6. Descriptions of the Collections


-leaders of banks, businesses, and the railraods--promoted agricultural settlement and the planting of trees
to break up the endless horizon and provide pioneers with fuel, fencing, and shelter.

By the 1890s, the Forestry Association had expanded its position to embrace "scientific forest
management." Publications in need of preservation address the concerns of the day--that widespread
deforestation affected the soil, water, and climate adversely; that public lands belonged to all people in
perpetuity; and that forests should be "cropped" and managed with appropriate scientific and economic
principles. For the next fifty years, the Forestry Association labored to impress upon Minnesotans the
benefits of tree planting and forest conservation. Important resources on the history of forestry and
lumbering include The Forest Tree Planters' Manual (1879), The Pioneer Woodsman as He Is Related to
Lumbering in the Northwest (1914), Minnesota Forester (1908-1911), and North Woods (1911-1923).

The Minnesota pioneer press played an important role--as news organ, literary medium, forum for
boosting Minnesota, and leadership in politics and culture. The first agricultural periodicals were
published in Minnesota in the 1860s including Minnesota Farmer and Gardener (1860-1862), Farmer's
Union (1867-1873), and Minnesota Monthly (1869-1870). Others followed, such as The Minnesota
Farmer (1877-1896) and Independent Farmer and Fireside Companion (1879-early 1900s). These
periodicals are a treasure trove of information on not only agriculture, but economic, social, and political
history of Minnesota.

The cooperative movement in Minnesota is an essential element of Minnesota and U.S. history. Carle C.
Zimmerman and John D. Black describe farmers' attitudes toward cooperatives in The Marketing Attitude
of Minnesota Farmers (1926). From the earliest days, farmers banded together to sell and ship their own
grain. Between 1866 and 1869, farmers in Vasa Township formed the Scandinavian Transportation Co.
of Red Wing and the first cooperative elevator was formed in 1876 in Meeker County.

The history of rural cooperatives lies at the intersection of political history, economic history, and the
history of immigration and ethnicity. Minnesota's rural cooperatives performed essential functions in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries--and they did so in an egalitarian, democratic manner that fit rural
society. They helped to preserve ethnicity by enabling immigrant farmers to handle many of their
economic transactions through their own member-owned, ethnic-language cooperative. They helped to
complete the network of trading centers by significantly aiding the construction of many small
crossroads communities. They served as important auxiliaries of agrarian protest movements. They
brought needed services to rural communities when private investors did not regard it as profitable to do
so. They helped parts of rural Minnesota diversity agriculture in response to declining wheat yields and
wheat prices.

The cooperative movement achieved its greatest penetration into American life in rural communities
dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Between 1865 and 1917, local Minnesota cooperatives
were organized by farmers without significant governmental assistance or help from any outside
institution apart from sponsoring groups such as the Grange and the Farmer's Alliance. After World War
I, local cooperatives increasingly joined together to form sizeable regional cooperatives such as Land O'
Lakes and Midland Cooperatives. Agricultural experts at the University of Minnesota, such as
Theophilus Haecker who promoted Danish cooperatives, were encouraged by state government to initiate
the organization of cooperatives at the local level.

The first major cooperative sponsoring organization in Minnesota was the "National Grange of the
Patrons of Husbandry," popularly known as the Grange. The Grange was successful in uniting farmers
(primarily "Old Stock" farmers, who had come from New England) into one statewide quasi-political unit
with many democratically-run local units. For Minnesota, the Granger period began in 1868, when
Oliver Hudson Kelly returned from Washington, D.C. Between 1868 and 1878, the Grange grew--from