5 7] THE INFLUENCE OF THE CREDIT SYSTEM 57 



share. The members of a lodge immediately interested 

 were urged to take stock, and thus help support an insti- 

 tution destined, as was thought, to free them from the 

 severe exactions of the merchants. Managers were 

 placed in charge of these stores. A former manager of 

 one of these Alliance stores writes in a personal letter 

 substantially as follows : Managers urged all the stock- 

 holders to give good profits both for cash and on time, 

 since the undertaking was a new venture, and the stock- 

 holders would share profits ; after running a few years 

 it was claimed that they would become strong enough 

 to sell goods more cheaply than regular merchants. 

 The managers were in many cases very shrewd business 

 men, while the bulk of the stockholders possessed no 

 mercantile experience ; it was therefore easy for the 

 managers to get the business in such a tangle that the 

 stockholders were willing to lose what they had put in 

 and sometimes more in order to get out. 



These stores failed utterly in their specific endeavors. 

 And in explanation it may be said that the very condi- 

 tion which invited the rise of these co-operative stores 

 foredoomed them to failure. If these farmers were fail- 

 ing as farmers simply because they were unable to bring 

 sufficient managing ability to the problem of farming 

 even after a life-time of experience in that business, it is 

 absurd to suppose that they were capacitated to succeed 

 in the mercantile business. 



Various other co-operative schemes were tried with 

 varying degrees of success. There were the co-operative 

 warehouses run for the purpose of enabling the farmer 

 to hold his cotton until the best prices could be obtained 

 for it. There were co-operative ginneries run in order 

 to lessen the expense of preparing the cotton for the 

 market after it was gathered. There was an energetic 



