The manager keeps in close touch with market conditions,—­where the demand for fruit is greatest, the kinds of fruit wanted, the best prices paid.  He contracts for the sale of fruit at fair prices.  Shipping in large quantities, he gets the advantage of low rates on fast freight trains with refrigerator cars.  Uniform methods of packing fruit are adopted, sometimes the fruit being packed at the central packing house.  Information is distributed as to the best methods of growing fruit, the best varieties to grow, and so on.  On the other hand, supplies and provisions are bought in large quantities, securing the best quality at the lowest prices.

VOLUNTARY COOPERATION IN CITIES

In cities there are almost innumerable organizations by which groups of people cooperate for one purpose or another.  Men in the same line of business or in the same profession organize to promote their common interests.  There are boards of trade, chambers of commerce, merchants’ and manufacturers’ associations.  Lawyers have their bar associations, physicians their medical associations.  There are associations of teachers, and work men in the various trades have their unions.  Besides such business and professional organizations, there are clubs and associations of all sorts for men, for women, and even for children, some of them educational, some social or recreational, some philanthropic, some religious.  Where there are so many people interested in the same thing, where it is easy for them to meet together, and where competent leadership is forthcoming, it is quite the usual thing to organize for united action.

COOPERATION IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

In agricultural communities cooperation has developed more slowly.  Farmers have been too isolated from one another to make organization easy, they have not fully realized its advantages, and they have lacked leadership.  This has been an obstacle to the fullest development of community life.  The most backward communities are those where there is the least cooperation.  In such communities “the farmer works single-handed, getting no strength from joint action or combined effort.”

But all this is changing.  Organizations like the fruit growers’ associations are becoming common and are proving their value.  The map on page 36 shows the distribution of organizations among farmers in the United States for cooperation in business enterprises of various kinds, though it shows only about half as many as actually exist.  They include cooperative grain elevators and warehouses, creameries and cheese factories, cooperative stores, fruit and grain growers’ associations, livestock associations, cotton and tobacco associations, and many others.

Study the map on page 36 and indicate the region or regions where you think cooperative grain elevators and warehouses would be most numerous; livestock associations; dairies and creameries; fruit growers’ associations; cotton growers’ associations; tobacco growers’ associations.