veloped by tariff walls."

[27] "The Fruits of Victory," p. 12, New York, 1921.

[28] _Ibid._, p. 14.

[29] (George William Russell), "The National Being," p. 167.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW COOPERATION STRENGTHENS THE COMMUNITY

The greatest improvements in marketing are being effected through
cooperation. We have indicated that willingness to work together for the
common good and loyalty to this principle are essential for successful
cooperative enterprises. As these same attitudes are the basis of
community life, it seems obvious that to the extent that membership in
cooperative associations becomes general throughout a community, the
stronger will be the community life. Indeed, the very etymology of the
two words, _cooperate_--to work together, and _community_--having in
common, indicate that community activities are essentially a form of
cooperation--of working together. Inasmuch as cooperative enterprises
are rapidly increasing and that they must, therefore, exercise a
powerful influence upon community life, it is necessary to gain a clear
idea of just what is involved in the principle of cooperation and to
what types of organization the term is applicable.

In a general way there has always been a certain amount of cooperation
between neighboring farmers in the exchange of work in barn-raisings,
threshing, silo-filling, slaughtering, etc. Out of this have grown such
cooperative organizations as threshing rings, and groups for the common
ownership and use of all sorts of more expensive machinery, the
cooperative ownership of sires, cow-test associations, and many other
forms of organization for mutual aid in farm operations. All of these
are cooperative associations in the common usage of the word
cooperation, but in recent years the term has come to have a more
technical meaning to denote a form of organization in contrast to the
corporation or stock company, which has been the most prevalent type of
business organization in recent years.

The cooperative association differs from the corporation or stock
company in three essentials. First, it is democratic in its control; all
true cooperative organizations employ the principle of "one man, one
vote," the influence of each member of the association being equal as
far as the legal control of its administration is concerned. The
individual members and not the amount of stock owned controls the policy
of the association. Cooperation is democracy applied to b