The individual farmer is fined or taxed for all bad eggs found in his lot.  This fine is deducted from his receipts and he has nothing to do but to submit to it or get out of the association.  The latter he cannot afford to do because the association has its established brands and can pay him more for his eggs than he could secure by attempting to market them himself.  As a result of this strict system of making the producer responsible for weight and quality of the eggs the Danish eggs have become the largest and finest in the world.

Although the writer firmly believes in the co-operative marketing of farm produce, and considers that the success already secured in this work is conclusive evidence of the practicability and desirability of co-operation, it would not be fair to infer that co-operation has entirely driven out private or corporate enterprise.  Just as a goodly per cent. of the citrus fruit of California is still handled by private dealers, so in Denmark we find that nearly one-half of the eggs sent to England are handled by private companies.  Let it be noted, however, that these companies maintain a system of buying on merit which enforces high quality that is not to be found where private buyers are without the spur of co-operative competition.  Before co-operation entered the orange regions of California, the fruit was poorly packed and handled and the markets at times so glutted, that shipments of fruit sometimes failed to pay the freight, and this was actually charged back to the unfortunate grower.  Co-operation has done away with this waste.  In like manner the great loss from decomposed eggs and half hatched chicks is unknown to the egg trade of Denmark.

Corporation or Co-operation?

The community of farmers producing a large quantity of a single kind of product is the coming form of agricultural enterprise.  Will this community be promoted by corporation or by co-operation?

Arthur Brisbane says, “As individual control of the Government has been superceded by collective control, so individual control of industries will be followed by collective control.  That is the natural order.”

Brisbane is right.  The individual, or the corporation, which is an individual using other men’s money, foreruns co-operation, because the individual knows exactly what he wants to do and the big group of individuals does not know what they want or how to do it until individuals have, by concrete successes, shown them.

When the creameries were started, co-operative creameries were unsuccessful and could not compete with privately owned creameries.  The farmers have now become too wise to be “easy-marks” to the fake creamery promoters or to trust their butter sales to a comparative stranger and co-operation is a success.

Poultry communities cannot be made out of whole cloth by the co-operative plan.  Private corporations will be necessary to launch these enterprises.  When they have reached the stage of development now to be seen in Little Compton and Petaluma they are ready for co-operation.