Seventy-Third Annual Report 1293 



failure of these institutions to take root and grow in this country 

 can be explained on other grounds, among which may be men- 

 tioned : 



1. Our wonderful agricultural domain where good land could 

 be had until recently almost for the asking, and where for genera- 

 tions land was so cheap and labor and capital so dear that exten- 

 sive cultivation was generally unprofitable. 



2. The prosperity of our farmers who have not been forced by 

 dire necessity to resort to usurious credit as were the farmers of 

 Germany during the first half of the last century when the co- 

 operative banks of Gennany were established. 



3. The unsettled character of a considerable part of our agri- 

 cultural population, as it has moved continually westward in 

 taking up new lands, and more recently as it has been retracing 

 its steps or moving northward. The population of many agri- 

 cultural communities has been so changeable that it was difficult 

 for the people to get together on a proposition involving so much 

 mutual confidence as does a cooperative bank. 



4. The heterogeneous character of manv of our rural communi- 

 ties, resulting from the westward movement of our population 

 and from our large immigration from different parts of Europe. 

 Here we have many different nationalities thrown together in one 

 section — Americans, Germans, Swedes, and Italians. 



The size of the farms and the financial responsibility of the 

 farmers moreover are very unequal. 



5. The isolation of our farmers in this country of large farms 

 and magnificent distances. Mutual confidence which is the cor- 

 nerstone of cooperative agricultural credit requires that the co- 

 operators should be able to get together easily, and that one should 

 be able to know what the other is doing. 



To emphasize most of these obstacles to-day is to brand oneself 

 as belonging to a past generation. Our domain of free arable 

 land is practically gone, good farms must be bought, and for them 

 ever increasing prices must be paid. The era of hand cultivation 

 is giving way to that of farm machinery propelled by horse-power 

 and even by steam, gasoline, or electricity, with its resulting great 

 increase in the efficiency of labor. Eleven years ago the editor 

 of the Dakota Farmer, in his testimony before the United States 



