274 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



the middleman to such profits as would compensate him for the 

 real service he would perform. 



How to buy. The next question, namely, how to buy, involves 

 such possibilities as cooperative buying as compared with indi- 

 vidual buying. Students of the labor problem of our cities have 

 come to lay great stress on what is known as collective bargain- 

 ing. By collective bargaining is meant the process by which a 

 whole body of laboring men, acting as a unit, bargain through 

 their representative for wages. It is held that this method gives 

 them greater bargaining power. A similar principle is involved 

 in what is known as cooperative buying on the part of consumers. 

 It is not always possible for the farm manager to enter into a 

 cooperative alliance with other farmers, because of bad social 

 conditions. It is not too much to say that one of the worst 

 drawbacks to American farming is the extreme individualism of 

 many of our farmers, constantly showing itself in the form of un- 

 willingness to cooperate with their neighbors for their mutual 

 advantage. A few cooperative stores have been run successfully, 

 but by far the greater number of those which have been at- 

 tempted have failed. This is, of course, not entirely due to lack 

 of the cooperative spirit. It has frequently happened that a co- 

 operative store has been started where there was no occasion 

 for starting one, where the local merchant was doing a fair and 

 legitimate business and charging no more than his service was 

 actually worth. To undertake a cooperative store in competition 

 with such a merchant is to invite failure, for the excellent reason 

 that such a store ought to fail. Nevertheless a certain kind of 

 cooperation in the buying of such products as can be graded 

 and sold at* standard prices, such as fertilizers, standard farm 

 machinery, lumber, and the like, can be done to advantage if 

 farmers will only agree among themselves to cooperate and will 

 not be held apart by suspicion. The advantage comes not so 

 much from saving the local merchant's profit as from placing 



