There are more than five thousand active Farmers’ Cooperation Associations in the United States.  Minnesota alone has over six hundred cooperative creameries, some of which have a laundry annex.  The associations have six hundred and sixty thousand members and do a business of nearly a thousand dollars a year for each member.  These are the people that we call “hayseeds”; if we could plant some more such “seeds,” it would be a good job.  But in cooperative retail domestic supply we are far behind England and other countries, even behind Russia.  That is partly because our better retail business methods leave less room for the savings.

A simple and easy but important beginning of cooperation was where each one took turns in delivering the milk and fetching supplies.  One farmer might do it all every day for a small charge.

The new South is developing a great business in this line.  When you go to New Orleans look up the stores whose letter head reads: 

NELSON CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION, INC. Food Suppliers OFFICE, 506 So.  PETERS STREET.  CREAMERY, ERATO ST. WAREHOUSE, 511 SO.  PETERS ST. BAKERY, ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE. 61 RETAIL STORES 4 MEAT MARKETS

In August, 1917, N. O. Nelson of the above concern writes in answer to my request: 

“It does not take 2500 words to tell all I know about Cooperation.  I trust the inclosed may be serviceable for your book, and shall feel proud if it is.

“I am doing my job here for two very practical reasons; first, the immediate service of reducing the cost of living to say 15,000 families, mostly poor; second, to introduce economy in retailing.

“The readers of such a book as yours are well aware of the wasteful ways of retailing goods.  In every town and city there is a multiplication of stores, advertising clerks, teams, and other incidentals.

“Likewise there is a lot of middle men and drummers, the buyers at the producer’s end, the wholesalers or middle men at the consumer’s end, with speculator and landowner at both ends.  All of these have to be supported by the system, and the dear consumer pays for it.

" The Cooperative store system, which was started in England 73 years ago, eliminates most of these waste expenses.  The system has kept spreading at an astonishing rate; in Great Britain there are now 3 1/2 million members, and more than a billion of sales a year.  Other European countries are full of these stores.  Many of the retail stores have from twelve thousand to fifty thousand members; their sales run into the millions.  They are federated in a wholesale agency which buys for them and manufactures on an extensive scale.

“By the economies thus introduced they are able to save regularly about 15%, besides paying interest on the capital employed, and accumulating a liberal surplus.  It is simply a question of people getting together (all civilization is), contributing their own money and their trade, and thus avoiding all the waste expenses.