COOPERATIVES: EARLY PHASES 77 



and the Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association were in the vanguard of the 

 movement. Farmer elevators were in existence in Iowa during the sixties, 

 in Kansas and Minnesota during the seventies, and in the Dakotas by the 

 nineties. 43 Specific information on their existence in Wisconsin and Illi- 

 nois is slight, yet the presumption is very strong that they were in existence 

 in both states during these early years. In Iowa, where the grain-marketing 

 activities were undoubtedly representative of those in other states, the 

 earliest of the farmer elevators began its short career in Blairstown about 

 1867 or 1868, one or two years before the state Grange was established. 



The majority of the early cooperative elevators were incorporated as 

 regular stock companies, and the others as voluntary associations; there 

 were few evidences of the payment of patronage dividends or the em- 

 ployment of other standard cooperative practices. There was a tendency, 

 however, to limit the amount of stock issued and to restrict control to the 

 organizers. 44 



The decline in the cooperative elevator movement, which set in follow- 

 ing the first flush of Granger enthusiasm, revealed some serious defects in 

 methods of organization and operation. The most common fault was 

 insufficient funds, but some of the cooperatives failed because they had 

 been set up in areas where a shift was in progress from wheat to live- 

 stock raising. An inadequate grasp of the complexities of the grain busi- 

 ness, Granger politics, and rivalry for office added to the difficulties of the 

 cooperatives, made competition with private grain dealers difficult, and 

 contributed to the mortality rate. 45 



The spread of the Farmers' Alliance during the i88o's witnessed an 

 earnest effort to re-establish the farmers in the grain business. This second 

 period of cooperative activity found the private grain interests stronger 

 and more firmly entrenched than ever before; it was, indeed, a period in 

 which combinations both in industry and in transportation were the 

 order of the day. Faced by stronger opposition, the cooperatives sought to 

 adopt a stronger form of organization and to devise means to secure the 



43. Nourse, in Iowa Bulletin 211, p. 236; Nineteenth Biennial Report of the 

 Kansas State Board of Agriculture (1915), pp. 24, 155-56; Possum, Agrarian Move- 

 ments in North Dakota, p. 161. See also Senate Document 95, 70 Congress, i session, 

 p. 54. 



44. Nourse, in Iowa Bulletin 211, pp. 236-39. 



45. Ibid., pp. 239-40. 



