According to the best information available, cooperative associations for the shipment of livestock had their beginning, so far as Iowa is concerned, in the year 1904 at Postville, Alamakee county. This date is somewhat earlier than that claimed for the birth of the cooperative livestock shipping movement in the adjacent state of Minnesota and Wisconsin². The facts probably are that beginnings were made in all three states at practically the same time, as part of an organization campaign carried out by the American Society of Equity in the contiguous territory of northeastern Iowa, southeastern Minnesota, and southern or southwestern Wisconsin. At all events the chief growth of the movement in Iowa was for several years limited to the group of counties in the northeast corner of the state, only nine being started in other sections during the first ten years of the movement.