THE CENTRAL EXCHANGE 145 



When these men go home to their district exchanges and 

 associations they cannot help but mold local policies along 

 broad lines, while without these frequent conferences local 

 issues might easily obscure that intelligent and comprehen- 

 sive procedure in marketing problems for which the ex- 

 change system is noted. 



Since the central exchange, like the associations and 

 district exchanges, has a provision that any member can 

 withdraw at the end of any year it appears that the ex- 

 change system depends for success on ability to satisfy its 

 8,000 members and not on coercion. An individual mem- 

 ber, an association, or a district exchange uses its own 

 judgment about whether it will remain a part of the co- 

 operative structure or withdraw from it. There are no 

 penalties or losses or formalities involved in severing mem- 

 bership, and one may be quite certain that the people who 

 are in the exchange are there because they believe that it 

 can serve their requirements better than any of the ordinary 

 markting agencies that are available to farmers. This free- 

 dom from coercion does not result, however, in an unstable 

 organization. Within the local associations there is some 

 slight instability of membership, a member leaving now 

 and then and an outside grower joining occasionally. The 

 defections do not quite balance the accessions, so the asso- 

 ciations are gradually gaining in power and prestige and 

 need not worry over a few trifling losses. Though having 

 full power to do so, an association very seldom withdraws 

 from the exchange syste'm, and no district exchange has 

 ever severed its relation in order to leave the system. Hence 

 the exchange as a whole has a constant and permanent 

 business, although the personnel of the constituent growers 

 is constantly being slowly altered. 



There are still other provisions of the contract which 

 demand discussion, but some repetition can be saved by 



