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constant internal campaign of stimulating loyalty within the ranks and 

 of gaining new recruits. With the Eastern Shore of Virginia Exchange, 

 this fight has been fierce and incessant from the start, and marked by a 

 degree of enthusiastic loyalty on the part of the association's supporters 

 and of bitter antagonism on the part of its leading enemies for which a 

 parallel can hardly be found in politics, or elsewhere than in war. From 

 the beginning it was realized that every Eastern Shore farmer who was 

 not for and with the Exchange was against it — that every man who fur- 

 nished potatoes to the local dealers whose operations had for years proved 

 disastrous to the country's prosperity and who were now actively seeking 

 to destroy the association, was giving not only "aid and comfort" but in 

 a very real sense ammunition to the enemy. And from the very start 

 the Exchange has insisted as the cardinal and almost only obligation of 

 membership, upon the constant and undivided loyalty of every membsr. 

 The very minute an Exchange man yields to the blandishments of the 

 local buyer or to the attraction of an artificial price set slightly in advance 

 of the fair market value of his goods for advertising purposes and in ordei 

 to make a break in the ranks, the moment he sells a barrel outside the 

 Exchange, he forfeits all rights of Exchange membership and unless re- 

 instated by special resolution of the boaid of directors can make no further 

 shipments through the association for the entire remainder of the year. 

 And although opcasional more or less valid grounds of dissatisfaction 

 with the Exchange are bound to arise, and the local buyers are always 

 on the alert to pick off stragglers, the total number of desertions has been, 

 on the whole, surprisingly few. 



Again, the Exchange differs radically from the ordinary corporation 

 in that its purpose is not the making of profits for its stockholders. Its 

 entire capital stock, in fact, is only forty-two thousand dollars, divided into 

 shares of a par value of only five dollars, which it has been the constant 

 and reasonably successful aim of the directors to keep widely distributed 

 in small holdings. In addition, a surplus fund of about a hundred and ten 

 thousand dollars has been gradually accumulated from the profits of the 

 business; and it is now a regular provision of the by-laws that at the end 

 of each year, after payment of a dividend not to exceed ten per cent, what- 

 ever net profits may remain shall be divided in half, one half being added 

 to the surplus in order that the association's fixed resources may keep 

 pace with the constant growth of its business and the other half being 

 distributed back among all the loyal shippers of the Exchange, whether 

 stockholders, tenants of stockholders or holders of shipping privileges 

 merely, in proportion to their respective contributions of produce. ' At the 

 close of the present season, barring any imexpected large loss not now 

 apparent, about fifty thousand dollars remains to be so divided. 



And now with respect to the external activities of the Exchange, 

 in pursuit of its original and proper purpose of marketing the products of 

 its members: First and foremost, it aims at enlightened and aggressive 



