170 COOPERATION 



field is the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Exchange (Fig. 31). 

 Here the farmers in two small counties market through their 

 central organization as much as ten thousand carloads of produce 

 in a season, putting it on the market under their own inspection 

 and label. This enables them to make their sales largely on the 

 f.o.b. loading station basis, securing a wider distribution and 

 avoiding market gluts. Only the poor quality of produce is con- 

 signed, and that without the "Red Star" label. One important 

 feature of the sales service is the liberal use made of the telegraph 

 and telephone wires in securing market information. Farmers' 

 cooperative organizations have also made successes in marketing 

 in many other fields, including the following: Egg circles, live- 

 stock shipping associations, potato warehouses, fruit and vegetable 

 organizations of various kinds, milk, and grain. The great success 

 of the farmers' cooperative elevator movement is discussed in the 

 chapter on the Grain Trade. 



(3) In Buying. Incidental to some other form of cooperation 

 we find buying developed successfully. Thus the Farmers' Union 

 of Maine sells potatoes and incidentally buys and distributes 

 fertilizer. The farmers' elevators sell grain, and quite generally 

 carry "side lines" purchased by the farmer, such as grain cleaners, 

 fertilizer, coal, twine, fencing and many other lines. Buying, 

 however, as a major operation, such as the cooperative store, has 

 not proved a success, but quite the contrary, up to the present. 



(4) Insurance. Farmers' mutual insurance companies, par- 

 ticularly hail insurance, fire insurance, and livestock insurance, 

 have spread widely over the country and have met with general 

 success. 



(5) Telephone. The farmers' telephone company is perhaps 

 the most widely known form of farmers' business undertaking. 

 Information is lacking, however, to say to what extent these cor- 

 porations are cooperative, and to what extent they are common 

 joint-stock or "capitalistic" corporations. But it is likely that 

 they are not, in most cases, cooperative in the strict sense of the 

 term. 



(6) Credit. Cooperative credit has been indeed slow to take 

 root on this continent. Credit must be given to Mr. Alphonse 

 Desjardins of Quebec for establishing in that Canadian province 

 our first real cooperative credit in America, in his Caisse Populaire. 

 A few States in the Union have now undertaken to provide the 

 legal machinery for cooperative credit. It is hardly necessary to 

 remind the reader in passing that credit based on first mortgages 



