THE ORGANIZATION OF RURAL INTERESTS 539 



much as is the hunter, for his own success. This experience 

 has become a habit of mind not easily bent to the needs of 

 cooperative effort. So strong is this trait that it has produced 

 in many cases a type of man actually unsocial, unwilling as well 

 as unaccustomed to work with and for his fellows. Neighbor- 

 hood jealousies and feuds in the rural communities are proverbial. 

 Farmers seem to be extremely suspicious of others' motives. 

 Not seldom will they refuse the primacy of leadership to one 

 of their own class. They have been known to repudiate the 

 bargains of a cooperative pact for the sake of individual tem- 

 porary gain ; such action was unsocial rather than immoral, 

 but it is disastrous to organized effort. 



(2) Financial considerations. Economic pressure has created 

 a desire to secure financial relief or gain, and if cooperation 

 would accomplish that it would be welcomed. But too often 

 the large view of the educational and social features of rural 

 organizations has been lost sight of, and the farmer has refused 

 to contribute to a movement with such intangible aims and 

 distant results. lie wanted to see where even his slight invest- 

 ment of time and money was going to bring him its harvest. 

 Farmers have not appreciated what the economist calls ' c culture- 

 wants. " 



(3) Economic and political delusions. The history of 

 farmers' organizations in the United States shows that the great 

 "farmers' movements" have gained much of their power be- 

 cause there existed an intense belief in certain economic and 

 political ideas which seemed to promise release from what the 

 farmers honestly felt to be industrial bondage. These ideas 

 strike at real evils, but in an extreme form at least proved 

 inefficacious, are considered by students to be intrinsically 

 unsound, and indeed have always been regarded by a large pro- 

 portion of leading farmers as unsound. These delusions were 

 mainly three: (a) that the middleman may be entirely abolished 

 and that farmers as well as producers may sell to customers 

 without the intervention of a third party, and as consumers 

 may also produce for themselves cooperatively, (b) That un- 

 satisfactory business conditions are almost wholly due to faulty 

 legislation, and that a farmers' party is not only feasible, but 



