UNITED STATES - CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 



It does not appear that there is a verj^ close relation between the date 

 at which farmers' elevators were first organized in a give .a county and the 

 proportion of the business the}^ now control there ; but the fact that in the 

 south-eastern part of the vState and in the Red River Valley generally they 

 have much less than half of the total business may possibly be connected with 

 the fact that comparatively few of them were organized in these regions 

 before 1900. No sufficient information is at present available to indicate 

 the reasons for the variation in the relative importance of co-operative ele- 

 vators in the several parts of the State. Doubtless it is afEected to some ex- 

 tent by the nationality of the farming population, by the degree of mixture 

 of different nationalities, and by the policies of the non-co-operative ele- 

 vators in dealing with grain growers, as well as by numerour othei factors. 



It i? noteworthy that the co-operative elevators are larger than the 

 other concerns or at any rate do a larger volume of business. As already stated 

 the 296 elevators classed as co-operative handled 43,489,000 bushels in 

 1914-1915 or an average of 148,000 bushels each. Approximately 1,130 

 other elevators and mills buying grain from farmers handled about 

 68,000,000 bushels, or an average of 60,000 bushels each. If mills were 

 excluded the average for proprietary elevators would perhaps be somewhat 

 larger, but it is safe to say that on ar average each co-operative elevator 

 does at least twice as much business as each proprietary concern. Although 

 no information is available as to the cost of operating proprietary elevators, 

 it seems probable that, on account of theirsmallerbusiness, their expenses 

 per unit of grain handled are higher than those of the co-operative elevators. 



b). Membership. — Although the reports were not complete, the total 

 number of stockholders using the elevators in 1915 may be placed approxi- 

 mately at 33,000 or an average of about 112 to a company. There are how- 

 ever an average of eighty-five persons for each elevator, or a total for all 

 the elevators of about 25,000 persons, who make use of them and yet are 

 not stockholders. This brings the total number of persons using them to 

 about 58,000 or an average of nearly 200 for each elevator. The total 

 number of farmers in the State in 1910 was about 156,000. As it is proba- 

 bly little changed, considerably over one third of the farmers may be said 

 to do business with the co-operative elevators. 



c) Capital Stock and Gross Receipts. — Practically all the farmers' 

 elevators are organized as stock corporations, mostly under the general 

 corporation law and not the special law authorizing the organization, of 

 co-operative corporations. The amount of capital stock varies greatlj' and 

 is by no means always proportionate to the volume of business. Table 

 II classifies according to the amoiint of their stock thirty-eight companies 

 which reported on this point. The average capital stock for all the compa- 

 nies is about $65,000 



