66 



AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



domestic market, of general trading and credit conditions." His depend- 

 ence on nature gave him little voice in any attempt to regulate the output. 

 On these grounds supporters of agricultural interests based their plea for 

 special treatment fitted to the farmer's "peculiar needs." 18 



Wisconsin and Minnesota also enacted legislation requiring the col- 

 lection of information about cooperatives. In Minnesota, by a law of 1913, 

 the department of agriculture of the University of Minnesota was required 

 "to collect statistics and information in reference to cooperative associa- 

 tions among farmers and the management and methods of conducting 

 such associations." 1 ' The Wisconsin legislation antedated this and was 

 more ambitious. The Wisconsin State Board of Public Affairs, especially 

 created for the purpose in 1911, was authorized, in conjunction with the 

 Legislative Reference Library, to make a careful investigation of co- 

 operation. "This investigation was made with three objectives in mind 

 first, to ascertain the extent and present status of cooperation in Wis- 

 consin; second, to learn the causes for the success of existing cooperative 

 organizations and causes for the failures of those that had not been able 

 to withstand the struggle; and third, to see what lessons could be derived 

 from abroad and how they could be applied here." 20 Possibly this action 

 indicated an awareness of the fact that the responsibility for improving 

 the business side of farming should not be left to sentimentalists, pro- 

 moters, and more or less erratic farmers, but instead should be taken over 

 by people who wanted to investigate the field in its entirety and to proceed 

 along scientific lines. 



The federal government gave slight attention to the farmers' marketing 

 problems until the farmers themselves had taken the initiative in setting 

 up their associations and had exerted considerable political pressure in 

 their respective states. The Department of Agriculture, for the most part, 

 had contented itself with impressing upon the farmers the necessity for 

 bettering the quality of their produce and increasing it in quantity. Never- 



18. Tobriner, in Columbia Law Review, XXVII (November, 1927), pp. 828-31; 

 Tobriner, "The Constitutionality of Cooperative Marketing Statutes," California 

 Law Review, XVII (November, 1928), pp. 25-26. 



19. L. D. H. Weld, "Statistics of Cooperation among Farmers in Minnesota," 

 University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 146 (St. Paul, 

 1914), p. 3. 



20. Campbell, in American Review of Reviews, XL VII (April, 1913), p. 470. 



