AMERICAN SOCIETY OF EQUITY 135 



chamber. All this information was at the disposal of the Equity represen- 

 tatives who assembled in Minneapolis on May 30, 1908, to organize the 

 Equity Cooperative Exchange. 55 



There were other preliminaries. The first phase of Equity operations 

 in the northwest probably began on May 25, 1903, with the circulation of 

 Everitt's series of "Dollar Wheat Bulletins" urging farmers to withhold 

 their wheat from market until the price of one dollar per bushel could be 

 obtained. Many northwestern farmers accepted this advice, and when 

 necessary even constructed new warehouses and granaries in which to 

 store their wheat. Much to their joy they found that the price of wheat 

 did rise to the dollar level, a development for which Equity leaders im- 

 mediately assumed full credit. Next year Equity sponsored another "hold- 

 your-wheat" campaign, but without the favorable results claimed in 1903. 

 Other similar attempts followed, and in 1907, according to Equity statistics, 

 some thirty million bushels of wheat had been pledged ; but the program 

 as a whole was a failure. The chief obstacles to success were the futility 

 of the plan, poor leadership, dissension at national headquarters, and the 

 lack of a satisfactory method for the financing of pooling members. 

 Despite these failures, the hold-your-wheat program was not altogether 

 without results. By recruiting ten or twelve thousand Equity members in 

 North Dakota alone, the leaders of the movement had paved the way for 

 the much more important program of cooperative marketing. 56 



With the organization of the Equity Cooperative Exchange in 1908, the 

 grain-marketing program in the Northwest entered its second phase. The 

 "grain growers' division" of the American Society of Equity had plans to 

 organize the grain growers of the country on as many terminal markets 

 as possible, but it was only in the spring wheat country that the program 

 materialized. By this time it was abundantly clear that organizing local 

 farm associations and establishing state service and educational organiza- 

 tions to aid the farmers in cleaning, grading, and storing their grain were 

 not enough. Much as these achievements might improve local marketing 



55. Co-operators' Guide (Indianapolis), IV (February, 1911), p. 4. 



56. Nash, in World Today, XIII (July, 1907), p. 717; Chelsa C. Sherlock, The 

 Modern Farm Cooperative (Des Moines, 1922), pp. 14-15; Equity Farm Journal, 

 I (May, 1908), p. 10; Devils La\e (N. Dak.) Inter-Ocean, June 28, 1907; Hibbard, 

 Marketing Agricultural Products, pp. 232-33; Herman Steen, Cooperative Mar fa- 

 ing (New York, 1923), p. 212. 



