izations operated for the sake of dividing earnings among stock-holders, with or without reference to their standing as producers, are not sufficiently cooperative to be considered in this connection, although they may be so in the way all incorporations essentially are. So intimately, however, are the nonprofit and capital stock plans associated that a central exchange may be organized on a non-profit basis while the local associations which are affiliated under its authority may proceed on the issuance of capital stock which is non-transferable and must be returned for proper consideration to the association when the holder is no longer qualified for membership as an actual producer.

Two concrete facts will enable the general reader to appreciate that California associations for giving special products acceptable commercial form and for selling them directly to large factors by private sale at fixed prices or by public auction to all bidders, or by their own agents, actually do control and market their own products. One is that an average of not less than 70 per cent of all the special products indicated by the names of the organizations in the list in Appendix J, are sold by producers' coöperative selling organizations. The other impressive fact is that in this way the return to producers was in 1919 an aggregate of over two hundred million dollars.

In order to present concrete facts about the operative means and methods of a number of Californian coöperative selling organizations, statements were secured for this book by questionnaire, the responses

thereto being presented in the table on page 302 which is representative of the procedures of all now active in California, both those of largest transactions (all of which are included), and several of smaller business dimensions.

The attitude of the public mind toward producers marketing organizations is seen in the fact that when the legislature of 1915 created the office of State Market Director and omitted from the prescription of functions to this officer specific reference to the organization of producers into marketing associations, the legislature of 1917 repealed that law and enacted a new one in which the promotion of organization of such associations was made one of the chief functions of the State Market Director. The conviction seems to prevail widely throughout the State that the achievements of such associations have been for the public good and that their continued and enlarged operation is one of the most important factors not only in the advancement of rural life in California but in the general development and prosperity of the State.

OTHER AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS

Special prominence has been given to organizations of producers for product sale and distribution and for manufacture or purchase of supplies and the like used in production, because such organizations are widely accepted as most distinctive and characteristic of California. Another line is, however, hardly less

RECORDS FOR 1919 OF COOPERATIVE SELLING ORGANIZATIONS SHOWING VOLUMES AND METHODS OF TRANSACTIONS

Of milk marketed in San Diego and Sacramento: of eggs marketed in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

(P. 302)

No

3,500,000

50 T

No
No

4,680,065

50 ¶

60,000 none

1,369,345

351

.......

original and significant and that is organization to provide for irrigation outlined in Chapter VIII. Besides these two groups of undertakings which are locally original in design and method, California participates in others which are more widely prevalent throughout the United States. One of these is Farmers' Mutual Insurance which was provided for by a special enabling act of the legislature and which had been pursued to satisfactory local operation in several counties. In 1920 there were twenty farmers' fire insurance companies in operation, writing insurance to the amount of $22,624,656.30, receiving premiums and assessments (net) of $211,329.60 and paying losses of $98,422.99.

Organizations, usually proceeding without incorporation, such as farm bureaus, cow testing, stockgrowers' and range cattlemen's associations, agricultural fair and stock show associations and the like, are widespread and active in promotive and protective work. They are for the most part operating for the purposes and by the methods prevailing in other states and are notably successful and influential.

CHAPTER VIII

IMPROVEMENTS IN IRRIGATION PRACTICE AND IN HIGHWAYS

IRRIGATION practice is very complex and broad, for it begins with the fundamental relations of the plant to the soil and air in which it grows and ministers to the subsequent development of the plant until its commercially valuable product is attained. Irrigation enterprise is also broad and complex for it shapes and provides for everything, from the gathering of small waters from springs or pumps to the diversion of a river from its majestic natural flow to lose itself in wandering through the miles of canals and ditches prepared for it over thousands of acres of hillsides and plains. California experience and achievement show that irrigation is an art which immediately employs every true discovery of scientific research or common observation on the wellbeing of plants and their products, appropriates widely the principles and practices of hydro-engineering and hydro-economics and attains its greatest achievements by the originality and successfulness of its appeal for service to statesmanship, legislation and finance. It may appear to the casual observer that a rivulet trickling from a spring or stream and