ve farmer to get
his neighbors to cooeperate in so simple a matter as hauling their
milk cans to the creamery, and so every day in the year ten horses are
hitched to ten delivery wagons carrying two or three milk cans apiece,
and driven by ten drivers along the same road to and from the railroad
station. One driver and two horses could easily carry as much or
more, as is done now in many other dairy districts. Even of successful
cooeperation among farmers sympathetic critics are forced to say: "Many
students of rural economics assert that cooeperation as applied to the
distribution and marketing of farm products is not very successful
unless it is founded upon dire necessity. When the records of the
organizations of the country are analyzed it becomes almost necessary
to accept that statement. So long as farmers do fairly well in their
own way they are not inclined to cooeperate."

Sec. 11. #Rapid growth of farmers' selling cooeperation#. Despite what has
just been said, cooeperation among farmers now is more developed and is
growing faster than all other kinds of cooeperation in America. This
is most marked in farming communities in the West, especially in
California and in the Middle Western or Northwestern states (e.g.,
Minnesota and Wisconsin). There the farmers are younger, and many have
been educated in the state agricultural colleges. They all produce
nearly the same kinds of crops of staple produce which must be shipped
to distant markets. The need of uniting to get what they thought
would be fair treatment from the railroads, and to protect themselves
against the abuses of the competitive commission salesagents, seems to
have given the first impetus to farmers' cooeperation.

The most notable developments were those of the California Fruit
Exchange and of cooeperative societies of the Northwest for marketing
grain. The membership of the former is made up entirely of the
local citrus growers' associations in California. It has a complete
organization of selling agents in the Eastern cities and a remarkably
efficient, tho simple, system of equalizing and expediting shipments.
Now the agricultural cooeperative associations of various kinds are
multiplying all over the country, for shipping live stock, fruits,
butter, cheese, and other farm products. Cooeperation for these
purposes called forth new activities; packing houses were built, and
grain elevators and creameries and dairies, and now a goodly number of
th