THE POULTRY PRODUCING COMMUNITY 
Brisbane is right. The individual, or the corporation, which 
is an individual using other men’s money, foreruns co-opera- 
tion, because the individual knows exactly what he wants to 
do and the big group of individuals does not know what they 
want or how to do it until individuals have, by concrete suc- 
cesses, shown them. 
When the creameries were started, co-operative creameries 
were unsuccessful and could not compete with privately owned 
creameries. The farmers have now become too wise to be 
“easy-marks” to the fake creamery promoters or to trust their 
butter sales to a comparative stranger and co-operation is a 
success. 
Poultry communities cannot be made out of whole cloth by 
the co-operative plan. Private corporations will be necessary 
to launch these enterprises. When they haye reached the 
stage of development now to be seen in Little Compton and 
Petaluma they are ready for co-operation. 
I have emphasized the point that the private corporation is 
the natural forerunner in this matter in order to discourage 
premature or over-ambitious efforts at co-operation. Whenever 
a community of poultrymen or, for that matter, a community 
of growers of any perishable form of products, who are al- 
ready successful in the producing end, wish to take up co-op- 
eration and will see that men are selected to manage it who 
will use the same precautions to guard against incompetency 
or graft that they, as individuals, would use in their own busi- 
ness, there is excellent chance of success. 
Go slow. Do not expect to get rich quick by “cutting out 
the middleman’s enormous profits,” for the middleman’s profits 
are not enormous, and if you see that your co-operation is not 
paying, give it up and confess to yourselves that you do not 
know as much about the business as your private competitors. 
