THIRTY-THIRD BIENNIAR SESSION 
22Q 
mucli more complex, even when you think of the number of bugs and fungi 
and other things that get into your fruit trees, for the simple reason thajt 
every individual grower who will arm himself with the information which is 
available and readily obtainable can handle his production problems in- 
dividually. Just as soon as you get to marketing and distribution you lose 
control of your product; transportation, refrigeration, storage, all of these 
things enter, over which the producer has no control and which have a 
very profound effect on his product. For this reason we are making the 
study of transportation and storage problems one of the important subdi- 
visions of the work of the Office of Markets. 
The enormous wastes; the enormous loss incident to the distribution 
of our present fruit crop is sufficient evidence of the need for such work. 
All of these things can be done more effectively when the growers are or- 
ganized, when they deal with the transportation companies and the ware- 
house companies as large units instead of small units, as units whose busi- 
ness is worth while, or as units whose business counts when you ask for a 
favor, or for a service, rather— its giving is regarded as a favor. 
Some of the members of the Convention before I came in asked whether 
we were going to- be able to give any practical help. That is just exactly 
what we want to do. We are interested in the theory of this matter only in 
so far as the theory keeps our practice trued up. With reference to as- 
sistance to cooperative organizations, we are preparing systems of account- 
ing suitable for different types of organizations, we are securing a wide 
knowledge and a very large collection of constitutions and by-laws for 
different types of cooperative enterprises, and these are to be put at the 
disposal of persons or groups interested in forming cooperative organiza- 
tions. We are planning to assist in devising courses of study, not only in 
cooperation — and we have done some of this already — but on marketing 
in general, suitable for the curricula of our agricultural colleges and such 
of the universities as offer courses in rural economics and other institu- 
tions which are interested in this very great problem. 
We plan also to assist so far as possible in the dissemination of infor- 
mation as to the best methods of organizing and operating cooperative or- 
ganizations. As you know, there are at the present time joint stock com- 
panies which call themselves cooperative; there are individually owned 
and individually conducted corporations which call themselves cooperative; 
and there is every shade and color from that down to the truly cooperative 
organizations, which have one share and one vote, with a reasonable inter- 
est on capital — and all calling themselves cooperative. We need to clarify 
the “cooperative” atmosphere considerably, so that a cotton growers’ as- 
sociation or a cotton growers’ organization, as it calls itself, cannot mas- 
querade under the name of “cooperative,” organize in all the cotton states 
of the South, and go ahead on that fictitious basis when as a matter of fact 
it is nothing in the world hut an ordinary business organization — men or- 
ganized to make as much money as they can for themselves out of the 
cotton business. And I know the same condition prevails in the fruit business. 
