Fundamentals in Cooperation 27 



purchaser or any one else who succeeds to the property 

 rights of a member be entitled to membership except 

 under rules legally fixed by the directors of the associa- 

 tion. It has often happened that the transfer of stock 

 from a producer to another person, an act which cannot 

 be prevented when the association is formed as an ordinary 

 stock corporation for pecuniary profit, has resulted in the 

 transfer of the control of the organization to those who 

 may be opposed to the continuance of the organization, 

 or the organization may be controlled by former stock- 

 holders who have sold their land and are no longer en- 

 gaged in agriculture. These difficulties and methods of 

 avoiding them will be more fully set forth in a subsequent 

 chapter. 



THE VOTING POWER OF MEMBERS 



As a general principle, the most desirable form of or- 

 ganization is the industrial democracy in which each 

 member has an equal voice in the management and shares 

 proportionally in the benefits and risks with every other 

 member. This type of organization, like the different 

 divisions of American government, is founded on equality 

 in the rights and responsibilities of membership. The 

 basis of the organization is the individual member, a num- 

 ber of whom have joined together to accomplish a mutu- 

 ally common purpose. This is very different from the 

 principle of the stock corporation formed for pecuniary 

 profit. In the latter, the responsibility and voting power 

 and profits of the member are proportional to the amount 

 of capital invested by each. In the stock corporation, 

 capital is the basis of the organization and of its control. 



