1274 
ity. They may develop a system of dis- 
tribution and of market reporting which 
keeps them in daily touch with the mar- 
kets in every part of the United States 
and Canada and with the general move- 
ment of fruit in transit. They may ad- 
vertise their products extensively and 
through their organizations handle the 
legislative and other public-policy ques- 
tions that vitally affect the industry. 
Co-operation in the East 
In the central and eastern parts of the 
country the growing of fruit is not usu- 
ally specialized or localized. It is more 
likely to be an incidental feature of the 
general agriculture of a community. It 
is slowly developing into a specialized in- 
dustry, especially in many sections of the 
Hast and South, though it is still large- 
ly in the hands of men whose only ex- 
perience has been gained on the farm. In 
the eastern half of the United States, 
where irrigation is not required, the dif- 
ficulties of production are more easily 
overcome, competition among fruit buy- 
ers is more or less keen, markets are 
comparatively close at hand, and the 
problems of transportation and of mar- 
keting are not as acute as they are with 
the Western fruit grower. 
The need of co-operation has not faced 
the Eastern fruit grower as squarely as 
it has the grower in the West. Hence, 
the co-operative movement has been of 
slower development in the East, except 
in such industries as grape growing in 
Western New York and the citrus-fruit 
industry in Florida, where the stability 
of the capital invested has been threaten- 
ed as a result of a haphazard system of 
individual distribution or of local sell- 
ing and marketing. Under these condi- 
tions there have been formed virile or- 
ganizations of growers for the distribu- 
tion and marketing of the products, and 
such organizations when properly di- 
rected have been successful. 
The Individualism, of the Farmer 
Co-operation among farmers is more 
difficult to effect than the consolidation 
of capital in other business enterprises. 
The farmer is the most individualistic of 
American citizens. It is not easy for him 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
to transact his business with his neigh- 
bors. Independence in handling his af- 
fairs is a tradition that has been his for 
generations. He would rather conduct 
his business man to man, as his fathers 
have done before him, unless necessity 
compels him to do otherwise. The co- 
operative movements that have been or- 
ganized among prosperous fruit growers 
have usually failed. The social, the po- 
litical, or the altruistic motives have not 
been strong enough to hold a group of 
money-making farmers together. The 
only successful co-operative efforts until 
recently have been those which have been 
born of desperate necessity. 
Co-operation must be effected when the 
fruit industry is at low ebb to have the 
virility to live in the face of the attacks 
to which all such efforts are at first sub- 
jected, bul after the growers have learn- 
ed the power of co-operation as a busi- 
ness opportunity, their organizations be- 
come permanent and exert a powerful in- 
fluence in the development of a better 
social life, and, through their participa- 
tion in the progress and management of 
rural affairs, in the development of a 
better citizenship. No other agency is so 
powerful in bringing about better farm- 
ing, better methods of handling the in- 
dustry, a greater prosperity, and a better 
community than a group of farmers who 
are successfully organized to protect and 
develop their agricultural interests. The 
American farmer is beginning to realize 
that the powerful influence of consoli- 
dated capital has been the source of the 
tremendous industrial progress of the last 
generation. He is beginning to take a 
greater interest in the possibilities of 
co-operative action when applied to his 
own problems. 
Fundamental Principles of Co-operation 
There are many kinds of co-operative 
associations among the fruit growers of 
the United States. In a non-profit asso- 
ciation, which represents the ideal type 
of co-operation, the members usually 
have an equal voice in its management 
and share proportionately in its benefits 
and risks. Such an organization is a 
voluntary industrial democracy in which 
