AMERICAN TOBACCO TYPES, USES, AND MARKETS 75 
which they dispose of their products. Some of these attempts have 
been successful; others have been short lived and, judged by imme- 
diate results, have ended in failure, if not disaster. Viewed broadly, 
however, they have contributed much to a proper understanding of 
the problems and fundamental requirements of successful organization 
among growers, and substantial progress has been made in solving 
those problems and meeting those requirements. 
The underlying objective of a cooperative tobacco marketing asso- 
ciation is to enable producers to attain a greater degree of bargaining 
power than is possible when they act alone, and to enable them to 
bring about improvements and increase efficiency in marketing their 
crop. 
The problems of cooperative marketing are many and varied. It 
is an intricate business enterprise entailing large investments of capital, 
business operations on a comprehensive scale, and dealings in a com- 
modity differentiated into many grades, characteristics, and uses. 
The requirements for success consequently involve capable business 
direction combined with technical knowledge of a high order. 
Since the cooperative must compete directly with existing market- 
ing machinery, it follows that success will depend upon its ability to 
perform the marketing functions at less expense than is entailed by 
‘ other methods. This involves the question of efficiency of the busi- 
ness organization itself and the question of volume of tobacco handled 
by which the overhead expense can be held to a minimum in cost per 
hundred pounds. 
In former years cooperative tobacco-marketing associations were 
organized with the idea of monopoly control. It was believed that 
through control of a major portion of the crop, cooperatives could 
dictate the price at which their tobacco would be sold. Since many 
erowers did not become members, the cooperatives’ control over 
supply was not complete. The cooperatives lack the ability fully to 
regulate supply in relation to demand, and as a result attempts to 
maintain prices at artificial levels were not uniformly successful. 
Many of them attained initial success in establishing higher price 
levels but as membership declined, or as production by nonmembers 
increased, the strategic position of the associations became weakened 
and prices tended toward lower limits. 
Through these associations, marketing activities of large numbers 
of tobacco growers over comparatively wide areas were centralized 
in One organization whose monopolistic features were reflected in the 
long-term contracts which the growers were required to sign. These 
contracts contained drastic penalties for failure of the growers to 
deliver the tobacco to the association and generally included no pro- 
vision for withdrawal during the life of the contract. Many growers 
joined the associations without a clear understanding of what cooper- 
ation could and could not do and were therefore unprepared for the 
failure of their associations to do the things they had been led to 
believe could be accomplished through cooperative effort. 
The situation was further aggravated by the fact that the pooling 
and withholding from sale of a substantial percentage of the crop 
stimulated prices paid to nonmembers on the open auctions. The 
nonmembers were apparently benefited as to prices by the measures 
adopted by the association, and this fact coupled with the unavoid- 
able delays in final settlement for members’ tobacco caused further 
