CHAPTER VII 

 BUSINESS COOPERATION 



UP to the close of the Civil War, the farmers of the West 

 were generally content to confine their business operations 

 to the raising of crops and stock. They disposed of their sur- 

 plus products in the most convenient market and purchased 

 the few supplies needed from the nearest store-keeper, without 

 bothering their heads about the extortions of manufacturers 

 or the profits of middlemen. During the decade of the seventies 

 however, there was a determined effort on the part of the farmers 

 to establish direct relations between producers and consumers, 

 with reference to both the products which they wished to dis- 

 pose of and the supplies they had to purchase. The explanation 

 of this is to be sought in changing economic conditions. The 

 western farmers in the pioneer period were independent in their 

 economic relations with the outside world, and indeed each 

 farm was almost a self-sufficing unit. But the rapid develop- 

 ment of the country and the increase in transportation facilities 

 changed all this, and by 1870 the farmers had become largely 

 producers of staple crops for market and nearly as dependent 

 upon outsiders for supplies as were those engaged in other 

 occupations. With no adequate conception of the actual 

 services performed by the middlemen or the complexities of the 

 business of distribution, 1 and with the example of successful 

 cooperation in England to urge them on, the western farmers 

 believed it possible to regain their economic independence by 

 themselves assuming the management of those industries which 

 touched them most closely. Two things were prerequisite 

 for this organization, and a certain amount of mutual con- 

 fidence and these were furnished by the rapid growth of 

 farmers' clubs and especially of the order of Patrons of Hus- 



1 Cf. Fetter, " The Theory of the Middleman " and Kieley, " The Middleman 

 in Practice," both in Bailey, Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, iv. 239-243. 



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