Wisconsin Stories: Camp Co-Op

In essence, a cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by the people who use and benefit from its services.

The time-honored co-op principles include: voluntary membership, one vote per member, equitable distribution of profits, member commitment and investment, commitment to education and cooperation among cooperatives.

By Greg Lawless

The author is an Extension outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, where he focuses primarily on cooperative development.

A true history of cooperation in Wisconsin would look back to the Native American tribes of the state. The Menominee, for instance, engaged in communal hunts for bear and buffalo, while extended families shared the work of harvesting wild rice. These cooperative activities likely contributed to the relative stability that the Menominee enjoyed for centuries along Green Bay and the Fox River Valley.

The beginnings of the cooperative movement
Contemporary cooperative theory states that people are drawn to form cooperatives when neither the public sector nor the private marketplace can provide for their needs at an acceptable price. And, indeed, that was often the case when Americans settled in Wisconsin and took up agriculture in the 1800s.
Monopolies and oligopolies among grain dealers, railroads and local merchants meant that most of early Wisconsin's farmers paid dearly for transporting their goods and acquiring their basic supplies, while often receiving very little in return for the products of their farms.

The economic injustices that Wisconsin producers experienced were also felt by farmers, workers and consumers around the country and in Europe in the 1800s, as unconstrained capitalism and industrialization rapidly spread. In response, many groups in America and Europe experimented with cooperative approaches to meet economic needs.

Wisconsin dairy cows sample the products of Organic Valley, a co-op started in La Farge in 1988 that grossed over $100 million in 2001. Photo credited to Organic Valley/C.R.O.P.P. Cooperative.

The famous Rochdale Pioneers of England are generally regarded as the founders of the modern cooperative movement. Organized in 1844, this association of small craftsmen and women joined together to purchase consumer goods in bulk at lower prices from wholesalers. More importantly, they established and promoted rules and a framework for cooperation that form the basis of contemporary cooperative principles.

Cooperative concepts
In essence, a cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by the people who use and benefit from its services. The time-honored co-op principles include: voluntary membership, one vote per member, equitable distribution of profits, member commitment and investment, commitment to education and cooperation among cooperatives.

These concepts spread through throughout Europe in the mid- to late 1800s. The Scandinavian countries were particularly adept at forming cooperative ventures, and immigrants from Finland and Norway who settled in Wisconsin brought that experience with them. They joined earlier settlers who were already experimenting with their own cooperative ideas.

As these various efforts converged, Wisconsin developed a cooperative tradition that even today is rivaled by few other states in the country.

Early Wisconsin cooperatives
Legend has it that the first co-op in Wisconsin was started in 1841 by Anne Pickett near Lake Mills. Pooling milk from her neighbors' farms, she converted it into cheese in her kitchen and sold it to buyers in Milwaukee. In cooperative fashion, the proceeds from the sales were distributed back to her neighbors in proportion to the raw milk they provided.

The first cooperative grain elevator in the United States started in Madison in 1857. While it reportedly collapsed in fire and scandal, it was the forerunner of a national movement that would one day include the Farmers Union Central Exchange, which then became CENEX and recently merged with Harvest States to become CHS Cooperatives of St. Paul, Minn. It is one of several regional, federated co-ops that provide farm supplies and marketing services to more than 200,000 farmer-members of independent, local co-ops in Wisconsin.

The state's oldest operating co-op is Premier Cooperative of Mount Horeb, a farm supply co-op established in 1893 in Black Earth. It was called Patrons Mercantile Co-op until it changed its name in 2000 and merged with the nearby Mount Horeb Co-op. Photo credited to the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives.

The oldest continuous co-op in Wisconsin is Premier Co-op, a farm supply cooperative headquartered in Mount Horeb. Founded in 1893 as Patrons Mercantile Cooperative of Black Earth, it merged with Mount Horeb Farmers Co-op and changed its name to Premier in March 2000. The second oldest continuously running co-op is Silver & Lewis Cheese Factory in Monticello, formed in 1897.

Wisconsin Cranberry Sales formed in 1906. It later merged with two East Coast cooperatives and eventually evolved into Ocean Spray, which in 1999 served 135 Wisconsin cranberry producers.
By 1912 there were 309 telephone cooperatives operating in the state. The 11 that remain in operation today serve more than 44,000 members.

Wisconsin's first cooperative lending institution, or credit union, was established in Milwaukee in 1923. Today, Madison is headquarters of national and international organizations serving thousands of credit unions worldwide.

Kids in the Kountry is owned and supported jointly by an agricultural co-op and two private businesses in Shawano, Wisconsin, enabling all three to provide child care benefits to their employees. Photo credited to Co-op Resources International.

The first electric co-ops began in 1936 in Richland Center and Columbus. Today, 25 of these co-ops provide electricity to almost 190,000 members and their families.

Today co-ops are
thriving and diverse
In 1938, 89 years after Anne Pickett pooled her neighbors' milk, a group of Waukesha County farmers would chip in $50 per cow to form Golden Guernsey Dairy. Today, that brand is marketed by Foremost Farms USA, one of nine regional dairy cooperatives that together generated over $2 billion in sales in Wisconsin (1999 data).

As these events suggest, co-op history in Wisconsin is dynamic, and it continues to be written. A survey conducted in 2000 revealed at least 798 cooperatives and credit unions conducting business in the state. These co-ops serve 2.7 million members-- equivalent to fully half the state's population!

Statewide, members have invested almost $2.4 billion in equity in their cooperatives. The state's co-ops generated $5.5 billion in gross sales in 1999, with $323 million being returned to members as patronage refunds. Furthermore, co-ops in the state employed more than 23,000 people in 1999, earning more than $660 million in salaries, wages and benefits.

Employee-owners of Isthmus Engineering of Madison, a designer and manufacturer of custom machine tools for the automobile and pharmaceutical industries. Photo credited to Isthmus Engineering.

Co-ops in Wisconsin are far more diverse today than when our economy was primarily agricultural. For instance, there are consumer-owned cooperatives providing childcare, health care, cable TV, a community newspaper, organic and natural foods, and a housing community for seniors.

There are co-ops owned by private family businesses, enabling them to pool their purchasing power to compete with corporate chains. These small businesses include hardware suppliers, groceries, pharmacies, car dealers and even archery retailers.

Meanwhile, worker-owned co-ops provide taxi service, precision machine tool manufacturing, printing services and Internet Web page design.

And so the tradition of cooperation is alive and well in Wisconsin. From the heritage and culture of our state's earliest inhabitants, through the development of an agricultural economy, to evolution of a modern industrial and consumer society, cooperative strategies have served the people of Wisconsin very well indeed.