One of the allurements of cooperative buying has been to at once establish a cooperative store for a general merchandising business. The history of such stores started by granges in the 70's and 80's is instructive in this connection. A few of them survive, but most of them were failures. Only after years of experience and education in cooperative purchasing and other cooperative enterprises have the aims and methods of operating cooperative stores been sufficiently appreciated by most rural communities to ensure their successful establishment. We have already considered (page 48) some of the considerations which should govern the attempt to compete with local merchants. Generally the successful operation of a cooperative store is more difficult for an average group of farmers to manage than the simpler forms of cooperative purchasing, or cooperative credit or selling associations.[31] Moreover, a cooperative store will seriously affect the solidarity of a small community unless a goodly majority, both from farm and village, are convinced of the necessity of competing with local retailers and will give the store their patronage. Except in the buying of agricultural supplies, which may be considered rather as the raw materials and equipment of the farm as a manufacturing business and which are therefore entitled to wholesale prices, consumers' cooperation as usually conducted through cooperative stores is not a distinctively agricultural problem, but is the same for the farmer as for the villager or industrial worker, and its desirability and limitations are determined by similar considerations.