COOPERATIVES: EARLY PHASES 67 



theless, the department had taken a few preliminary steps in the direc- 

 tion of improving the farmers' marketing conditions. It had gathered 

 some information on the subject, had developed techniques for dealing 

 with it, and had trained the necessary personnel for the study of the 

 problem. 21 It had even made a study, in 1911-12, of a few cooperative 

 cotton associations, and had furnished them with some suggestions for 

 the improvement of the methods they employed in the handling and 

 marketing of cotton. But with the creation of the Office of Markets and 

 Rural Organization in 1913 there was a change of pace. Thereafter the 

 collection of statistical information on cooperatives became a major 

 undertaking. 22 



During these early years the state colleges of agriculture contributed 

 even less than the United States Department of Agriculture to the growth 

 of cooperative marketing, and, even harder to understand, they showed 

 an astonishing indifference to the whole subject of agricultural economics. 

 The guiding policy of the colleges of agriculture in the earlier days had 

 been to make two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before 

 and to apply "a knowledge of the laws of the 'natural' sciences to the 

 practical operations of the farm." Of the state universities in the western 

 Middle West, the University of Wisconsin was among the first, if not the 

 first, to ofTer a course in the "Economics of Agriculture." This course, 

 conducted by Professor William A. Scott "especially for agricultural stu- 

 dents," was listed in the university catalogue as early as iS^2-g^. 23 Three 

 or four years later, the Office of Experiment Stations of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture sponsored a committee on instruction in agri- 

 culture which reported that rural economics should be recognized as a 

 division of the science of agriculture. The treatment of the subject by the 



21. J. T. Horner, "The United States Governmental Activities in the Field of 

 Agricultural Economics Prior to 1913," Journal of Farm Economics, X (October, 

 1928), pp. 451, 458-59. 



22. Chastina Gardner, Cooperation in Agriculture, Farm Credit Administration, 

 Cooperative Division, Bulletin 4 (Washington, 1936), p. 5. See also Thomas Nixon 

 Carver, "The Organization of Rural Interests," U. S. Dept. Agri., Yearboo/^, 1913, 

 pp. 239-58. 



23. Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1892-93, p. 60. Two courses were 

 listed for most of the years down to 1902-3: "Agricultural Economics," designed for 

 students in the short course in the college of agriculture, and "General Course in 

 Agricultural Economics." Ibid., 1902-3, p. 94. 



