298 ' FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS 



greatest importance, directly, because the profits of manufacture 

 will thus be controlled by the Order, as well as the profits of trans- 

 fer or dealing ; indirectly, by securing facilities that will favor the 

 introduction of manufacturing establishments in districts at 

 present far removed from them, and where their products are in 

 demand." The theory of having the farmers' machinery manu- 

 factured at his door was an alluring one. And to divert the 

 "profits" of the manufacturer into the pockets of the farmer was 

 then, and it is now, the subject of many a naive scheme to "do 

 something for the farmer." 



Interest in Cooperation. It was into cooperative enterprises 

 of buying and selling, however, that the Grange was most actively 

 drawn at this period. The craze for cooperation has indeed been 

 compared to the craze for gold in 1849. The National Grange 

 adopted the policy of promoting cooperation after the model of 

 the English Rochdale system. An envoy was sent to England to 

 study the question and confer with British cooperators. A large 

 plan was conceived, whereby the Grange was to raise a capital 

 fund of $125,000 for building shipping depots, and a Grange 

 Company, called the "Anglo-American Cooperative Company" 

 was to carry on trade directly with England. Three English com- 

 missioners visited America and investigated the plan, and decided 

 to erect their own warehouses at four seaboard cities. They were 

 to furnish clothing and other manufactured goods at ten per cent 

 discount, and were to buy farm produce at market price from the 

 Grange, provided the Grange would concentrate its purchases 

 through them. But a volume of business large enough to justify 

 the venture could not be guaranteed, and the project was dropped. 

 In the various States village cooperative stores were now quite 

 extensively started, although the Rochdale plan was not very 

 faithfully adhered to, particularly that feature of the English plan 

 which distributes surplus earnings on the basis of patronage and 

 not on the basis of capital. It is somewhat difficult to state the 

 net gain derived by Grange members from all their many ventures, 

 for substantially all of them were short-lived. In Iowa a purchas- 

 ing agent bought plows and reapers for the local Granges, effecting 

 a savings thereby in one year of fifty thousand dollars, according 

 to Grange figures. If this lowered the prices of implement dealers 

 who were taking too wide a margin, it was a permanent benefit to 

 the Grange. If, however, it served to put out of business entirely 

 many local dealers, thus making repairs difficult to secure, it was 

 a loss rather than a gain in the end. At this distance, it is not easy 



