Labor Party Favored.

A score or more of other resolutions were passed dealing favorably with such principles as the freeing of all political prisoners, co-operative banking, labor dailies, selfdetermination of Russia and Ireland. The formation of a new political party combining the forces of organized labor and the organized farmers, was also called for; and Samuel Gompers was requested to call a conference of labor unions and farmers organizations to effect this purpose. It is too much to expect, until the education and the sense of values of the workers become broader, that any convention will take more than a few forward steps. Each succeeding convention is an act of education for the delegates and for the membership at large.

I

N Europe are two ancient institutions which for a century have controlled the lives of the people. They have been more powerful than the people themselves. Yet today the foundations of these two mighty things are tottering; and no man can predict their fate.

One of these is the institution of government called the political state. There is not a government in Europe with any sense of security. Every one rests upon force; and without force, to suppress the majority of citizens in the interest of the minority, not one would long survive. They are things of armies, police and jails. The other tottering institution is profit-making business. Business is trembling and uncertain. Even the wealth of a Stinnes is an uncertain possession.

But there is a third institution which gives one the impression of solidity and permanence; it is the co-operative organization. The people through this movement are increasingly doing for themselves what the profit-making business had done and what the socialized political state aims to do.

During July, August and September, I studied the labor and co-operative movements in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Switzerland. England, Scotland and Wales. Unemployment is serious in every country except Germany. Here private industry, as well as co-operation, is more active than in the other countries.

The French government is meeting the situation by keeping the war going, but this policy is having a most disastrous effect upon the French morale. In no other country that I visited is there such a state of uncertainty. The labor movement is demoralized, chauvinism is rampant, and the people are waiting for somebody to do some

thing for them. Having "won the war," the French are to receive from Germany vast sums of money-and they are waiting.

The co-operative movement is the most substantial and really sound constructive movement in France, although its members have not altogether escaped the debasing influence of the French government. The United States government had a large military office headquarters building on the Boulevard Bourbon in Paris during the American occupation; the Co-operative Wholesale Society bought the building and established their central offices there. Thus is the new order succeeding the old. I went up through the devastated area, stopped at Amiens and Albert, and saw the cooperators doing more toward rehabitation than the government was doing.

The

The Belgian Triple Alliance Belgium is better s tuated than is Fiance. Here is found a strong combination of cooperation, trade unionism and socialism. The three are bound together as one. biggest red flag I ever saw flies all day from the front of the cooperative headquarters on the Palace Eduard Anseele in Ghent. Anseele, the veteran co-operator, sat as Minister of Public Works in the House of Parliament. I ta'ked with him there, and with Wauters, Minister of Labor; Vandervelde, Minister of Justice;* Huysmans, and Henri DeMan. They all know that if the people should demand today the sociali ation of the industries that program could not now be carried through. They know that voting at the polls does not train the workers to administer industries; that socialism cannot be obtained by political action alone.

They have decided upon a better way. *These men have since resigned.

The political labor movement in Belgium is absolutely nited in the co-operative movement. The workers are so busy in their cooperative movement actually doing things, organizing, administering, producing, distributing, educating and creating, that they have no time to bother their heads over the academic questions that disunite the socialist talkers in other lands.

The socialists, cooperators and trade unionists of Belgium are not separated into left and right wings and other subdivisions. Politics is largely words; cooperation is action; and they express themselves through action. They are solidly and harmoniously united. The workers of Belgium are too radical to be much interested in political theorizing. They are busy building a new social order from the bottom up, and they have the actual structure to show to anybody who wants to see it. It is the most substantial thing in Belgium-their cooperative movement.

The workers in Holland are split into wings. Political antagonisms hamper unity of action. In The Hague may be found the "Volharding," a cooperative society for medical service, which counts 90,000 families in its membership, with a fully equipped medical clinic. The society has many drug stores. Boxes like letter boxes are placed at the street corners for the doctor's prescriptions. Boys on bicycles collect prescriptions and deliver medicines. The society possesses a much more efficient medical service than that in England under the government. I have observed with much interest the working of these two plans of socialization of medicine. The cooperative, non-political method seems to me to be the better.

As one comes out of the railroad station at Copenhagen, Denmark, the largest and most imposing building that meets the eye is the Danish cooperative bank. This building occupies a block and is the finest business building in the city. Denmark may be designated as the most civilized country in the world. Cooperative housing is far advanced. The cooperators supply their members with houses at 10 to 20 per cent. less than the municipalities. The difference arises from simplicity, efficiency and freedom from bureaucracy.

What the Germans are Doing.

One of the most astonishing things in Europe is Germany. The cooperative movement there is progressing rapidly and upon a fundamental basis. Already the German societies have more members than the British. I have never been in a building which impressed me more than the office building of the Central Union of German Consumers Societies in Hamburg. Here is The efficiency, beauty and magnitude. meeting room where the board of directors sits is a richer and more beautiful room than that of the directors of the Bankers Trust Co. on Wall Street. I asked, "Do

the working people approve of such elegance of equipment for their officials?" "Yes," was the reply, "the building of the Central Trades Union, just a few doors away, is still finer than this." I found it so. I wish that our labor temples in America, if they cannot be as beautiful, might at least be as clean as the German workers' buildings.

