T II E
C 0-0 P
WAY.
Did you know that, more than- 3,000,000 Ameri can: famera, ard using their own cooperative
to buy things the^ need,, and to soli, the crops ythey i\aise'.' They are doing more than
2 billion dollars port's/of business through ,their co<?ns every yepr.
WJry, is. ...the Co-op Way better? 4
A farmer w\th 40 or 50 acres Of land usually cannot afford ‘to om a tractor. He could
use it. o'plyha for/days a year, and the tractor could not earn enough to make the in
vestment'worth’while. \
If 8 or 10 small •farmers get .together, however, they can buy one tractor -for all of
them to use. They can take turns using it to plow and harvest and torrace their
fields, so that it will be busy nearly all the time; no moiloy will be tied up in idle
machinery. All of them can have the best modern equipment, at very small cost,
because the investment is spread ever 10 farms instead of 1. Th6 tractor might have
lost money for 1 farmer; but for 10 farmers, it is good business.
That is an example of a cooperative in its simplest form. Cooperation simply means
"working together"—and thousands of small farmers havo found that they must work to
gether to keep from going broke.
For instance, Ed Carson is a little cotton farmer', tilling 15 acres with a lean mule
and a plowshare that was handed down from grandpa. Ho has a hard timo making ends'
meet. Ho cannot'compote on oven terms with the big corporation farm down the road,
which operates 3,000 acres with tractors and gang plows, buys .its sood.and fertiliser
wholesale, atid sends its cotton to its own gin.
If ho does not want to go bankrupt and'lose his land, Ed Carson will'havo to uso tho
modern equipment and .efficient methods, just like his big competitor. Ther.g is only
one way ho can do it—ho can get together with tho other little farmers in his
neighborhood and start a cooperative.
They car. buy one or two pieces of g<5od oquipinent for all of . thorn to use. They can
pool their money and buy their seed, fertiliser, and other 'farm and household sup
plies in largo quantities—therefore getting better quality at lower prices. They'
nay find that it is good business td sell their pigs and truck crops cooperatively,
instead ef peddling them separately, a wagonload at a time. In the. long run, thoy
may even be able to start a cooperative cotton' gin, owned jointly by all the little
farmers in the township. Then.they can save a good part oi' their ginning foes, just
like the big company farm which operates its oral gin,
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All o%rer the country small farmers arc doing those/ things and making money at it,
Thcro is nothing new about this voy of doing business, .American farers have boon
working together in co-ops for more than a hundred years—ever'since 1810, when a fow
Connecticut dairymen set up a cooperative cheese plant. Today, however, moro little
farmers are joining co-ops than over boforo, bcbausc it is getting hArdor and hardor
for the fanily-sizo farm to compete against the big commercial farm?, which are run
like factories with all kinds of modern equipment, '•
C00“ER.’..TI7ES have been growing rapidly and soundly, especially in the last 10 years,
but thoy still have. a. long way to go. They arc strong in the Middle Wost and' Pacific
Coast States, but in the South—where farm incomes arc lowost and co-ops arc ..most need®
od—they have barely taken root.
In comparison with t}n cooperative novartent in a few other courtries, America’s is;
still a baby. In England, for instanco, half of all the families in the nation belong
to co-ops. City people as woll as farmors have learned to run'their own businesses
the co-op way, and one-seventh of all thefood that England eats is now 30Id through
co-op stores. All of the little co-op groups have banded together in one big organi
zation—the English Cooperative Wholesale Society—v;hich owns its own flour-mills.shoo
factories, banks, and steamship linos, ' .
In Denmark, whose farm people are among the most prosperous in the world, co-oas j
handle'nearly everything the farriers raise for market or buy for their own use. In
Sweden,-, Norway, Holland, Ireland, and other countries co-ops also control a large 1
share of all business, in town And country alike. They have done much to keep those
countries stable and prosperous, even when the rest of the world teas having hard times.
What these countries have done, the United States can dq as'well,. Many co-op members
believe'that cooperatives in this country will keep growing, until thoy bring pros
perity and plenty to millions of hard-up families, and go a long way towards making
depressions impossible.
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CO-OPS for 'the 'SWA 17, vwwx