STATE GRANGE OF ILLINOIS. 101 



'dividend' is ba^ed ou the purchases; we have expressed it herein as so 

 much per cent, on share capital, as in order to become a member one is 

 obliged to buy shares, and in trading with the co-operative store he 

 receives at least as much for his expenditure as he would elsewhere, and 

 also receives the percentag«,' stated on his capital invested. In addition 

 to this gain, each member is part owner in assets of greater pecuniary 

 value than is represented by the figures given, as the annual custom 

 of charging off a stated percentage for depreciation, has reduced the assets 

 as expressed on paper below their market value. During the twenty- 

 nine years of the existence of the Society, it has sold goods to the value of 

 f 17,861,015, and the profits made have been $2,160,485." 



If such a remarkable success can be had in a small city in England, 

 where the percentage of profit is very small on business conducted in the 

 usual way, what a lesson it is for the industrial class represented by the 

 Patrons of Husbandry of the United States. I have been quoting at length 

 to f\i\\y iUustraite tfie pluck, the perseverance &nd energy of those men who 

 began by depositing six cents per week each, and fromthat .small beginning 

 dates their social advancement and future thrift and enjoyment. Will the 

 Patrons of Husbandry say now that they cannot donate the product of one 

 acre ui grain or cotton toward establishing a system of co-operative ship- 

 ping and distribution that is full of the promise of success as an invest- 

 ment, besides being the certain remedy for the evils that now beset their 

 system of exchange or distribution. If each Patron in the United States 

 will deposit fifty cents per week for a year, they will have a fund next 

 December large enough to move their crops of grain, pork, cotton and 

 rice with perfect ease. And I would earnestly suggest the propriety of 

 your deciding upon some such method at this meeting, before you leave 

 for your homes. I cannot leave this subject without a quotation from 

 that valuable article of Worthy Master Colonel D. Wyatt Aiken, Master of 

 State Grange of South Carolina, and which I trust every Patron will read 

 if they have not done so: 



" Experience teaches that where the superbundant water-power of every 

 Southern State has been utilized in propelling spiuningjeunics, or looms, 

 both thread and cloth have been turned out at a cost less than can be done 

 in a more Northern latitude. Where the cotton crops manufactured in 

 the South, the saving on freight and the increased price of the manu- 

 factured article would alone add sixty per cent, to the value of this staple 

 product, to say nothing of the millions of thrifty, intelligent, industrious 

 laborers it would invite into that salubrious section. But anomalous as it 

 may appear, the bulk of thread and cloth manufactured at the South is 

 first exposed for sale in Northern countries. Southern merchants lay in 

 their stock (of Southern manufactured goods,) in Northern cities. Here 

 again tlie Oranges have tJiepinoer to prevent this drainage upon the industry 

 and energy of l/ie farmer. I have thus, with much reluctance but great 

 earnestness, endeavored to present to the Patrons of Husbandry the advan- 

 tage and practicability of condensing the bulk and increasing the value of 



