3^ STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



annual meeting of the cooperative societies of Great Britain the 

 records showed that during 1908 business amounting to five 

 hundred and thirty-seven milhon dollars was transacted. 



In America four lines of agriculture have lent themselves 

 to successful cooperative enterprises, namely, market gardening, 

 grain growing, the manufacture and marketing of dairy prod- 

 ucts, and the production and marketing of fruit. The first three 

 are not to be considered in this paper except as the successful 

 organization of them may serve as an example to fruit growers. 



The grain growers' association now numbers its smaller 

 cooperative enterprises by the hundreds in the middle West. 

 The battle against the united grain dealers was a hard one. 

 Every device known to crafty traders was used to thwart the 

 efforts of the farmer to organize. Building sites were refused 

 for elevators ; switches would not be put in ; cars would not be 

 furnished by the railroads ; loaded cars were side tracked and 

 demurrage sufficient to eat up any possible profits was charged ; 

 the press was used freely to predict and advertise failure ; they 

 boycotted for a time commission houses that received coopera- 

 tive association goods ; the local merchants were threatened with 

 department stores ; but neither discouraged nor daunted by the 

 efforts of the organized grain dealers, backed by the railroads, 

 the farmers of the middle West have more than sixteen hundred 

 independent elevators, owned by more than three hundred thou- 

 sand stockholders. 



Mr. N. O. Nelson visited fifty-five of these cooperative eleva- 

 tors and stores in Minnesota, delivering an address on coopera- 

 tion at each place. Writing in a recent number of the Outlook, 

 he says : 



"We explained the economic, social and moral value of 

 cooperation. We reminded them that their splendid homes and 

 barns had been built by the cooperative creamery. We laid 

 stress upon the value of cooperation as removing an ever pres- 

 ent tendency to greed and fraud in private profit sharing busi- 

 ness. We showed them that 'by the people and for the peo- 

 ple' is even more important in trade than in government. We 

 pointed out the influence of cooperation on religion in contrast 

 with the adverse influence of private trade. We showed them 

 that the cooperative creamery, elevator, mill, packing house, or 

 store, lead up to consolidated schools, central high schools, bet- 

 ter roads, town halls for social and public uses, young people 



