USU Digital Library - Extension, Enterprise, and Education: the Legacy of Co-operatives and Cooperation in Utah
USU Digital Library - Extension, Enterprise, and Education: the Legacy of Co-operatives and Cooperation in Utah
The co-operative spirit in Utah was exemplified early in the state's history by early Mormon villages and continues today in Utah State University's Co-operative Extension programs. Since the University's establishment in 1888 as Agricultural College of Utah, its faculty have written about and helped build co-operative enterprises in Utah. Faculty member and rural sociologist Lowry Nelson emphasized the uniqueness of the Utah experience through his study of the Mormon village in 1952. Long considered a model for research on small communities and community life, his research provides rich insight on social and cultural conditions of villages and communities. He wrote
The Mormon Village and American Farm Life and served as editor for the
American Journal of Rural Sociology and Utah Farmer.
Mormon villages are a cluster of homes surrounded by farming lands. The home lots were arranged on blocks separated by wide streets, laid out north-south and east-west. Public buildings were located in the center of town. Farmers lived in the town and drove out to their farming plots for work. The concept was originally envisioned by Latter-day Saint Church founder Joseph Smith to facilitate co-operative efficiency, and to maintain religious education and practice. Joseph Smith's conception of the Mormon Village was based on a co-operative economic system and a communal society; some of these idealistic practices were implemented in Utah by the Mormon pioneers in the mid-1800s.
In Salt Lake City, Mormon Church members formed multiple co-operative enterprises, one in each ward (local church district). Other smaller settlements such as Brigham City (Utah), Hyrum (Utah), and Paris (Idaho) established community-wide co-operative enterprises that employed all the local settlers and were managed by a central board. In other communities such as Orderville (Utah) and Bunkerville (Nev.), this collectivization was carried one step further, with church members living communally. Everyone ate in a dining hall, wore similar clothes made from the same fabric, and shared equally in the community's resources.
Commonly referred to as the United Order, some aspects of this communal society were promoted by Joseph A. Geddes, another USU faculty member, in his quest to revitalize rural Utah communities.
Joseph A. Geddes was influential in Utah's co-operative movement and helped establish the Utah Co-operative Association. Dr. Geddes' academic interest in co-operatives, social organization and community building stemmed from his experiences as a youth in Plain City, Utah. He continued his interest as he investigated the United Order as the subject for his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University.
To support the Agricultural College of Utah's land-grant mission, its faculty visited rural communities to encourage adoption of better farming practices. Extension work included instruction at schools, exhibition at local, regional and national fairs, and conducting Farmer Institutes throughout the State. The College also partnered with the Union Pacific and Denver & Rio Grande Railroads to sponsor agricultural exhibit trains: the railroad companies provided the train cars, while college faculty furnished equipment and livestock to demonstrate new farming and housekeeping practices. These special trains, variously called "industrial" or "educational" trains, stopped at railroad stations throughout Utah and eastern Nevada, lecturing and demonstrating to groups of farmers along the way.
Not only did the College bring the campus to the communities, but beginning in 1896, it began sponsoring Farmers and Housekeeper Conferences on it's campus in Logan, Utah.
"The summer encampments under the direction of the extension division, replaced the Farmer's Roundups and Housekeepers Conference held in towns over the state during the winter months. These summer encampments combined profitable learning and family outings. Hundreds would gather on the south lawn; county agents, college faculty members, and imported specialists would be ready with their latest information in the areas called for at that convention.
Passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914 solidified the College's mandate for Co-operative Extension through establishment of Co-operative Extension offices with agents established at the county level.
County agents organized yearly programs demonstrating new agricultural techniques to Utah's farmers. While the Extension Service's county agents helped the State's farmers, its home demonstration agents advised rural women about nutrition, homemaking, and sanitation. All agents prepared annual federal reports of the year's accomplishments and plans for the coming year. These reports contained a wealth of information on rural life in Utah: crop production, livestock, dairying, wool marketing, irrigation, weed and pest control, home economics, clubs and community events, etc.
W. Preston Thomas worked as Weber County's first agricultural agent from 1915 to 1925. Thomas was a leading proponent of Agricultural Co-operatives.
In 1915, Thomas collaborated with farmers to establish the Weber County Farm Bureau. A year later, he joined with representatives from other counties to officially establish the organization state wide. The state and county bureaus assumed the responsibility of representing the farmers in their efforts to collectively market sugar beets, canning goods and dairy products. The bureaus also enabled members to collectively purchase farm products at wholesale cost. In Weber county Thomas conducted educational programs to teach farmers about co-operative marketing, rural credit, and purchasing. Thomas was instrumental in organizing the Weber Central Dairy a seminal example of a co-operative enterprise.
By 1920, co-operative marketing had proven to be very popular throughout Utah. In 1923, Representative Lawrence Atwood of Utah County sponsored a bill in the State Legislature to provide farmers a means of organizing co-operative associations. Following the passing of the Utah Co-operative Act, the Farm Bureau actively supported and organized co-operatives. Between 1923 and 1953, 308 co-operative associations were incorporated under the Utah Co-operative Act.
In response to the deepening 1930s economic depression, the State Legislature created the Self-help Co-operative Board in March 1935. The state Self-help Co-operative Board consisted of one member named by the State Engineer, one by the chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, three members named by the Self-Help Co-operatives, and two named by the Presidents of the University of Utah and Utah State Agricultural College (i.e. USU). Joseph Geddes served as the USU appointee.The State Self-Help Co-operative Board helped pave the way for organizing the Utah Co-operative Association in 1936.
To centralize the existing system of Self-Help Co-operatives, the Self-Help Board created the Utah Co-operative Association (UCA) by merging in August 1936 the Consumers' Co-operative Association and the Farm Bureau Supply Co-operative. The UCA helped market farm produce, buy farm supplies, and assist farm families with persistent credit problems made worse by the Great Depression.The USU Department of Agricultural Economics taught students to become articulate and effective in uniting and achieving objectives necessary for implementing successful co-operative farm enterprises.
In 1921, USU began offering courses in a newly-created program called Agricultural Economics, jointly administered by the School of Agriculture and the School of Commerce (predecessors to the College of Agriculture and the Huntsman School of Business). By the early 1930s, the College taught courses on the co-operative marketing of agricultural products. Co-operative marketing increasingly became a focus for graduate work; five Masters of Science degrees on this subject were awarded in 1948. In 1977, former President of the UCA, W.B. Robins, donated the Association's records to the Special Collections Department at USU. Simultaneously, he endowed a fund within the College of Business for a curriculum to study and teach the principles of co-operatives.
Contributors to the development of USU's Co-operative Education curriculum included W. B. Robins and Gary Hansen, among others. Robins contributed monetarily by endowing the College of Business to study and teach the principles of co-operatives. Economics Professor Hansen contributed not only by teaching new classes in international and worker co-operatives, but also by donating materials on co-operatives to USU Library's Special Collections and Archives and funding development of a Co-operatives Archives, including this digital collection.
Utah's celebrated legacy of cooperation began with the first vanguard of
Mormon settlers, and extended through much of the Twentieth Century.
The same spirit of cooperation that characterized Utah's early settlers
also came to distinguish Utah State University following its founding as
the Utah Agricultural College in 1888.
