118 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



and also owns elevators at other points, because the corporation 

 can outbid the farmers at the one point and make up at the other 

 ten or a dozen points what they may have lost at the competitive 

 point. Of course, it is all very fine to say that the farmers should 

 patronize their own, elevators, even if they can get a cent a bushel 

 more for the grain at the competing elevator, but the average man 

 is so constituted that he will sell wherever he can get the highest 

 price and buy wherever he can get the lowest price, regardless of 

 who is the buyer or seller. 



To meet this kind of competition, the farmers' elevators 

 should do exactly what the privately owned elevators have done — 

 combine. There are more than 2,000 farmers' co-operative ele- 

 vators in the United States, distributed as follows: 



CO-OPERATIVE FARMERS' ELEVATORS IN THE UNITED STATES. 



Iowa, 340; North Dakota, 331; Minnesota, 297; Illinois, 260 

 South Dakota, 225; Nebraska, 204; Kansas, 137; Wisconsin, 53 

 Oklahoma, 34; Indiana, 28; Montana, 27; Ohio, 26; Michigan, 23 

 Washington., 18; Missouri, 8; Texas, 5; Colorado, 5; Idaho, 4 

 Oregon, 3; Arkansas, 2; Kentucky, 1; total, 2,031. 



The aggregate capital of these farmers' elevators is probably 

 as much as thirty million dollars and their annual business is ap- 

 proximately six hundred million dollars. It is reported to me on 

 good authority that they do sixty per cent of the business at the 

 point where they are located. Yet, unfederated, a corporation 

 operating three or four small elevators could drive any one of 

 these farmers' elevators out of business. Federated, they would 

 be safe against any competition that could be offered. Better still, 

 if they were united, no attempt would be made to run any one of 

 them out of business. They would be immune against attack. 

 This same principle will apply to many other kinds of co-operation. 



PRECAUTIONS TO TAKE. 



Do not form co-operative associations hastily, and especially is 

 it important to avoid hastily engaging in new enterprises involving 

 business details with which the members of the society are not 

 familiar. If a community desires to establish a co-operative store, 

 and perhaps there is less need for co-operative stores than almost 

 any other form of co-operation, it is important, first, to study the 

 history and management of the Rochedale stores of Great Britain ; 

 the Arlington stores of Massachusetts; the Johnson County Co- 



