(a) The importance of the telephone as a means of cooperation in my community.

(b) Instances in my community where bad roads have caused a lack of cooperation.

(c) Instances in my community where improvement of roads has led to better cooperation.

In what ways do you think there is need for better cooperation in your community?  Discuss this with your parents, and report in class the result of your talk with them.

Is there any organized cooperation in your community or county as a whole for the general improvement of the community or county?

Investigate the organization and work of a farm bureau. (If there is none in your county, write to your State Agricultural College or to the States Relations Service, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., for information.  See references at the end of this chapter.)

PUBLIC LIBRARY AS AN EXAMPLE

Cooperation is as necessary for the fullest satisfaction of our other wants as it is in the business of making a living.  In one pioneer community there were few “books and papers and they were handed about from house to house.”  There may be comparatively few people in a community who can afford to buy a hundred books each year; but there may easily be a hundred persons who could buy one book each, and by some arrangement exchange with one another, so that each could in the course of a year have the use of a hundred books.  Neighborhood clubs are often organized to subscribe for magazines on this plan.  A public library provides an arrangement by which a great variety of good reading matter can be enjoyed by the entire community at trifling cost to each member.  In fact, we may be able to draw books from such a library without any cost to ourselves; but the books which we thus enjoy do cost the community a large sum of money, and our free enjoyment of them is one of the advantages of community cooperation.  Our part in the cooperation is in using the books carefully and in returning them promptly, so that as many people as possible may have the use of them.

NATION-WIDE COOPERATION

The necessity for cooperation is by no means limited to our neighborhood or county or city.  People with common purposes organize for cooperation on a state-wide or nation-wide scale.  Following is a list of national organizations in the interest of agriculture.  As our study proceeds, we shall have abundant illustration of the value of cooperation and of the disadvantages that follow from its absence.

FARMERS’ ORGANIZATIONS

American Cooperative Association (Cooperative League of America).

American Dairy Farmers’ Association.

American Federation of Organized Farmers.

American National Live Stock Association.

American Pomological Society.