back from the things that may be to the things that are, it is
worth while to note that in 1911 2,120 out of a total of 6,284
creameries in the United States were conducted on coöperative lines,
and that of 3,846 cheese factories, 349 were coöperative. In Minnesota
608 out of 838 creameries were coöperative. In Wisconsin 347
creameries out of 1,000 and 244 cheese factories out of 1,784.
In these as in other lines of business coöperative associations are
largely localized. A successful coöperative creamery in a locality
helps to organize other creameries near it on a coöperative basis, and
so on. Similarly, the successful coöperative rural stores of the
country are largely grouped in Minnesota and Wisconsin, having spread
from one or two unusually successful ventures in small towns. The
coöperative grain elevators of the country are mostly located in Iowa,
the Dakotas, Minnesota and Illinois, although Nebraska and Kansas have
over a hundred each. Where one farmers’ telephone line is organized
another is likely to follow, and whole counties have been covered in
this way.
In short, the coöperative spirit is like the little leaven which
spreads and spreads until it leavens the whole lump.
It is not only that a successful coöperative enterprise leads to the
establishment of similar enterprises in nearby communities. More
notable and striking still is the fact that a successful coöperative
enterprise in a rural community seems often to put new life into the
whole community and to give the farmers entirely new conceptions of
their own capacities and the possibilities of their vocation.
Take, for example, the story of Svea, Minnesota, as told by a recent
visitor to that town—a visitor, by the way, who went to Svea simply
to see how the farmers there were working together and what profits
they had from so doing. I quote:
“In Svea they have established and operated thus far without one
single failure, a coöperative creamery, a coöperative telephone
company, a coöperative grain elevator, a coöperative stock-shipping
association, a coöperative store, a coöperative insurance company, a
coöperative bank (now forming). Moreover, they also have as a result
of what we may term coöperative effort, a thoroughly equipped high
school with agricultural and domestic science teaching, a consolidated
church with a resident pastor, a school library and a State teaching
library, neighborhood social meetings three times a month under church
influences. They have made their neighborhood a reading neighborhood.
Almost every farmer takes two to four farm papers and other reading
matter in proportion.
“In other words, the Svea farmers have become ‘business men’ as surely
as commercial men in the towns, and are doubling their profits as a
result, while they are at the same time developing a high degree of
culture and that satisfying social life, without which mere money is
valueless, while also maintaining moral and spiritual influences which
town life tends to destroy.”
The first enterprise was the creamery which was started in 1896. It
paid so well that the coöperative telephone line came four years
later; and, having once learned how much it helped them to work
together, they have continued all along to find out new ways in which
they could coöperate for the upbuilding of the community. The
coöperative store, strictly on the Rochdale plan, was started in 1909,
and to show how coöperation pays, the experience of the town pastor
may be cited. He took $100 stock in the store, giving his note in
payment. He then went on for a year buying goods from the store at
the usual retail prices. When settlement was made, ten months
later, it was found that the dividends due him—the rebate on his
purchases—amounted to $150.60. He had, without spending a cent or
paying any extra prices for merchandise, cancelled his note and the
interest on it and acquired a balance of $44.60. In other words, if he
had bought his goods from a regular merchant, he would have paid that
merchant $150.60 in net profits, whereas by coöperating with his
neighbors and trading with himself so to speak, he was enabled to
return the whole sum to his own pocket. With such examples of the
benefits of coöperation before their eyes, it seems but natural that
the farmers of Svea should be the prosperous, progressive,
broad-minded, hopeful folks they are said to be—the sort of folks who
are able and willing to vote upon themselves a tax of $1.70 on the
hundred dollars of property to build and equip the kind of high school
they want.
Take, as another example of how the coöperative leaven works, Catawba
County, North Carolina. The farmers and other business men of this
county decided some five years ago that they needed a county fair.
They got together and had it—a fair with liberal prizes but without
entrance or admission fees. Everything was free to all who came, and
the authorities saw to it that there was nothing to injure or deceive
anyone who came. The fakers and cheap side shows which are the big end
of some fairs were not allowed to stop in Hickory where the fair was
held. The fair was a success, and has been a success since. Last year
the townspeople did not feel inclined to contribute to it, but the
farmers had learned how to work with each other in the meanwhile and
they went ahead and had a fair just the same, out in an oak grove
surrounding a rural high school. Fifty horses and mules on exhibition,
50 pure-bred cattle and other exhibits to match. Those who have
attended Southern fairs will know at once from the livestock entries
that this was truly a good county fair. I doubt if these farmers could
have held this fair, however, if it had not been for the coöperative
creamery. This institution, established in 1910, when the farmers
found themselves developing a dairy industry without a convenient
market, has been the coöperative leaven in Catawba County. It was
started with a capital of $1,500, the money being borrowed and the
machinery purchased from a creamery “promoted” somewhere in Georgia by
the agent of a creamery-selling concern which persuaded the farmers
that if they got a creamery outfit the cows would somehow come to it.
The creamery was a success from the start; soon it began a new work of
service by handling the farmers’ eggs on a coöperative basis, teaching
them how to produce and market eggs of quality while securing more
than the regular market price for these eggs. The lesson was quickly
learned: it paid farmers to work together. Now they have a farmers’
building and loan association, a “Sweet Potato Growers’ Association,”
rural school improvement associations, women’s clubs, and are
preparing for a coöperative laundry. The women meet and discuss the
needs of their schools—as many women do—and then lay out a plan of
action and go to work to supply the needs—as too many women do not.
The Farmers’ Union in one district recently made a complete survey of
that district and can now tell just what each farmer reads, what he
does for his neighborhood, almost what he thinks, in so far as
thoughts may be determined by actions and conditions. In short,
“Catawba is a live county,” as any North Carolinian will tell the
inquirer, and coöperation among the farmers has made it live.
At first thought it may seem strange that the intellectual and moral
progress of a rural community should be so quickened by business
coöperation among the farmers, but a little thought will show why this
must almost necessarily be so. It is beyond question that the lack of
organization, of unity of purpose and concert of action, is as great a
hindrance to rural progress and development as is the traditional
conservatism and inertia of the individual farmer. The farmer has
simply not learned how to use all the multitudinous committees and
boards and sundry group organizations which the city dweller has found
so effective in many ways. Once the farmer gets into the habit of
working with his neighbor for a common end, he sees all sorts of
desirable ends to be worked for, and if a “divine discontent” with
existing evils or needs is present in the community—as it usually
is—it is almost certain to be no longer hemmed up in the hearts of
two or three persons but set free in the consciousness of the whole
community. Then action follows.
The man who would improve social and moral conditions in the country
districts can make no more effective start than to organize the
farmers into coöperative business associations. The American farmer
has, it seems to me, demonstrated himself an efficient and
whole-hearted coöperator, when once he learns the trick and gets the
habit.
And he is learning rapidly. Before me, as I write, are reports from
various Southern States of coöperative tobacco and cotton warehouses,
coöperative and semi-coöperative stores, produce-selling exchanges,
fertilizer and supply buying associations, cotton marketing
associations, coöperative buying of machinery and livestock, and so
on. There is even an account of a coöperative church—a whole
community uniting to make the church a social centre and a help to
all. The work of rural organization, either for business purposes or
for intellectual development and social improvement, has just begun;
but it is something that a beginning has been made, and I, for one, am
not yet willing to admit that the American farmer is inferior to the
farmers of any other country in either common sense or neighborly
feeling. Unless he is so deficient, he will become as good a
coöperator as any of them, for both his business interests and his
sense of neighborliness demand a new organization of country life to
fit the new conditions of our time.