136 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



conditions, they did nothing toward the reform of conditions on the 

 terminal market. What was needed was a farmers' terminal marketing 

 firm that would receive grain shipped on consignment, or, better still, 

 could be fed by a chain of local cooperatives with ample storage facilities. 

 With such a setup the farmers could clean, condition, transfer, and store 

 their grain at a minimum of risk and expense, and thus retain control of 

 their grain from the time it left the farm until it was sold on the terminal 

 market. 57 



The exchange marketing program was significant in that it sought to 

 organize the farmers on the basis of the crop produced. By so doing its 

 leaders were pursuing a realistic course, for experience had revealed that 

 the "farming class" was a heterogeneous group consisting of farmers with 

 differing and frequently antagonistic interests and that the success of a 

 marketing organization depended primarily on bringing together pro- 

 ducers of the same crops who had the same problems. The farmers could 

 also, should the need be felt, organize as consumers to purchase feed, seeds, 

 fertilizers, machinery, farm implements, and general farm supplies. 58 



Unfortunately, such a plan of organization was hardly designed to 

 promote good relations between the American Society of Equity and the 

 Equity Cooperative Exchange. Sharp differences developed between the 

 parent order and its offspring over aims and objectives, policies, jurisdic- 

 tion, and finances. The Equity Cooperative Exchange was interested solely 

 in the problems of the spring wheat grower, while the American Society 

 of Equity claimed an interest in all farmers "the grain grower, the stock 

 feeder, the dairyman, the tobacco grower, the fruit grower, the cotton 

 grower." The exchange was realistic and opportunistic, while the Equity 

 Society was idealistic and altruistic. The former saw no reason why it 

 should submit to policies that did not directly and immediately benefit 

 the grain producers, while the latter asked that commodity and regional 

 interests be submerged for the general welfare of the farmers as a class. 



57. Codperators' Herald, October 10, 1913, and April 17, 1914; Equity Farm 

 News, January i, 1912, p. 13. See Lionel Smith-Gordon, Cooperation for Farmers 

 (London, 1918), pp. 190-93, for a good, brief discussion on the pros and cons of 

 local and terminal marketing operations. 



58. George Harold Powell, Cooperation in Agriculture (New York, 1913), pp. 

 5-10, 18-23; Chris L. Christensen, Farmers' Cooperative Associations in the United 

 States, 7929, U. S. Dept. Agri., Circular 94 (Washington, 1929). 



