RURAL AMERICA 



5^2 per cent each stockholder has but one vote, regardless 

 of the number of shares he owns. 



Cooperative stores are less numerous. Of the 120 stores 

 reporting, sixty-one rendered detailed reports showing a total 

 business of $2,593,643, an average of $43,518 for each store. 

 The cooperative store movement has been marked by a num- 

 ber of failures, but there are no figures to prove that the 

 experiences of cooperative stores have been much, if any, 

 worse than those of privately owned stores. Farmers own 

 81 per cent of the stock in fifty-nine of the stores, and if the 

 average should hold for the rest of the 120, the movement 

 is in line with the development of the cooperative spirit in 

 other directions. 



A more recent development in cooperative marketing in 

 Minnesota has to do with live stock shipping associations. 

 On January i* 1914, there were 115 such organizations, and 

 many have been formed since. The value of the live stock 

 marketed through associations in 1913 was approximately 

 $6,000,000, 12 per cent of the total. There are 600 cooperative 

 telephone companies, which do an annual business of $900,000, 

 and 154 township mutual fire insurance companies, which 

 were the first successful cooperative enterprises in the state. 

 Receipts from premiums in 1913 were $696,732, and the total 

 amount of insurance outstanding January i, 1914, was $342,- 

 223,319. The cost of each $100 of insurance in force was 

 18 cents, as against 46 cents for stock companies soliciting 

 business on three-year contracts. The number of policies in 

 force at the end of 1913 was 158,283, an average of 1,128 for 

 each company. 



The Hon. Myron T. Herrick, in his address before the 

 National Conference on Markets and Rural Credits, gave the 

 following comprehensive definition of an economic cooperative 

 association : " A cooperative association may be defined as 

 a voluntary union of persons for utilizing their collective 

 energies or resources, or a part of them, under their manage- 

 ment, in some economic enterprise carried on upon their 

 common account with a view to their mutual and individual 



