Charles Harper through a Galbrathian lens: Agricultural co-operation and countervailing power in colonial Western Australia

Abstract

Charles Harper (1842-1912) has been rightly identified as the founder of agricultural cooperation in Western Australia. While it was his son (Charles Walter, 1880-1956) who established the principal cooperative organisations in Western Australia, Charles senior prepared the ground for the development of agricultural cooperation via his work in popularising the concept, implementing experiments in cooperative activities and influencing the development of government infrastructure and policy aimed at encouraging what J.K. Galbraith would later call the development of countervailing power. Harper was disinclined to express his economic thought directly and so, in this paper, Charles Harper's economic thought is demonstrated within a framework of countervailing power.