240 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



Thenceforth, business cooperation was a leading feature 

 of the movement and one of the principal incentives for the 

 growth of the order. Whenever a local grange was formed, 

 almost the first step taken was to adopt some plan of cooperative 

 buying and selling. Often, especially during the early years, 

 all that was done was to make arrangements with certain local 

 dealers for special rates in return for the cash trade of all the 

 members. 1 This plan never worked very long and generally 

 made way for the establishment of a local agency. In some 

 cases, the agent simply attended to forwarding the cash orders 

 of the members to a manufacturer or jobber or to the state 

 agency, if established, and distributed the shipments when they 

 arrived. For these services the agent might receive a small 

 commission or he might be paid a small salary by the grange. 

 More often, perhaps, he got no compensation but the oppor- 

 tunity to purchase his own supplies at a reduced price and the 

 satisfaction of helping his neighbors. In other cases, the agency 

 was supplied with a small amount of capital by the grange or 

 by a stock company of members, and then it approached more 

 nearly to the dignity of a cooperative store. 



Often the granges of a county or other district found it 

 advantageous to join together in a county council or Pomona 

 grange and established a county or district agency to assist 

 the members in their buying and selling. 2 These larger agencies 

 varied in methods much as did the smaller ones connected with 

 a single grange. At first most of their energies were devoted 

 to inducing manufacturers and wholesale dealers to make special 

 terms. In this, of course, they were more successful than the 

 local agencies because of their ability to control a larger trade. 

 Later many of the county and district associations developed 

 into cooperative stores of one form or another. Whatever the 

 method, the object in view was the same throughout: to secure 

 supplies at lower prices by bulking orders and dealing as directly 

 as possible with manufacturers and jobbers; and to eliminate 



1 A " Trading Card " of the Winnebago County (Wisconsin) Council, Patrons 

 of Husbandry, is in the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society. 



2 See Kelley, Patrons of Husbandry, 298. 



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