COOPERATIVES: EARLY PHASES 81 



livestock-shipping associations, plus 37 farmer elevators which bought 

 and shipped livestock, thereby bringing the total up to 647. In Wisconsin 

 the number in 1920 was placed at approximately 500 locals. The figures 

 in Minnesota for 1919 show 655 locals in operation. More than one-fourth 

 of the livestock shipped from the state of Iowa was handled by farmers' 

 marketing organizations, while 75 per cent of the livestock sent into the 

 South St. Paul market, and about 15 per cent of all that reached the 

 Chicago market, was shipped by cooperative associations. 51 



In livestock marketing, as in grain marketing, both the Grange and 

 the Farmers' Alliance had made important beginnings. Associations were 

 organized in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Illinois during the years 1872 

 and 1873. Most of them were managed by agents of the Grange and 

 operated mainly as selling agencies. As interest in the Grange declined, 

 interest in the associations disappeared also, and few of these early co- 

 operatives survived. Farmers' Alliance livestock cooperatives were active 

 in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri during the middle i88o's, but 

 with the collapse of the Alliance and the growing farmer interest in 

 politics, the livestock-shipping movement slackened. 52 



In the period from 1903 to 1920, the American Society of Equity and 

 the Farmers' Union took the lead in furthering the livestock cooperative 

 movement. Equity, directly or indirectly, was responsible for the establish- 

 ment of associations at Postville, Iowa, in 1904, at Durand, Wisconsin, 

 in 1906, and at Litchfield, Minnesota, in 1908. The Farmers' Union began 

 its operations several years later in Nebraska, southern and western Iowa, 

 Kansas, and Missouri. Iowa was ideally located for the movement to 

 flourish. The state was surrounded by seven principal livestock markets 

 and had within its borders, or close to them, eleven minor packing cen- 

 ters. Thus it could distribute its surplus hogs, cattle, and sheep to the 

 various markets with the maximum of efficiency and a minimum of cost 



51. E. G. Nourse and J. G. Knapp, The Co-Operative Marketing of Livestock 

 (Washington, 1931), pp. 17-19; Nourse and Hammans, in Iowa Bulletin 200, pp. 

 404, 407; B. H. Hibbard, L. G. Foster, and D. G. Davis, "Wisconsin Livestock 

 Shipping Associations," University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, 

 Bulletin 314 (Madison, 1920), pp. 3-5; E. C. Johnson and J. B. McNulty, "Live- 

 stock Shipping Associations in Minnesota," University of Minnesota Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, Bulletin 302 (St. Paul, 1934), p. 3. 



52. Steen, Cooperative Marketing, pp. 92-93. 



