Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1911-11-16
COOPERATION, CITY AND coUN-
TRY

TRY
Whatever advantages the city may
claim over the country, either as a
! place of residence or as an arena for
business enterprise, are mainly due to
the fact that in the city the principle
of cooperation has found larger de-
velopment. The cooperation may be
often involuntary, and in many cases
the principle has been perverted to
the enrichment of corporate and other
monopolies; but it nevertheless so
permeates all municipal life as to con-
stitute the largest factor in the max
ing of the city. The improved road
ways and. sidewalks, the water supply
and sewer systems, gas and electric
lighting and heating facilities, the
trolley lines, telephone service, parks,
libraries picture galleries, hospitals,
express deliveries, cheap amusements
and superior school advantages ALI
are the fruits of varied application
of the cooperative plan.'' For CO.
operation is simply an agreement by
number of men to unite in doing
or maintaining something which none
of them, individually, would be able to
do or maintain. The mere fact of h
mans taking up his residence in a
city makes him, however involun-
tarily, a co-operator in all it's works
OF public service. Their maintenance
is part of the "cost Of living there
The growth of cooperation has
been more rapid in the cities because
OF the multiplied contacts among the
number of people there brought to-
gether, which have practically forced
them to join hands for the general
advancement, along some lines; and
along others, has made it easy for the
corporate and monopolistic beneficial
ries of cooperation to levy the tribute
charged for the use of their several
conveniences - cOnveniences which
the multitude was not vet ready to
install from it's own resources. But
today similar contacts stimulated by
the presence of the telephone, the
trolley, the daily mails, and all that
they imply-are as numerous in many
a country district as they were in the
7 city of "yg aldeh tsi1nea before The ssa-
/ vent there of the agencies named.
And the multiplication of contacts
stirs the progressive spirit in the
country as it has done in the city.
And that spirit can find no outlet like
that afforded by the development of
cooperation.
How many are the avenues of bene
ficent endeavor which center at Co
operations door! Yet how few of
those avenues have we, until recently,
tried to penetrate! We have made
some beginnings with cooperative
elevators and grain selling; with
creameries and egg-selling associa-
tions: with livestock shipping and
stock-breeding associations; with
frultgrowers' and market-gardeners
unions. But nine-tenths of the busi-
ness in the several lines named. ex-
cept in the case of creameries, is still
handled on a non-co-operative basis:
and this in the face of repeated dem
onstration in securing larger returns
to the farmer.
The extension of cooperation along
these lines may we'll engage a large
share of the new spirit now kindling
So, also, may the "Good Roads" move
ment, than which few cooperative un-
dertakings promise more. Such ex-
tension will make easier the applica-
tion of the cooperative idea to the
purchase and use of costly farm ma
chinery: to the creation - where
neighbors are sufficiently near-of
permanent supply of running water;
to the common raising, for shipment
by the carload, of single kind of
vegetable, single breed of cattle or
hogs, single type Of horses; to the
establishment of social and civic cen
ters at schoolhouses or churches: to
the beautifying of country roads with
shade-trees and side-lawns; to the es-
tablishment Of free government
news service, which shall enable the
country daily to compete with the
city sheet, and thus restore the indie
pendence and dignity of Journalism;
to the tightening of the burdens Of
the farmers wife hY tha establish.