214 THE FARMER AS A COOPERATOR. 



member is accustomed to transact for himself on a smaller 

 scale, there need be no apprehension of lack of ability to 

 manage the business well, and with ordinary prudence in 

 providing capital and keeping out of debt, there is no reason 

 not to expect success. For example, in a dairying community 

 there is general information as to the processes and general 

 expense of butter or cheese making, and a cooperative cream- 

 ery may be expected to succeed; so in a fruit-drying commu- 

 nity, whose members are accustomed to dry fruit extensively 

 on their farms, there is no difficulty in maintaining successful 

 fruit-drying associations. Sucli societies are also able to 

 successfully take a step in advance, provided the step be not 

 too great. For example, the fruit-growers of California are 

 accustomed to sell their dried fruit each year to local buyers, 

 who concentrate it in warehouses and sell it in distant markets. 

 It has been found entirely practicable and economical for 

 growers to bring their own fruit to their own cooperative 

 warehouses, and have it sold for themselves in the distant 

 markets, by their own officers. In this case there is the simple 

 advance from a retail business of a few tons each, to a whole- 

 sale business dealing only in car-load lots, and collecting 

 through the banks in the ordinary mercantile way, instead of 

 receiving cash on their farms from the local buyers. There 

 has been no trouble whatever, but no one would expect a 

 dairy association to manipulate or sell dried fruit successfully; 

 nor could any association of fanners successfully carry on a 

 cooperative shoe factory, although a body of shoe-making 

 operatives might do so. These distinctions are obvious, but 

 often they are less so, and producers induced to invest money 

 in a business too complicated for them; for example, while 

 any farmers' society can dry and sell fruit successfully, it can 

 seldom, if ever, make a success of a coo[)erative cannery, which 

 is a complicated manufacturing business in which several 

 times as much money has to be paid for sugar, labor, and 

 packing materials as for the fruit. It has not been found safe 

 to permit salaried employees, themselves mostly without expe- 

 rience, to expend three or four thousand dollars of money, 

 usually borrowed, in the purchase of material and labor to 



