Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1910-12-07
AGRICULTURAL COOPERATION
Wallace's Farmer Explains Why Ag.
ricultural Cooperation Has Not
Been IL Great Success.

iAoNC DNSh tohihS pui hOllIS
of the few efforts that have proved
to be eminently successful. We
have concluded that there are sew
eral conditions without which any
great degree of success cannot be
obtained.
First in Importance is business ca
pacity required and will depend upon
the amount of business to be con-
Quoted; but whether that be large
or small, the business capacity must
be commensurate with the magni-
tude of the business. In California
We found cooperative enterprises
which paid five thousand dollars and
over for the services of the princi-
pal executive officers. This, of
course, was in the great fruit grow
ers association, where property to
the extent of millions of doilars was
handled. In Colorado we found a
similar cooperative concern. We
found also the same excellent and
well paid business capacity.
When it comes down to conduct
ing farm operations, co-operators
are not always willing to pay the
market price for ability of this char
acter. When the grange stores were
established, in the seventies, farm
ers were willing to pay good farm
wage for man to move to town and
conduct the business, but they were
unwilling to pay the salary which a
man of like ability in town demand
ed for conducting a business of like
magnitude. A thousand dollars a
year then looked like a very large
sum for the management of
grange store. The farmer, no mat
ter how skillful he might be in
swapping horses, in feeding cattle or
selling them, undertook new bust
ness when he attempted to manage
store, and generally failed. What
these oranges should have done was
to have gone into the market and
hired the best storekeeper that could
be found in the town or county, and
then pay him more than any other
merchant, would give him. First
secure an honest man, and then
trust him.
1t will be found wherever coop
erative enterprises succeed, that the
patrons have learned to pull togeth-
err; and wherever they have failed,
one of the causes was that they
were not accustomed to team work
and did not pull together. This is
not surprising. The farmer in all
time past has been an individualist
He has relied upon himself. He was
obliged to do so. Accustomed to
this, and rather inclined to distrust
his neighbor, with whom he was
perhaps not very we'll acquainted, it
is not strange that farmers are slow
in acquiring that confidence in each
other and that ability to work to
each others hand, that recognition
of leadership, which successful CO.
operation absolutely demands.
Farmers are more individualistic
now than they were half century
ago. One man can now build a sta
BILE, if he is handy with tools; but
one man could not build barn
then. He had to have raising"
He had to call in his neighbors. He
had to have a leader. and when the
leader said, "Heave! o, heave!" ev-
cry man had to heave, and thus
raise the big beam up to the square.
If one or two men failed, disaster
might come to the whole neighbor-
hood. There was team work then.
The farmer has become more indie
pendent of his neighbor; hence does
not recognize leadership so readily,
and thus fails in one of the essen
tials of successful cooperation.
Where men have confidence in each
other, work together, pull together
and follow the leadership which they
have themselves created, they can
cooperate in almost anything.
We have never seen successful
cooperative movement where farm
ers failed to be loyal to that move
ment as such. They have been like
all other persons, namely, more OIL
less easily tempted by present i'm
mediate profits. To illustrate
When cooperative creameries were
established, it was difficult to hold
the patrons( (there is the same diff
ficulty now if an outsider offered
cent or two more per pound FOL
butter fat than the creamery car
give. 1t is the same way with the
elevator companies. The co-opera
tive elevator companies were oblig
ed to require the man who accepted
this higher price from rival ele
vator to turn over part OF the in
crease to the cooperative. There l!
no one thing that so arouses the ire
of the line companies as this regu
lation of the co-operatives, that the
man who accepts higher price
shall pay a certain per cent of the
increase into the treasury of the CO
operative.
No cooperative company can hope
| to succeed unless ii is made up o.
men who cannot be tempted by ;
cent or two on a bushel of grain o.
pound of butter fat. On this poin
human nature, not merely rural, IL
"unco' weak" The larger corpora
tons have found in the past that /
they could offer lower prices to thu
buyer and higher prices to the sell
er men would desert their co-opera
tive company and weaken 1t to sucl
an extent that 1t could not do bust
ness, and was forced to sell to thu
best bidder. Then after the coop
erative had gone out of existence thu
other company would recoup III
losses and much more by putting III
prices to the buyer and lowering
prices to the seller.
No cooperative company in an!
line succeeds unless men are broad
minded enough to see something be
| tho aAiata praoauf oduo N