e simple manufacturing processes are undertaken by these societies,
now numbering thousands.

Sec. 12. #Some economic features of farmers' selling cooeperation#. This
type of producers' selling cooeperation is proving in America to be far
more successful than producers' cooeperation among workingmen;[3] and
certain important economic features in it should be noted. The local
producers' selling cooeperative society is composed of farmers who as
enterprisers own and carry on their own separate businesses; they
are not, as in the other case, wage workers. Any productive processes
undertaken by this kind of society are subordinate to the main
business, being such as picking, packing, drying, preserving, and
making boxes for packing. This form of cooeperation with the related
form of consumers' cooeperation that is fostered by it, promises to
have a wide extension.

Some of these societies, as those dealing in citrus fruits, regulate
with some success the picking and the marketing so as to distribute
them more evenly throughout the year. They watch the markets and
direct their agents by telegraph to divert cars _en route_ away from
markets that are glutted with products and into markets where prices
are higher. They take some of the products, as eggs in the spring at
the period of low prices, and pack or refrigerate them, to be sold
when prices are higher. For thus withholding the supply they are said
by some to exercise a monopolistic power. But this is a more than
doubtful view. So long as only the seasonal variations are equalized
and the total supply of the year is not reduced it is, on the marginal
principle, an economic service to the consumers, comparable to
insurance in its utility. Any reduction of the area planted or of the
entrance of others into the industry would be a monopolistic act but
this as yet has not occurred.

Sec. 13. #Cooeperation in buying.# Cooeperative buying (called also
consumers' cooeperation or distributive cooeperation) has had a large
growth in the British Isles, since 1844, when the society called the
Rochdale Pioneers was founded by a group of factory workingmen. The
cooeperative stores, both in Great Britain and on the Continent, have
continued to develop mainly among the industrial classes in urban
centers. However, this has not been exclusively the case, and
particularly in Denmark and Ireland cooeperative buying has increased
in agriculture in connection with selling associations. Si