In a general way there has always been a certain amount of cooperation between neighboring farmers in the exchange of work in barn-raisings, threshing, silo-filling, slaughtering, etc. Out of this have grown such cooperative organizations as threshing rings, and groups for the common ownership and use of all sorts of more expensive machinery, the cooperative ownership of sires, cow-test associations, and many other forms of organization for mutual aid in farm operations. All of these are cooperative associations in the common usage of the word cooperation, but in recent years the term has come to have a more technical meaning to denote a form of organization in contrast to the corporation or stock company, which has been the most prevalent type of business organization in recent years. The cooperative association differs from the corporation or stock company in three essentials. First, it is democratic in its control; all true cooperative organizations employ the principle of "one man, one vote," the influence of each member of the association being equal as far as the legal control of its administration is concerned. The individual members and not the amount of stock owned controls the policy of the association. Cooperation is democracy applied to business. Second, the cooperative association is organized to secure more efficient service rather than to exact profits. This is a point upon which there is much misunderstanding upon the part of those starting cooperative enterprises and which requires further explanation. Third, the earnings or savings of the association (commonly thought of as "profits") are distributed among the members or patrons of the association _pro rata_ according to the volume of the business which they have transacted with the association, so that although its control is democratic its benefits accrue according to the amount of financial interest involved. There are certain other principles of business procedure which have been found essential to the successful operation of different kinds of cooperative associations, but these three--individual voting, service rather than profits, and pro-rating the earnings--are fundamental to all truly cooperative associations, and it is to this combination of business methods to which the term cooperation has now come to be applied in a technical sense. Exclusive of associations formed for cooperation in the general sense of the term, i.e., for various purposes of farm operation as mentioned above, farmers' cooperative associations may be divided into three general groups: for buying, for selling, and for finance.