"Produktion," the local cooperative society in Hamburg, has 120,000 members. It not only conducts stores but has a housebuilding department which has already erected several hundred dwellings. This one local society owns 35 automobiles, 60 horses, 50 boats and several productive plants. It has recently bought out a meatpacking business which had become too big for the capitalistic corporation that ran it during the war. The Berlin society is still bigger than that in Hamburg. Its bakery turns out 100,000 loaves of bread daily which are distributed to its 150 stores.

Germany is the one country that is actually meeting the housing shortage by building houses; and this building is being carried on most effectively by the cooperative societies. The cooperative movement has young men, executives of remarkable administrative genius and experts in every department. Many socialists who once were indifferent to cooperation are now in the movement heart and soul. I believe, as a result of better understanding, the German working people, while still retaining interest in political action, are giving serious attention to cooperation as offering the greatest hope. They have learned by bitter experience that political regimes come and go but cooperation is constant, and what they gain in that field they hold most securely. Germany is distressed, but the distress does not apply to the cooperative movement.

Switzerland has the most beautiful cooperative movement. It is concentrated and effective. It embraces more than onethird of the population. When big business attempts a boycott or coercion, the Swiss Cooperative Union "takes it over." The process is simple. It did this with the flour trust. The Swiss Cooperative Union could not beat the Beef Trust until it got possession of 51 per cent. of its stock; and now it runs the business and has the use Our of 49 per cent. of capitalist capital. American radicals would

scorn

putting

money into the beef trust, but they are doing it every day with every bit of meat they eat; and they will keep on putting

in millions of money and have no voice or control for their pains.

It was a striking thing to find the shoe factory of the Swiss Union running full capactiy, and making more shoes than the members can buy and storing them in its warehouses, just for the sake of constant employment for its workers. "If there is any loss, the cost to the large number of consumer owners of the factory will be very small compared with the cost of unemployment to the workers. This at a time when there is not a capitalistic shoe factory in Switzerland running full time!

The cooperative movement in Great Britain is plodding along as it has for the past seventy-five years, making its steady gains, and training the workers to administer industries.

Making Use of the Expert.

The noticeable thing about the cooperative movement in Europe is that everywhere one finds experts. The Germans are especially given to the employment of chemists. Laboratories are found in every big factory. Cooperation is a movement in which the democratically organized mass employs experts to perform for the people the special services which the democracy itself cannot perform. Engineers, electricians, accountants, scientists, architects, artists and every conceivable sort of experts are being "taken over" by the cooperative movement.

Another noteworthy fact is that the cooperative movement is not easily "seen" by academic students. American investigators of labor conditions go to European countries where half of the people are embraced in this movement and utterly fail to find it. I know of only two Americans who have gotten to the heart of the European co-operative movement.

A visitor who sees it in action in country after country gets a sense of living in the future. This is a real and positive impression. It is the actual contact with a civilization in which things are produced and distributed for use and not for profit and in which the democratically organized working people are actually financing, controlling and administering every sort of useful industry. They are themselves controlling the capital which others pay out in profits to private interests. All of this is done quietly, efficiently, without demonstration or oratory.

It was a great privilege to sit as a delegate from the United States in the Tenth International Congress at Basle, Switzerland. The comparative extent of our American movement may be judged by the fact that the United States had 2 delegates, England 94, Germany 78 and France 48. This Congress set on foot an international cooperative wholesale society and an international bank. Its 1200 delegates, elected from 20 countries, re resented co-operative

societies having a membership of 30,000,000 heads of families. This body represented organizations which are actually solving in the economic field the great question which is disturbing the whole world and which diplomats and politicians cannot and will not solve.

SALES CONVENTION AND BONUS DISTRIBUTION

The salesmen and executive officials of S. C. Johnson & Son, met in their first annual convention at the home office and main factory in Racine, Wisconsin, during the week of December 12th.

In addition to the discussions on technical subjects the gathering was enlivened by social events and by an entertainment and dance for the employees and their families at which time a bonus of $76,810.64 was distributed among the 243 employees in amounts proportioned according to length of service and salaries received during the year.

PHILADELPHIA TRADE UNION

COLLEGE.

Among the encouraging signs in the labor movement at this time is the continued interest in labor education and the continued support of the trade union colleges even in the midst of the present financial difficulties. The Philadelphia Trade Union College began its second year of work the first of November with classes established in English and economics and others in process of formation in public speaking, labor and the law and other courses.

The aim has been to arrange for those courses which the local trade union members feel would be most helpful to them. They wish courses which will promote their understanding of the basic principles of trade unionism, help them to plan for the future of their organization and to work intelligently toward the advancement of their economic and political status.

The fee for a course of ten lessons of two hours each is $2.50 for a member of a local affiliated with the Trade Union College, $5.00 for members of non-affiliated locals. Some locals, recognizing that even this small fee might debar some of their members from taking a course at this time, have set aside union funds sufficient for a limited number of scholarships for their members. The control of the college is vested in a council made up of delegates from the affiliated unions. Its officers at present are, president, S. Tyson Kinsell, President of the Federal Employees Union 23; secretary, Miss Frieda Miller, Secretary of the Women's Trade Union League.

A number of the Philadelphia Painters' Locals are affiliated with the Trade Union College. Members of those locals should see their delegate, or the secretary of the college, at once and register for one of the courses.