AGRICULTURAL SITUATION AND OPPORTUNITY 151 



gave way to a new social life in which the town and city 

 were too largely the pattern. This marked the beginning 

 of the breakdown of the small rural town and of the serious 

 impairment of many rural institutions, notably the rural 

 church. 



The industrial development of the period had of course 

 been accompanied and aided by great and efficient organiza- 

 tions of capital and labor. The owners of capital had early 

 acquired great power and influence as a direct result of 

 this organization. Taking its lesson from this example and 

 out of its necessity, labor has now developed similar power 

 and influence through organization. But the farmer, in a 

 similar and more difficult position, had not yet learned the 

 lesson of the need and the remedy for it. He had his social 

 organizations, of which the Grange or Patrors of Hus- 

 bandry was perhaps the oldest and most noteworthy. He 

 had attempted economic organization, usually without suc- 

 cess either because of a lack of a proper appreciation of the 

 problem and its attendant difficulties, with consequent lack 

 of preparation along right lines, or because of attempting 

 to remedy an economic difficulty by political means. 



But out of the wreck of many commercial cooperative 

 enterprises much experience had been gained and some 

 solid achievements attained. The most notable of these 

 were the cooperative grain elevators of the Middle West 

 and the fruit marketing in California and in the North- 

 west. So that at the opening of the twentieth century the 

 American farmer was just coming to a realization of his 

 need for economic organization and of the means of attain- 

 ing it. He was at the threshold of a period of organization 

 in agriculture when the isolated individuality of the 



