DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE


percentage so high before the actual count was made The
officials of farmer cooperatives realize today as never before
that the success of cooperative marketing and purchasing
depends to a large extent upon an interested, informed,
and responsible membership. Members not only own the
organization but participate actively in its affairs.

 The larger associations are spending an increasing per-
centage of their net income on membership education.
Many have employees trained in the science of membership
relations. It is the business of these officials to help the rank
and file of members understand the technical side of coop-
eration and instruct members in the long-range, as well as
the more immediate, benefits of cooperative marketing and
purchasing. This is being done by membership meetings
which hundreds of thousands of farmers regularly attend.
In addition to supplying information on improved methods
of preparing farm products for market, these meetings are
teaching the business side of cooperation by means of
circulars, house organs, wall charts, and readily understood
financial statement. As a result, farmers have begun to
realize that cooperatives need strong financial structures
and adequate operating capital, as well as markets for
products ond reliable sources of farm supplies.

 Membership and employee education has become an
accepted activity of agricultural cooperation. Many associa-
tions are developing their own technical schools to teach
their employees and some of their members the principles
of cooperative business. There are short-course cotton-class-
ing schools in the Southern States; grading schools for the
employees of cooperative wheat elevators; and schools
conducted by wholesale purchasing associations to train
store managers, field men, and other employees. But edu-
cational work is by no means confined to activities by the
co-ops themselves. State agricultural colleges and universi-
ties over the past two generations have been teaching
cooperative marketing and cooperative business principles
to farmers' sons as regular college courses. Today such