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32 BULLETIN 1392, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Although local branches are specifically provided for in the gen- 
eral plan of organization, there is no unanimity of opinion among 
the leaders of the movement regarding either their value or activi- 
ties. In general, they have been described as informal advisory 
groups organized to render local aid in obtaining contracts, to en- 
courage deliveries, to disseminate information relative to associa- 
tion affairs, to furnish statistical data, to maintain proper morale 
in the membership, to promote better farm practices, and to bring 
about general improvements in rural life. Officials of some cen- 
tralized associations maintain that such locals are exceedingly valu- 
able and that they are necessary to success. Others assert with 
equal emphasis that they are a detriment, inasmuch as they not 
only attempt to dictate association policies but use their regular 
meetings to foster discontent and antagonism. These widely dif- 
ferent views are the results of their respective experiences with 
local “ contact ” organizations. 
The organization and maintenance of “contact” locals is not a 
widely accepted principle or a recognized feature of the cotton asso- 
ciation, at least at the present time. They have not functioned as 
the leaders anticipated, and the trend is definitely away from the 
local branch and toward a general community organization. These 
community organizations, which are being formed as a part of the 
field-service activities of several associations, are not branches or 
units. Membership is not limited to association members, or even 
cotton growers, but includes all of the men, women, and children who 
are interested in rural progress and community development. The 
organizations are designed to serve as contact groups for the cotton 
associations, although cooperative marketing is only one of their 
many interests. 
The underlying idea in the originally adopted plan to have in- 
formal branches or locals of the cotton associations seems to have 
been to obtain some of the advantages enjoyed by federations with- 
out losing the control characteristic of centralized associations. In 
federations like the California Fruit Growers’ Exchange the locals 
own and operate packing plants, maintain their own pools, and in 
other ways handle and control their own product. Unlike these 
locals in associations of the federated type, those in the cotton co- 
operatives have had social rather than business activities. 
The problem in developing and maintaining effective locals of the 
“contact ” type has been further complicated by the fact that mem- 
bers in a given geographical area may include plantation owners, 
small land owners, tenants, and croppers, both whites and negroes. 
Their relationships are, for the most part, business relationships. or 
the satisfaction of social desires each class in the given geographical 
area may go outside that area and meet others of the same class 
from other areas. These conditions are also factors to be reckoned 
with in the more recently adopted plan of community organization, 
in fact in any plan of rural grouping. i 
In general, the attempt of centralized cooperatives to organize 
their members in rural communities, largely on a geographical basis, 
as social (nonbusiness) locals or branches of business organizations, 
has not been satisfactory. Experience, however, is developing a 
better understanding of the factors that must be considered in the 
