CO-OPERATIVE IRRIGATION COL- 

 e : OKIES. 



JOEL SHOMAKER. 



Co-operative is a union of individual interests for the benefit of 

 the collective body and through that the mutual sharing of personal 

 advantages. The practice of productive and distributive co-operation 

 began a half a century ago in Europe and has extended throughout 

 the representative industrial countries of the world. What is known 

 as the Rochdale plan had its beginning among the cotton spinners of 

 England in 1856, and was introduced into the United States on the 

 organization of the Patrons of Husbandry or grangers. The chief 

 object of such distributing co-operation was to dispense with the 

 middlemen's profits by bringing producer and consumer, wholesaler 

 and retailer into closer commercial relations through combining num- 

 erous orders for the same home necessities. In this manner it has 

 been demonstrated that articles of home use, in daily demand, can be 

 handled and all running expenses including interest on investment, 

 rentals, clerk hire and dividends on capital stock paid promptly by 

 charging the consumers 10% above actual wholesale cost. 



While co-operation in distribution has resulted so beneficially to 

 many thousands of wage earners the productive principle has not 

 been so thoroughly tested. The introduction of modern irrigation 

 and the necessity for colonial organization has developed active co- 

 operative elements that otherwise might have remained dorment for 

 centuries. There are no better illustrations of this fact than the suc- 

 cessful reclamation of arid deserts by the Mormon pioneers of Utah 

 and the primitive settlers of the Greeley colony in Colorado. In 1847 

 about 2,000 religious enthusiasts under the command of Brigham 

 Young, crossed the great plains and located in the then barren and 

 desolate Salt Lake basin. The land was almost destitute of vegeta- 

 tion, the soil parched and lifeless and the pall of a death valley 

 seemed to overshadow the entire realm of aridity. Those strange 

 wanderers knew nothing of irrigation or practical co-operation but 

 the prudent goddess of necessity demanded that for self-preservation 

 the colonists should unite their forces and construct canals for irri- 

 gating the desert in order that its fruitfulness might be enjoyed. 

 The water was flooded over the dry sandy surface, the colony fields 

 were plowed and immediately the germs of vegetation opened and the 

 desert became a green sward. 



The Mormons were alone, over one thousand miles from the base 



