Not only has this vast development of cooperation served to unite farmers and develop common initiative and community spirit; it has greatly reduced the expense of farm business and the cost of living. Professor Valgren estimates that mutual fire insurance saves the Minnesota farmers annually $750,000. Cooperative telephones save often one-half the cost of the service. Cooperation reduced the price of reapers from $275 to $175; of sewing machines from $75 to $40; of wagons from $150 to $90; and of threshers from $300 to $200. The Pepin County Cooperative Company of Wisconsin did about a quarter of a million business in the year 1909 in its nine retail stores. A far greater cooperative plan is the Right Relationship League which has a hundred successful stores in Minnesota and Wisconsin, though incorporated but six years ago. _Cooperation Among Fruit Growers_ It is safe to say that the great success of fruit growing on the Pacific slope would have been impossible without cooperation. Individual growers were at the mercy of the railroads and the middlemen; but unitedly they have mastered the situation and control the New York market. The fruit is inspected, sorted and packed by the company, not by the individual growers, and thus the standard is maintained and all trickery eliminated. The organization is able to get all possible advantages in the way of low rates for large shipments, to secure ideal accommodations in refrigerated fast freights and storage warehouses; and to keep in touch, by telegraph, with the market conditions in all eastern centers, thus preventing over-supply. These associations often purchase for their members all supplies needed in the business and keep their laborers busy in the slack seasons making boxes, crates, etc., so that they are able to develop and retain a permanent force of skilled labor instead of depending on the precarious supply of seasonal help. The Grand Junction Fruit Growers' Union of Colorado bought, in 1906, 224 carloads of supplies for its members, both for business and household use. For fifteen years past, three-fourths of the citrus growers of California have been cooperating successfully and are most efficiently organized. Their central agency markets an annual product worth fifteen millions and keeps representatives in some seventy-five leading markets of America and in London. They command the highest market price for their product and distribute it at a saving of about one-half the expense. _Some Elements of Success and Failure_