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'phone to the local agents. In the evening, the day's sales-bulletin is 

 completed before being passed on to the accounting department by 'Spool- 

 ing the prices" — a process of averaging by which each grower will be paid, 

 not necessarily the exact price received for his particular lot of goods, but 

 the average price received for all goods of the same grade and value with 

 his on the day in question; and as rapidly as the necessary bookkeeping 

 work can be carried through, payment for each day's sales is rushed for- 

 ward to the local agents, to whom the growers go for settlement. Each 

 agent is of course required to keep an account with every shipper and to 

 make payments exclusively by check; and at the end of the shipping 

 season all agents must turn in their checks, books and records for audit 

 by the bookkeeping force at the general office. All risks of collection 

 are assumed by the association; and all expenses of the business are met 

 by a commission of five per cent on the gross sales, which is of course de- 

 ducted when the original returns are made. 



In carrying out its appointed mission, the Exchange has consistently 

 adhered to certain well-defined working principles, by which its general 

 course of action has been determined and upon which, I believe, its success 

 broadly rests. These demand specific mention, both as being necessary 

 to an appreciative understanding of the work of this association and be- 

 cause they are broadly applicable, with equal advantage, to similar efforts 

 in a great number of other communities. 



First, with reference to what may be termed the ''home policy" of 

 the Exchange: All such movements are necessarily militant; to under- 

 stand the workings of any such co-operative association, it must be borne 

 constantly in mind that every minute of its life is a fight — a struggle first 

 for existence and afterward (if there be any "afterward' ') for an increasing 

 measure of supremacy. For the success of any such movement means 

 loss, or unwelcome change, of occupation for the local exponents of pre- 

 viously existing agencies of distribution which it is the very purpose of 

 the association to supplant. To assume that we have a vested right in 

 whatever benefits we have once uninterruptedly enjoyed, regardless of the 

 original basis of such enjoyment, seems to be a universal fallacy of human 

 nature; and these men, speculative buyers perhaps or solicitors for com- 

 mission houses, will very quickly be found fighting the new movement 

 in a spirit of personal resentment born of a misguided sense of personal 

 injury and with all the vigor of the instinct of self-preservation. Each 

 of these men of course has some personal following among the farmers; 

 and each can devise a hundred ways to estrange supporters from and 

 incite antagonism to the association. The leaders, therefore, in the co- 

 operative movement must be propagandists — preachers of a new doctrine 

 of solidatity and vigorous advocates of an occasional surrender of immedi- 

 ate and temporary self-interest for the general and permanent good; 

 and throughout the career of such an association, parallel with its external 

 activities as a business concern, there must be kept up in some form this 



