insufficiency of capital, incompetency
of buying and selling agents and of managers, dishonesty of trusted
officials or of debtors, commercial panics, and other adversities to
which cooeperative, quite as much as or even more than individual
companies have been subject, there are peculiar dangers often fatal to
their cooeperative principles. For instance, more than one such
association, after going through a period of struggle and sacrifice,
and emerging into a period of prosperity, has yielded to the
temptation to hire additional employees just as any other employer
might, at regular wages, without admitting them to any share in the
profits, interest, or control of the business. Such a concern is
little more than an ordinary joint-stock company with an unusually
large number of shareholders. As a matter of fact, plain, clear-cut
cooeperative production makes up but a small part of that which is
currently reported and known as such. A fairer statement would be that
there is a large element of cooeperation in a great many productive
establishments. Nevertheless, productive societies more or less
consistent to cooeperative principles exist in considerable numbers and
have even shown a distinct increase of growth in recent years.

*87. Cooeperation in Farming.*--Very much the same statements are true of
another branch of cooeperative effort,--cooeperation in farming.
Experiments were made very early, they have been numerous, mostly
short-lived, and yet show a tendency to increase within the last
decade. Sixty or more societies have engaged in cooeperative farming,
but only half a dozen are now in existence. The practicability and
desirability of the application of cooeperative ideals to agriculture
is nevertheless a subject of constant discussion among those
interested in cooeperation, and new schemes are being tried from time
to time.

The growth of cooeperation, like that of trade unions, has been
dependent on successive modifications of the law; though it was rather
its defects than its opposition that caused the difficulty in this
case. When cooeperative organizations were first formed it was found
that by the common law they could not legally deal as societies with
non-members; that they could not hold land for investment, or for any
other purpose than the transaction of their own business, or more than
one acre even for this purpose; that they could not loan money to
other societies; that the embezzlement or mis