The Forum, October 1914

by Various

THE AMERICAN FARMER AS A COÖPERATOR

E. E. Miller

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.