Appendix F 



COOPERATIOlSr. 



7. COOPERATION AMONG FARMERS. 



There are few statistics of cooperation among farmers in the United States 

 for business purposes. There is probably much more of it than we know any- 

 thing about. As is inevitable in the beginning of the practice, large numbers 

 of societies are started without adequate foundation and amount to nothing. 

 Still others start off well, but develop no staying qualities, and soon pass away. 

 In many cases societies— especially cooperative creameries- are started by those 

 who do not develop the business capacity to make them profitable, and so pass 

 into the hands of better business men, as private concerns, while still retaining 

 the cooperative title. 



The purposes for which cooperative societies of farmers have been formed in 

 this country, are, in the probable order of their relative importance, creameries, 

 irrigating ditch companies, fire insurance companies, marketing societies, 

 general stores, and flouring mills. Our decennial census reports ought to show 

 the facts as to the progress of cooperative work, but thus far have not done so. 

 I understand that there is a probability that some inquiry will be made as to 

 these facts in the census of 1900. I am not able to find data from which to 

 form any estimate of the present status of cooperation in the United States, 

 and therefore do not attempt it. 



I gathered, in 1898, for the United States Department of Agriculture, as 

 good a list as was possible by correspondence, of the farmers' cooperative 

 societies of California. It included seventy-three irrigating ditch companies 

 (certainly incomplete), three flouring mills, and two fire insurance companies. 

 It was impossible to obtain by correspondence a list of the cooperative cream- 

 eries. Some of the granges and farmers' clubs do more or less purchasing for 

 their members. There were once a good many cooperative stores, but none 

 were ever managed on the Eoclulale plan, and while some are still in existence 

 and retain the cooperative title, if any remain really cooperative I do not 

 know it. 



The following is a list, very nearly correct, of the cooperative fruit market- 

 ing societies of California which actually did business in 1898, or are so 

 organized as to give reasonable assurance of permanence. Quite a number of 

 new ones are in process of organization; tlu' sales of these societies, in 1898- 

 ( G02 ) 



