COOPERATION 



movement, amounted to about thirty millions 

 of dollars per year. The practicability of 

 cooperation in the United States was thus 

 established, no matter what might be the out- 

 come of adverse combinations, or what the 

 influences brought to bear by unfair capital. 

 It was a clear, positive illustration of the fact 

 that the underlying principles of cooperation 

 are sound. A concrete illustration was shown 

 in the case of one county in the state of Min- 

 nesota. This county was exclusively agricul- 

 tural. There was little or no manufacturing 

 in its borders upon which to depend. For 

 years the farmers had been pushing the wheat 

 lands beyond the limit of production, and 

 Nature's slow but unanswerable protest had at 

 last been entered. The farmers turned to 

 cooperative dairying. Creameries for butter 

 manufacture were established, some twenty- 

 nine in all. There were nearly three thousand 

 members, or stockholders. In the year in 

 which the first creamery was established there 

 were twenty-four mortgage foreclosures; the 

 number four years later had fallen to one ; in 

 the next year there were none. Ten years 

 after the establishment of the first creamery 



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