In agricultural communities cooperation has developed more slowly. Farmers have been too isolated from one another to make organization easy, they have not fully realized its advantages, and they have lacked leadership. This has been an obstacle to the fullest development of community life. The most backward communities are those where there is the least cooperation. In such communities "the farmer works single-handed, getting no strength from joint action or combined effort."
But all this is changing. Organizations like the fruit growers' associations are becoming common and are proving their value. The map on page 36 shows the distribution of organizations among farmers in the United States for cooperation in business enterprises of various kinds, though it shows only about half as many as actually exist. They include cooperative grain elevators and warehouses, creameries and cheese factories, cooperative stores, fruit and grain growers' associations, livestock associations, cotton and tobacco associations, and many others.
Study the map on page 36 and indicate the region or regions where you think cooperative grain elevators and warehouses would be most numerous; livestock associations; dairies and creameries; fruit growers' associations; cotton growers' associations; tobacco growers' associations.
Are there any organizations of farmers in your community similar to those in the list in the last paragraph above? Make a list of them. What are their purposes? What are their advantages? What obstacles have they encountered? Are all the farmers in the community members? If not, why? Describe their plans of organization—membership, officers, management, etc. (Discuss these questions at home and report results.)
Is there any organization of businessmen, or of workmen, in your town or neighboring town? If so, ascertain what advantages it seeks.
Show how an ordinary store, or a bank, or a grain elevator, is a means by which people cooperate.
Are there any boys' or girls' clubs in your community? Show how such clubs require and secure cooperation. How is leadership provided?
If there is a parents' association connected with your school, show how it brings about cooperation among its members in the interest of the school.
Make a list of all the organizations you can think of in your community (such as clubs, societies, associations). Opposite the name of each write the chief purposes for which it exists.
Write the six great wants across the top of a page, as suggested in the fifth topic on page 6, and arrange the list of organizations suggested in the last question above in the proper columns according to the wants they provide for.