The agricultural societies were organized in five central bodies, their airns being to purchase provisions, to sell their own products at a profit, to protect their members against over production, to diminish the cost of production and to improve and educate their members.
At the end of 1897 there were in the Nether lands 697 societies, 253 of which were for ex ploiting milk, butter, cheese and other products. In 1900 the total number of organizations had grown to 2,000. The co-operative societies of Belgium numbered 1,000, the dairies leading (227), and doing a business of $3,250,000. In Ghent there is an organization of 25,000 work ingnien sharing the profits of stores and fac tories conjointly owned. A vast baking system is carried on in the same way. Marked progress has been made in Italy, where the Church has talcen an active interest in organizations for the benefit of the people. There are in that country 1,200 distributing societies with annual sales amounting to about $10,000,000; 1,737 co-opera tive banks; 750 dairies and 513 productive labor societies.
In Hungary an interesting feature of co operation is the share which the state takes in it, as a member adding 1,000,000 crowns to the capital. In that country there are 1,002 banks, many dairies and various other co-operative undertaldngs. Austria has 5,092 organizations, most of them being of the nature of credit societies. Figures for Russia are not available later than 1896; 1,442 societies were then in existence, 605 of which were banks. Even 'in Spain the movement is being felt, though the number of its adherents is comparatively small.
In the United States co-operation has made comparatively slow progress. A store in Kingston, Mass., is said to be the oldest existing experiment on the Rochdale plan. It was organized in 1875, but its annual trade is small. There were various co-operative associa tions formed in the late forties and the early fifties. A bulletin of the Department of Labor issued in 1896 states that %one survive' In modified form, however, one or two still exist, among which is the Protective Union of Worcester, Mass., and the Central Union Association of New Bedford, Mass., organized respectively in 1847 and 1848. In 1886 co operative business in New England included creameries, banks and building associations. A co-operative coopering association was estab lished in Minneapolis in 1874. In 1882 the
students of Harvard University formed a so ciety for supplying themselves with books, sta tionery and other articles. It has been a great success and has been imitated at Yale and other colleges. The co-operative creameries in certain of our northwestern States have achieved an astonishing measure of success. Minnesota, probably leads in the number and value of creameries in the United States, though New England — Massachusetts notably — has many of them. In 1901 more than 50 Farmers' Co operative Grain associations were formed in Kansas. The Co-operative Association of America, organized during the same year, in Lewiston, Me., was started with the purpose of developing a federation of various lines of business, beginning with a grocery. The profits are divided semi-annually among the co-oper ators. In 1901-02 the association accumulated $250,000 and reported a business of $600,000. There are many co-operative communities in the United States, varying much in their methods and characteristics. They have been classified as communistic, socialistic and par tially co-operative. So far as it has gone the co-operative movement has been a real and effectual training for the intelligence, business capacity and moral character of the workmen. It has taught them thrift, foresight, self-control and the habit of harmonious combination for common ends. Experience seems to show that where articles are produced to order and not for the general market co-operative production may succeed, but that these enterprises fail when they are confronted with the difficulty of adjusting the supply to the variations of the market demands. The success of co-operation in certain agricultural processes is essentially an incident in the marketing of products and bears no close relation to productive co-opera tion properly so called.
Bibliography.—Adams and Sumner, Problems' (New York 1905) ; Ayes, 'Co-opera tive Industry' (London 1907) ; Bertrand, (La co-operation' ; Fay, (Co-operation at Home and Abroad' (London 1908) ; Gilman, Shar ing' (New York 1888); Greening, 'The Co operative Traveler Abroad) Grey, 'The Co-operative Movement) (1900); Hamilton, 'Savings Institutions' (New York 1902) ; Hag gard, Denmark) (London 1911) ; 'His tory of Co-operation in the United States) (in the John Hopkins University Series, Baltimore