16 Cooperation in Agriculture 



eral discontent. It is a common fault that they have 

 aimed too high to be useful. Many of them have been 

 formed ahead of their time through the efforts of oppor- 

 tunists when there was no real call for organization or 

 when the farmers were too prosperous to hold together. 

 Many have been managed by incompetent local men who 

 have been unsuccessful in business or who have been 

 selected by the farmers because of evidence of local leader- 

 ship rather than for business qualities, and, finally, the 

 great majority of the organizations have been managed 

 by totally incompetent, low-salaried men because the 

 farmers have not realized that a business organization 

 to succeed depends primarily on a manager possessing a 

 high order of business and organizing ability. Such or- 

 ganizations have had a short, violent existence and have 

 died as every business undertaking must when born pre- 

 maturely or when placed in the hands of inexperienced, 

 incompetent leaders. 



It would be unfair to overlook the splendid efforts of 

 many of those who, in the past, have tried to organize 

 the farmers under a better business system. Many of 

 these enthusiastic men have set forth principles that 

 underlie the most successful organizations of the present 

 time. They may have been in advance of the necessity 

 for organizing. They may have been ahead of the eco- 

 nomic and social ideals of the people whose condition they 

 tried to improve. Their ideas may have been crude and 

 impractical, but they scattered seeds among the rural 

 classes which have been growing and developing more 

 perfectly and which are now reaching the harvest time. 

 Every movement that seeks to reorganize and to establish 



