ABSTRACT
The Southern credit system, with its crop-lien drag on agricultural progress, prevented any extensive cooperative enterprises among the common run of farmers, and for reasons that need no further explanation. The cooperative marketing of fruits elsewhere in America antedates any of the attempts in California, but the later magnitude of the Western ventures naturally attracts attention first in that direction. It was in the North Central states, where the Grange had flourished especially, that cooperative grain elevators were generally found—these were the first, the most numerous, and the most successful. The Patrons of Industry, another Northern farmers' organization operating west of New England, fostered retail stores through its local associations. The net effect of limited cooperation of that sort was about the same as farmers in the more humid regions sharing the same rainfall. The Farmers' Mutual Insurance Company, of Clayton County, Iowa, in business as early as 1866, was possibly the first of the long list for fire protection.
