ABSTRACT
The effort of longest standing to develop countervailing power has been made by the farmer. The handful of manufacturers of farm machinery, of accessible fertilizer manufacturers or mixers, of petroleum suppliers, of insurance companies all exercise measurable control over the prices at which they sell. In this century the farmer has largely lost interest in inflation. One reason is that inflation has ceased to be technically practicable by the old methods. In seeking to develop countervailing power it was natural that farmers would at some stage seek to imitate the market organization and strategy of those with whom they did business. The necessary instrument of organization was available to the farmer in the form of the co-operative. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, and the subsequent agricultural legislation, merely eliminated the technical weakness which had led to the failure of the earlier voluntary or government-aided efforts.
