278 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
^association in some form, and it is a modified or partial co-opera¬ 
tion that I shall venture to suggest. 
I am well aware that this idea of co-operation is rather repul¬ 
sive to the American farmer. His social science has long been 
summed up in the adage “Let every tub stand on its own bot¬ 
tom.” He has cherished the idea of sturdy independence and re¬ 
liance upon his own resources, until the thought of co-operative 
effort strikes him as a very thin quality of moonshine. No other 
class of men are so sure to have an opinion on all subjects as your 
average Yankee farmer, and none are so sure to be sure that their 
opinions are right. The thought of submitting his efforts to the 
direction of others, or investing his capital where he cannot exer¬ 
cise full control over it, strikes his sturdy instincts as a parting 
with his birthright degrading to his manhood. So marked is this 
dissociative spirit of the farmer, that he can hardly co-operate in 
the organization of a church without losing his religion, or in the 
location of a schoolhouse without jeopardizing the cause of edu¬ 
cation in his neighborhood. The establishment and direction of 
a cheese factory is a tremendous pressure upon his milk of human 
kindness, as he must unite in action with others; each sure to 
have a different plan of procedure, and each equally persistent 
that his own idea shall prevail. The county agricultural society 
is, through the knotty-headed ness so peculiar to the farmer, a de¬ 
bating club where questions are decided after hot debate, to the 
satisfaction of but few, and the lay members generally agree only 
in regarding the management of the society as a Denmark of rot¬ 
tenness. 
Notwithstanding this tendency of the farmer to isolation, and 
to distrust the views and integrity of the rest of his fellow-men, 
I shall venture crudely to outline .‘a plan of co-operative effort, 
which seems to me worth the trial. Steering clear of those radi¬ 
cal phases of the subject which run into communism, I shall, also, 
avoid those other ideas of industrial association which involve a 
very considerable investment of joint capital, and which, as far as 
my observation extends, have proved to be failures, owing mainly 
to the chronic disinclination, before hinted at, of farmers to pull 
together. Associations or trades-unions of some form are becom¬ 
ing quite common in this country. Every book we buy now costs 
