American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man ”—Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
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Volume 112 For the Week Ending November 10, 1923 Number 19 
What Is Wrong With the Cooperatives? 
Those That Fail to Profit By Experience Will Be Weeded Out 
F OR many years after this country 
was settled the farmers had no real 
marketing problems. Every farm 
was a complete production plant 
where nearly everything that the family 
needed to eat and wear was grown, and 
every kitchen was a laboratory where food 
products were prepared and preserved, and 
rude clothes were manufactured. Each 
man’s farm was his kingdom where it was 
pretty nearly true that the farmer was 
“monarch of all he surveyed,” and where he 
was more nearly independent than he has 
ever been since or ever will be again. 
But times changed, as they have a habit 
of doing, especially in progressive America. 
As the changing times began to 
bring more population and new 
problems, the farmer began to 
lose some of his independence and 
to depend more and more upon 
agencies outside of his farm. A 
marketing problem therefore de¬ 
veloped. It was necessary to buy 
more and more supplies for the 
farm and in order to get the 
money to buy .them, the farmer 
found that he had to sell more 
surplus products. Because his 
sold products were surplus, more 
or less unimportant at first, he 
paid little attention to selling 
them properly, and when he did 
wake up at last to the fact that 
he was getting the bad end of the 
deal, both going and coming, in 
the markets, he found it too late 
to do anything with the situation 
as an individual. The middle 
men had the market business 
pretty well sewed up and moreover, they in¬ 
tended to keep it so. 
As the cities 'began* to grow, and to bring 
their food from longer distances, the prob¬ 
lem constantly became more complicated and 
the farmer found it increasingly difficult to 
get anything like fair prices for what he had 
to sell. For two generations or longer the 
farmers bitterly complained about market 
conditions when they met each other on the 
road or at the milk stations, but their dis¬ 
satisfaction was usually limited to merely 
finding fault. Sometimes individual farm¬ 
ers became indignant and tried to take some 
action, or small groups got together, but 
without success. A few larger groups of 
farmers who tried to buck the dealers, al¬ 
ways failed because they could not stick to¬ 
gether. \ 
Finally, about the beginning of the World 
War, conditions became so intolerable on the 
farms that there was a general uprising of 
farmers from one end of the country to the 
other. Absolute necessity forced them to 
organize and they proceeded to do so in 
nearly every farm community and with 
nearly every farm product in America. The 
past ten years will go down in American 
history as the age of the great agrarian up¬ 
rising, which may well be called the Coop¬ 
erative Era. 
By E. R. EASTMAN 
• 
Cooperative associations have been or¬ 
ganized by the hundreds. There are at least 
twenty large milk sales cooperatives in the 
country, and in New York State alone there 
are twelve large farmers’ organizations for 
buying or selling farm supplies or products, 
besides something like 1,224 small ones or¬ 
ganized in the counties and communities. 
Without the least doubt, cooperative organiz¬ 
ing has been overdone. Much that has been 
done was not well done. Any movement, 
however good, always goes too far. Coop¬ 
eration has been preached as a fetish, almost 
as a religion. It has been advocated as a 
cure-all for all marketing evils; many of 
its advocates and supporters take the atti¬ 
tude that nothing can be wrong if done under 
the name of “cooperation” ; they insist that 
the cooperative associations are perfect. Its 
enemies, on the other hand, go to the other 
extreme and will not admit the good points 
and the successes. There have been organi¬ 
zations for organization sake; there have 
been organizations to give the organizers 
jobs; mistakes have been made and hushed 
up ; and successes have been over-emphasized. 
In order to get men to join, promises have 
been eloquently made that have never had a 
chance to be realized. The great difference 
between the farmers’ prices and the consum¬ 
ers’ prices have been pointed out by the 
organizers, and the farmers told that coop¬ 
eration and cooperation alone would wipe 
out all the difference, and all he had to do to 
bring about immediate success to his busi¬ 
ness was to sign on the dotted line. 
Perhaps there was no other way to get 
the farmer to join, for he is not naturally a 
“joiner.” He and his ancestors had lived 
too long on the lonesome pioneer farms and 
worked out too many problems alone to re¬ 
alize that the marketing problem was one 
that could not be solved alone. So he was 
slow to understand that nearly every other 
group was working together.^nd he was 
very slow to orgaiftze. Perhaps the advan¬ 
tages of organization had to be over-empha¬ 
sized. Anyway, the organizers were success¬ 
ful, or partially so, for the farmers joined 
up by thousands, and the cooperatives be¬ 
gan to perfect their machinery, to set up 
their offices, and to get busy. 
For a time, practically all of them suc¬ 
ceeded, or appeared to do so. Most of them 
were organized during the war; prices were 
on the up-grade, and the newly organized co¬ 
operatives got the credit for all the increase. 
They were certainly entitled to some of it. 
Had it not been for organization, the dealer 
and not the farmer would have received 
most of the benefit of the increased prices. 
During the first years of coop¬ 
eration, there was much loyalty 
and enthusiasm. Many of the milk 
organizations pulled off successful 
strikes. This increased the en¬ 
thusiasm and support, and the 
dealers who “had first come to 
sneer at cooperation remained to 
pray.” 
But finally the good times came 
to an end. The European war 
markets ceased, and the farmer, 
who had been the last to realize 
any benefits from those prices, 
was the first and the worst to get 
paught when they went down. He 
began to look around for some¬ 
thing to kick and the first thing he 
found was his cooperative organi¬ 
zation. And kick it he did! He 
could not understand why, when 
he had been told so much about 
the wonderful efficiency of his 
organization, that it could not 
save him from declining prices. 
The cooperatives began to realize that a 
friend in need is a friend indeed. They found 
that the enthusiasm of many of their mem¬ 
ber supporters depended upon the organiza¬ 
tion getting good prices. Many members, 
finding that cooperation was not the panacea 
for all of their troubles, dropped out; others 
constantly threatened to. Having been told 
by the organizers of the great profits be¬ 
tween the producers and the consumers, the 
members constantly asked and are still ask¬ 
ing why their organization did not bring 
those profits back to the producers. 
The cooperative management on their part 
found, too, that many of the ideals and ob¬ 
jects upon which the cooperative movement 
had been organized were all wrong. They 
found that there was a really tremendous 
service which had to be performed in taking 
the products from the* farms and putting 
them into the consumers’ hands; they found 
that this service cost money, and they found, 
too, that the only hope or excuse for the ex¬ 
istence of their organization was in being 
able to render this service cheaper and bet-\ 
ter than the distributors already on the job. 
But this was not a glowing fact upon which 
to build the farmers’ enthusiasm for coop¬ 
eration. It was just a plain, cold matter of 
(Continued on page 321) 
| 
Coming 
W HAl* salaries should cooperative associations pay their officers? 
What kind of officers and directors should be elected to run 
the cooperatives? Why does a nonmember get more money for his 
product in many cases than a member? Are the overhead expenses 
of a cooperative too high ? Is there politics in the management of the 
cooperatives; if so, how much damage does it do? Should the farmers’ 
organizations be managed largely through central control or local 
control? What about the contracts with members, should they have 
teeth in them and should they be for a long or short period ? What 
is the future of the cooperative movement? 
These and other intensively interesting topics will be frankly dis¬ 
cussed in coming numbers of American Agriculturist. Watch for them, 
for you will be sorry if you miss them. The first one is on this page.— 
The Editors. 
