204 THE FARMER AS A COOPERATOR. 



bouudaries. A distinct term is needed for this phase of cooper- 

 ative effort. 



In these pages, however, because I wish only to cover, in 

 some detail, a rather narrow field in which I have had 

 personal experience, I shall use the term cooperation and 

 cooperative in tlie more restricted sense in which they are 

 still used in common speech, and which includes only organ- 

 ized societies of operatives or producers to market their labor 

 or their product, or of any class of individuals to purchase 

 supplies. In this class of societies the fundamental idea is 

 that of saving rather than of gain ; of keeping what is already 

 in possession, rather than of securing additional income or 

 increase of capital. Of course the result, if success follows, is 

 an increase of net income which may be expended or become 

 capital. These enterprises also exclude the idea of individual 

 profit to any one connected with the management.* 



It is true that cooperative enterprises in the above sense 

 are sometimes established with the same idea of profit that 

 obtains in other business ; as a cooperative shoe factory, or a 

 cooperative cannery, but it is probable that when such con- 

 cerns are set up it is with the expectation of securing a higher 

 price, or a more certain market, for some commodity produced 

 by the founders, as tlie labor in the case of the shoe factory, 

 or the fruit in the case of the cannery, and the tendency is to 

 consume what would be profit in an ordinary business in 

 higher wages, or higher prices. 



In referring to the probable success or failure of a business 

 enterprise, normal or ordinary conditions are supposed to 

 exist. A flood, a fire, a robbery, or some general calamity 

 may bring the best planned and best conducted enterprise to 

 ruin. These are the chances of life to which all enterprises 

 are subject. 



The more common forms of cooperative enterprise are 

 societies for the purchase of suj)i)lies needed, or the sale of 

 products produced by their members. Societies for the pur- 



* While a bank is a cooperative money-lending concern, certain individuals, 

 by engaging a certain amount of their own capital, and assuming the manage- 

 ment, expect to profit by lending the money of their depositors. 



