tion. They have been the beginning out of which has come the other and more modern growths. And the larger movements depend absolutely upon the locals for their power and existence. Their very life blood is drawn from them. In the study of the cooperative movement as a whole, then, the importance of the local cooperatives, which may seem puny as individual business concerns, cannot well be over-estimated.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Local Elevators

Changing the ownership of our existing marketing agencies and their facilities is not the large work of cooperative marketing on the part of farmers. If cooperation were advocated merely because it would wrest the control of these agencies from one set of individuals and transfer it to another, there would be little to commend in the program. But cooperation exists for the single outstanding reason that it offers a possibility of performing a service for society apart and distinct from the service now performed by agencies serving the same field that are privately owned. If the cooperative movement does not offer to perform this service, then it will not, and does not deserve to succeed. Lacking this service, it will be merely another overhead organization taking its toll from the producers and consumers of the land.

The service to which we refer is more efficient marketing. Doing the same work and doing it a little cheaper. Cutting out the waste incurred in private ownership and management where the sole criterion of profit is to charge all that the traffic will bear. Affording storage facilities whereby

the individual farmer, by pooling his grain and his resources, may store it, to market later in the season when prices have commenced to mend. Sinking the old hoax of individualism among farmers and bringing them together in common purpose, fostering the community spirit and developing, in the end, that greatest of all the fruits of cooperation, the cooperative spirit. These are the larger reasons for the cooperative marketing movement; the larger reasons why it stands as a solution today for the economic problems which so seriously beset the agriculture of this country.

Particularly significant in the cooperative marketing movement among farmers is the ownership by farmers of local grain elevators. The local elevator is possibly the pioneer among farmers' cooperative marketing agencies; if not, then it is antedated only by local creameries. The local elevator movement started back in the early '90s in response to the feeling of unrest current among farmers at that time, who felt, as many do today, that they were not getting a fair shake in the marketing of their grain. It is natural that the first step the farmers should take would be in acquiring the ownership and control of the local elevator, for it was there that they first came into direct contact with the grain trade.

O. M. Kile, in his work on "The Farm Bureau Movement," states: "The most vigorous sort of opposition was encountered and for a time this movement made small progress. The strongly intrenched line elevators, usually owned by big milling and financial interests, enlisted the aid of the railroads in refusing siding privileges, 'forgetting' to furnish cars and 'losing' shipments. The banks refused credit at critical times. In many instances where farmers were about to form a local organization the rival concern sent in organizers and arranged for a 'cooperative' elevator which was cooperative in name only. Many of these still exist.

"By 1910 much progress had been made in many states, however, and in 1915 Illinois had 192 farmer-owned elevators; Iowa, 228, and North Dakota, 264. Since 1915 the movement has been quite rapid and it is officially stated that today (1921) there are more than 4,000 such elevators in active operation, largely in the middle west."

Perhaps an intimate examination of two elevators which the author has personally visited will serve to graphically present to the readers the local elevator, the field it serves, and the purposes and policies back of its organization. One of these elevators is located in southern Missouri and the other in central Minnesota.

Down in Jasper county, Missouri, there is a real cooperative service station. We refer to the Farmers' Cooperative Elevator Company of Jasper. Organized in 1916, with $15,000 paid up capital, it stands today a living example of what can be accomplished along cooperative lines by serious-minded farmers when their shoulders are put to the wheel and all work together for the common good.

Jasper is a town of about 700 population located in the north end of Jasper county, on that great plain above Carthage starting over in Kansas and running east to the Ozarks. It is right in the heart of the southern Missouri grain-growing section where considerable small grain is produced each year. About 400 stockholders living around Jasper are responsible for the Farmers' Cooperative Elevator Company. They have constructed one of the finest elevator plants owned and controlled by farmers now in existence in the middle west. Their elevator and feed mill cost $10,000 to erect in 1916, is fireproof throughout, being constructed entirely of concrete and brick.

"The fact that we are a stock company should not be taken to mean that we are a closed corporation," said J. E. Hull, who has been manager practically all of the time since the company was organized. "We have men outside the organiza