FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT. 53 



to be relied upou than that of those who are guarded iu some other way. 



It may be that the Millennium is so much nearer in southern Michigan 

 than northern Michigan that you friends keep together without any 

 trouble. After we have had more experience, after Ave have had time to 

 breathe, we shall I hope, do the same as you, but neither of tSiese insti- 

 tutions that I have been connected with, will have as many members the 

 second and third year as the first. There will be a selection. Some of 

 us will believe in the idea and will go forward, and do business, and 

 only when we show the other fellow that; they cannot afford to stay out, 

 will they come in and do as they ought to. 



If you have an idea of organizing anything of the kind in your com- 

 munity, the more the idea is disseminated the better it will be — but 

 remember that in the last analysis whether you have a contract or not, 

 whether you depend upon your moral suasion, this thing will be true, 

 that until you can show the producer dollars and cents for being in the 

 organization, he wont come in, and the growth of the organization will 

 necessarily be slow, 



I remember once being in a political fight, and I said tb one who 

 was with me in it, "I can not understand the attitude of So and So — 

 I can not understand why he takes that side of the question. This 

 friend said to me, "Don't you know that some people can put a dol- 

 lar so close to their eyes that they can not see the sun? Now the sun is 

 a very much larger object than a dollar, but the dollar is large enough 

 so that you can put it so close to your eye that the sun is obscured. 

 There are many fellows — and good fellows they are — and once you can 

 show them a dollar right in hand, they will co-operate. But as you 

 present the matter to them, they will say, ''I would like to see that thing 

 succeed — I hope you fellows will give it a try-out — but as for myself, 

 I will wait around and as soon as I see that you are going to make it 

 succeed, then I will come in. And now, with all due respect to my 

 good friends here in this room, a good many of you are doing the same 

 thing. 



There is. possibly a reason for the attitude taken in the north. Those 

 who went in there first were pioneers — they had to work hard to keep 

 the wolf from the door — they cut down the trees and built a log cabin, 

 they cleared away the forests for a place to raise their crops — they 

 learned to be self-reliant, for it was a continual fight to maintain an 

 existence — an individual fight, and this was so stamped upon their 

 minds that it has been hard to get them away from this individualistic 

 standpoint. 



When you go over into Wisconsin or Minnesota, where you meet with 

 a large proportion of people from across the water, from Scandinavia, 

 Scotland, England and other of those Old Country lauds, where the co- 

 operative idea is well understood and practiced, you see things are dif- 

 ferent. They have brought their co-operative ideas with them, and 

 they immediately incorporate them. Why, co-operation is as natural to 

 me as the air I breathe. Over in England co-operation is in everything, 

 and it is the means of greatly reducing expenses and enables the peo- 

 ple to carry on enterprises tliat they never could do without it. 



.Another of the problems — it is not easy to get the people, to co-operate 

 because it is so easy to market This may seem contradictory, but it 



