Eddy, Arthur Jerome: The new competition: an examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world ; the change from a competitive to a cooperative basis (New York [u.a.], 1912)

CLASS LEGISLATION

325

XXI
In all these cooperative movements farmers are capital-
ists just as much as makers of iron and steel are capitalists.
In the article referred to it is said the farmers of certain
grain-growing states own 1,600 grain elevators and “have
invested about $15,000,000.” Few steel companies have
that investment.
The Tamarack cooperative association of Michigan on
February 18th, 1911, declared to purchasers of goods its
twentieth annual dividend, $104,821.60, equal to 162 per
cent, on its capital stock. Since its organization this so-
ciety has done a business of $8,113,917.85 and returned
to its members rebates of $938,033.67. Few manufacturing
or mercantile concerns of anything like the same size can
make equal showing.
In January, 1906, the Texas truck growers organized
their association “with a capital of $10,000. Shares were
to be sold at $1 each, but every member was required to buy
at least five shares, he was required, however, to pay only
thirty per cent, of his subscription at the .beginning. Thus
any farmer could easily join the organization. Growers of
about seventy-five per cent, of the crop for 1906 became
members, and that year the association marketed 900 car-
loads. In 1909 it handled 2,500 carloads with an approxi-
mate value of $1,500,000.”
In its capitalization, paying in of only thirty per cent.,
its control of the industry, and its rapid development, the
history of this association reads like the story of a New
Jersey trust in the deft hands of Wall street promoters—but
it is nothing of the kind, it is simply the natural and logical
banding together of a number of farmers to get better prices'
for what they raise.