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eT RS eT ens MEEBO Crea 
DIVIDENDS IN COOPERATIVE GRAIN COMPANIES. 0 
in book form becomes too cumbersome to be economically feasible 
for daily use under these more complex conditions. 
In the county plan several elevators are grouped together into a 
single unit, with the control centering in a general office supervised 
by a general manager. As any system of accounts devised for this 
type of organization should aim to minimize the work of each local 
manager, all accounting, except such as is required for the recording 
of sales of merchandise to local patrons, is recorded in the central 
office. In this case a system of grain-purchase tickets will take the 
place of the patronage ledger. Each station manager will record 
upon a suitable ticket all the grain received from a certain patron 
during a business day. At the end of the day these tickets will be 
forwarded to the central office, together with the report of all the 
business transactions of the day. At the central office these grain- 
purchase tickets should be alphabetized by the names of the patrons. 
If the grain has been received and not paid for, such tickets are filed 
according to number in another compartment of the filing drawer, to 
be removed to the alphabetical file upon notice that the grain has been 
purchased. By this method cf filing it becomes possible, through the 
use of an adding machine, to arrive at the business transacted with 
each of the patrons during any period by simply adding together the 
totals of the tickets registered under each name. In the case of sales 
of merchandise, a similar filing system should be used, each of the 
patron’s purchases being filed under his name. At the end of the 
year the bookkeeper would be able to record on his patronage ledger, 
under the name of each patron, the total transactions of both kinds of 
business occurring during the year. It has been customary under 
the county-unit plan to keep the business of each elevator separate 
and apart from that of any other belonging to the group. For this 
reason the profit derived from the business of each of these elevators 
also can be determined. 
Although it is usual to consider the profits of the organization as 
a whole when distributing patronage dividends under this arrange- 
ment, a condition sometimes has arisen which has been the subject 
of considerable discussion. By keeping each elevator’s business en- 
tirely separate, in some instances the patrons of the different elevators 
have been paid their pro rata share of the profits of the elevator with 
which they did business. In some cases different elevators operating 
at a less relative cost per bushel have been able to pay a higher per 
bushel dividend than others in the same group. The following ques- 
tion has then arisen: Inasmuch as each patron is contributing to the 
prosperity of the county organization on a per bushel basis, from 
which it is assumed the same margin of profit has been taken, would 
it not be more equitable if the gross profits of the organization were 
pooled, the entire expenses deducted, and each patron paid his equal 
