COOPERATION IN AGRICULTURE 



CHAPTER I 



CHANGES IN INDUSTRIAL METHODS 



IN the last few decades, the industrial horizon of this 

 country has been rapidly widening. Fifty years ago, the 

 outlook of the American was bounded by his home and 

 his community; his capital was small, his business 

 interests were equally limited. But, during the period 

 of the Civil War, mechanical invention was greatly stim- 

 ulated and this was correlated with rapid progress in 

 manufacturing and in foreign and domestic commerce. 

 The telegraph, the telephone, the steamship, the modern 

 locomotive, together with the Bessemer steel rail and the 

 wireless telegraph, have displaced the personal mes- 

 senger and the stage-coach and the sailing vessel, and 

 have brought the whole world into instant communica- 

 tion. 



The last generation has been primarily the age of the 

 inventor, and not only of mechanical appliances, but of 

 business methods as well. Combinations in all kinds of 

 business have been formed, capital has been concentrated 

 around gigantic undertakings, various systems of credit 

 have been developed, and instruments of business devised 

 to extend the influence and power of capital and of those 



