A few years ago a Government poultry expert paid a visit to Petaluma.  He came back and reported, “It is a great disappointment, the methods are very crude.”  The case is most pathetic.  Here was a man employed by the people to teach them how to make poultry pay.  His carfare is paid across the continent that he might visit the only community in the United States where at that time any considerable number of people were making their living from poultry, and because he did not find lightning rods on the poultry houses, he came back with the look of Naamen who, when he was requested by Elisha to bathe seven times in the river Jordan, replied, “It is very crude.”

Will Co-operation Work?

That magic thing, “Co-operation,” while utterly lacking in the Utopian qualities with which the word artist paints it, is a decidedly bigger factor in American affairs than the average man realizes.

The chief difficulty with co-operation is that the manager, if not incompetent, has an excellent opportunity to be a grafter.  In Europe co-operation in agricultural and mercantile enterprise is older and better developed than in this country.  Perhaps the Europeans are less inclined to be grafters, but a more likely explanation is that the members of such associations as these have learned how to prevent and detect graft, just as our business men have learned to avoid losses from the dishonesty of employes.  That this is the true explanation is substantiated by the fact that when co-operation once becomes established in this country, it succeeds even better than in Europe.

When the creameries were started in the West several years ago, there was much complaint of swindlers, fake stock companies, and co-operative ventures in which the manager absconded with the butter money.  To-day more than half of the American creameries are co-operative and the number is constantly increasing.  They are efficient and successful in every way, and to-day make the finest of butter and pay the highest prices to the farmer for his cream.  But their way was first paved and the business developed by successful private concerns.

Co-operation is entirely feasible and successful where the people behind the movement have enough interest in the enterprise and good enough business sense to run the proposition as efficiently as similar private enterprises are run.  The idea that co-operation must always result in a big saving is a misconception.  Employes will not work any harder for an association than for a private employer, sometimes not as hard.  Certainly no employee will work as hard for an association as he will for himself.

Why people should expect to buy out the grocery store and hire the grocer to run it and save money for themselves, is a thing I could never understand.  But if there is some great waste that co-operation will prevent, as where seven milk wagons drive every morning over the same route, or where the market of perishable crops is glutted one day and starved the next, centralization, corporate or co-operate, will pay.