COOPERATIVES, 1920-32 



mitted themselves to the cooperative movement, they did so not because 

 of any particular love for it, but because it was thought to be the least 

 offensive of the numerous proposals advanced for the relief of the farmers. 

 They realized that something had to be done to appease the farmers, 

 especially those of the western Middle West; but whatever relief plan was 

 adopted had to be as inoffensive to the industrial interests as possible. 

 The McNary-Haugen proposal, export debentures, domestic allotment 

 plans, inflation of the currency, price fixing, and other similarly radical 

 measures were out of the question. Republicans, as well as others, realized 

 that cooperative marketing was a "perfectly valid longtime policy, but 

 comparatively futile as a measure for immediate relief." 13 If one took 

 Republican orators seriously, the depression was going to be short-lived; 

 meanwhile, the cooperative movement could be used as a talking point. 

 When the depression failed to lift, the Republicans, for the want of a 

 more satisfactory remedy, had nothing but larger and better doses of 

 cooperatives to offer. 



One of the most conspicuous phases of the cooperative movement during 

 the twenties dealt with wheat pooling. 14 Obviously, these pools tried to 

 do for their farmer members what the salt pool, the wire pool, the plate 

 pool, the gunpowder pool, the envelope manufacturers' pool, and numer- 

 ous other pools had tried to do for industrialists and manufacturers during 

 the seventies and eighties. The forming of these agrarian pools also dis- 

 played a lag in the thinking of the farmers, who tried to put into opera- 

 tion what the industrialists, who were in a more favorable position to 

 accomplish their end, had failed to do some half-century earlier. 



The pools had hoped to strengthen the bargaining position of the pro- 

 ducers. Obviously, the average wheat farmers were small individual 

 operators who were at a competitive disadvantage. To overcome this, a 

 pool would be formed and a manager would be hired and given complete 

 control of the storing and selling of the farmers' wheat. The farmers 

 usually bound themselves to the pool for a period of five or seven years. 



13. Gee, American Farm Policy, p. 43. See also Henry E. Erdman, "Possibilities 

 and Limitations of Cooperative Marketing," Annals of the American Academy of 

 Political and Social Science, CXVII (January, 1925), pp. 217-26. 



14. Elsworth, Farmers' Cooperative Business Organizations, p. 57; see also Chapter 

 IX on pooling in H. C. Filley, Cooperation in Agriculture (New York, 1929), pp. 

 114-26. 



