R.L. Smith founded The Farmer’s Improvement Society of Texas (FIST) in 1890. FIST championed cooperative buying and selling as a strategy for purchasing necessities at less expensive wholesale prices and selling what members produced at higher prices; it owned 10 stores with an average inventory of about $400 where every November and February members purchased farming necessities cooperatively at discounted prices. It pledged to cares for its sick and burry its dead affordably and when ill the organization promised to care for a members’ crops for free. Like Tuskegee, FIST founded a college for its member’s children where they would receive a first-class education at the tuition cost of $50 per year. FIST called for building businesses that employed its members’ children. Like Booker T. Washington’s Negro Business League, FIST organized chapters and some 400 communities in Texas and Oklahoma with meetings held semimonthly.
