INFORMATION RELATING TO CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 3 1 



roubles on paper securities ; 35,526,000 roubles on merchandise and certi- 

 ficates of merchandise ; and 71,015,000 roubles on real estate, of which 

 5,575,000 roubles was lent on promissory notes secured by land. The 

 value of the paper securities was entered in the books as 23,918,000 roubles. 

 These few leading facts are enough briefly to indicate the position and 

 the activity of the existing credit societies on I July 1915. Their signifi- 

 cance, as regards their methods and the operations they conduct, is for the 

 most part local. 



UNITED STATES. 



THE CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING OF I,IVE STOCK IN WISCONSIN. —R. M. Orchard 

 in The Banker-Farmer, Vol. Ill, No. 7, June 1916. Champaign (Illinois). 



Farmers' associations for the marketing of live stock in the United 

 States now number about 500 and have had some excellent results. 



The Muscoda Farmers' " Shipping " Association may be taken to be 

 typical of organizations of this kind in Wisconsin. Its members are a group 

 of farmers who have agreed among themselves to market their live stock 

 together. In November 1913 they came together and chose a president, a 

 secretary-treasurer or manager, and a yard man. 



A farmer desiring to sell by the medium of the association gives a 

 list of his stock to the manager, who keeps a register of the names of as- 

 sociated farmers, the number and kind of animals they have to market, 

 and the approximate weights of these. When the manager sees from his 

 register that he has a truckload of hogs, cattle or sheep ready to be marketed 

 he engages a truck from the railway company by telephone for a particular 

 day : and then, also by telephone, instructs the farmers to deliver their 

 stock in time. On the appointed day it is received, weighed and marked 

 by the yard man, who keeps a list of it and of the owners, weights and marks. 

 The animals are then loaded and sent to Chicago or Milwaukee, according to 

 their number and quality. On the same day the manager sends to the com- 

 mission house, which will dispose of the stock in the central market, an in- 

 voice in which the names of the owners and the weights and marks of the 

 animals are indicated. When the truck reaches the central market it is 

 unloaded and the animals are fed and watered. If they are cattle they are 

 then sorted according to their owners ; if they are hogs it is considered more 

 profitable to grade them according to quality. The animals are afterwards 

 weighed and sold ; and the commission agent to whom they have been con- 

 signed pays, on the very day of the sale, the money due for them into the 

 account which the " Shipping " Association has at a bank. He afterwards 

 makes a report of the sale to the manager of the association, stating the costs 

 of freight, yard accommodation, insurance and food, as well as the arnount 

 of the commission, all of which have been deducted from the gross price. 



