COOPERATIVE MARKETING OF COTTON 3 
price appeal was dominant in organization campaigns. Usually the 
program combined (1) acreage reduction and (2) holding the crop 
for an established price. 
This crop-restriction, price-fixing program was sponsored and used 
by the Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union, following its 
formation in 1902. The Farmers’ Union was very active for a num- 
ber of years in conducting campaigns for limited production, advo- 
eating crop diversification, and promoting the establishment of co- 
operative warehouses for storing and holding cotton. It endeavored 
to prevent the large volume of fall selling by means of storing and 
financing in cooperative warehouses, and by naming a minimum 
price below which its members should not sell. In addition to stimu- 
lating warehouse construction, it advocated the sale of cotton on the 
basis of its class. Local marketing associations were later encour- 
aged. 
= 1917 the United States Department of Agriculture and the 
Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas entered into a coop- 
erative agreement providing assistance to community organizations 
of cotton growers in improving local marketing conditions. The 
purpose of this work, which was demonstrational in character, was 
to emphasize the relation of variety to uniformity of fiber; the 
advantages of growing a single variety in a community; the benefits 
accruing to the growers from proper ginning, baling, classing, and 
storing; and the economies in assembling and selling in large lots. 
That these purposes could be accomplished by local cooperation had 
been demonstrated by growers at Scott, Ark., who had organized an 
association for like purposes in 1912. 
The formation of a number of these organizations in 1917 and the 
results obtained under the plan attracted considerable attention. By 
1921 there were 43 organized communities in Texas, 6 in North Caro- 
lina, 19 in South Carolina, 2 in Mississippi, 3 in Arkansas, and 12 in 
Oklahoma, a total of 85 community organizations. During that 
year classers appointed as agents by the Department of Agriculture 
and paid in part by the cooperating farmers and the State colleges 
of agriculture classed over 450,000 bales of cotton. Of this quantity, 
about 60,000 bales were sold collectively by the growers. 
A few of the organized communities have continued this local one- 
community type of cooperative marketing, but most of them ceased 
to operate with the advent of the large, centrally controlled State- 
wide associations. 
Granting that cotton growers have had a decidedly limited expe- 
rience in cooperative organization and collective enterprise as a back- 
ground for the highly organized business cooperatives that are now 
in operation, it is apparent from a careful study of early organiza- 
tion activities that each effort or movement toward cooperation con- 
tributed something to the development or form of the contemporary 
movement. 
IMMEDIATE INFLUENCES 
_The economic conditions immediately responsible for the forma- 
tion of cooperative cotton-marketing associations after the World 
War were somewhat similar to those that influenced the Granger 
movement in the South’s reconstruction period. From a very low 
price in 1914 cotton reached an extremely high price in the 1919-20 
season. Then came the depression of 1920-21. The average price 
