70. Examples of successful coöperation 1 in the States. Often discussed in connection with profit sharing, but of greater Status of social significance, is coöperation. In general, coöperation has cooperation developed more slowly in the United States than in Great Britain United and on the continent of Europe. Nevertheless, some types of coöperation have attained considerable success in this country, particularly, perhaps, consumers' coöperation. In the following passage, James Peter Warbasse gives some examples of successful consumers' coöperation in the United States: ... coöperative societies in the United States. All over the country the movement has developed. It has been Over 2000 sporadic. No center can be designated as the seat of the renaissance consumers' of coöperation. The agricultural people of the northern states have been among the first in this new era. The Coöperative League of America has knowledge of over 2,000 true consumers' coöperative societies conducting stores. The Tri-state Coöperative Society is a federation of about seventy The Trisocieties, mostly in western Pennsylvania. These societies are constituted of many nationalities; Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukranians, Italians and Bohemians. One of the typical successful organizations is that of Bentleyville, Penn. Here, in a little mining town, it has crowded out private business, and handles groceries, meats, dry goods, shoes, feed, and automobile supplies to the amount of $200,000 a year. ... State Cooperative Society. States Cooperative Society. The Central States Coöperative Society is a federation of about The Central sixty-five distributive societies. Its headquarters are Springfield, Ill. It maintains a wholesale with a warehouse at East St. Louis. These societies are largely built up among the union locals of the United Mine Workers in Illinois. This is a group of about eighty of these societies. Their financial success enables many of them to return to their members a savings-return of from 6 to 12 per cent quarterly on the cost of their purchases. Illinois is but an index of what is going on in the neighboring states. Strong groups of societies exist in Indiana, Ohio and Iowa. The Palatine Coöperative Society of Chicago with 1200 members 1 From James Peter Warbasse, The Coöperative Consumers' Movement in the United States. The Coöperative League of America, New York, 1919. The Palatine Co operative Society. Coöperation in Wiscon sin, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Mon tana. Coöperation in the Puget Sound section. Coöperation in Cali fornia. conducts a school with 400 Polish students. This society has a capital of $500,000.... Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana are, perhaps, more thoroughly permeated with the spirit of coöperation than any other section of the country. An example of the method of operation is the Silverleaf, North Dakota, Society. A small group of farmers subscribed $200 each. They bought out two merchants in the nearest town. One building was remodeled and used as a store, warehouse and creamery; the other is used as a community center. . . The Northwest has a vigorous movement around Puget Sound. The powerful labor organizations of Seattle have become interested in coöperation. Things are happening rapidly. The Seattle society bought a store doing a business of $4,200 a month. They started in June, 1918, and increased the business to $7,000 a month. They then took over the city market, and during the first 30 weeks did a business of $500,000. Now their meat business alone amounts to $70,000 a month. . . . During the past few months, they have gone ahead and organized their slaughter house where they kill the animals supplied by their own agricultural members. Most of their fruit and vegetables are supplied by their own members. Their market is a concrete building with its own ice plant and cold storage. Among these Seattle coöperatives are found a laundry, printing plant, milk condensary, several shingle mills, fish cannery and recreation houses. Behind them is the support of the labor unions. A single union contributed $12,000 to their total $41,000 paid up capital. The Puget Sound Coöperative Wholesale, a federation of the societies about Seattle, was organized in 1918. An older coöperative movement is found in California. The Rochdale movement was started there fully twenty years ago. It experienced many vicissitudes. A wholesale was organized but it failed to give substantial help. Then the Pacific Coöperative League was incorporated in 1913 as a propaganda and sustaining organization. This has given decided strength to the movement. During the first four years more than 1100 associate members joined the League. In 1918 a significant move was made: the California Union of Producers and Consumers was created. The three organizations which enter into its composition are the Farmers' Educational and Co operative Union, the Pacific Coöperative League and the California State Federation of Labor. . . 71. Examples of unsuccessful coöperation 1 of producers' co The Coöperative League of America believes that producers' Two types coöperation is generally a success when engaged in by consumers' societies, and when the product is intended, not for the general mar- operation. ket, but for the exclusive use of members of these consumers' societies. The League believes, on the other hand, that producers' coöperation is universally a failure when engaged in by persons not members of a consumers' society, and when the aim is to produce for the general market rather than exclusively for members of a consumers' society. In the following selection, Mr. Warbasse illustrates the failure of this second type of producers' coöperation: of the coöperative producers' factory We must face the facts. The coöperative producers' factory has Failure failed. After a hundred years of painful experimenting, history shows that when a group of workers organize and control their product, their motive is to get as much as they can for it. The interest of the small group of workers is to exploit the great mass of consumers. Even though they are less ruthless, and give better value than capitalistic producers, the main fact still stands. They sell their product in competition with capitalistic producers, and no matter how unselfish and ideal their original plan has been, they tend ultimately to become animated by the same spirit of trade as animates the capitalist. The history of the coöperative producers' factory in the European countries is in line with the above facts. The United States is not without its examples. From 1845 down to the present time, such organizations have come and gone, and left their groups of sad and disillusioned workers standing by the wayside. illustrated by the history of cooperation in the United States from 1845 to the present The Workingmen's Protective Union, the Sovereigns of Industry, time. the Patrons of Husbandry, and the Knights of Labor, all organized coöperative producers' enterprises. The latter had several boot and shoe factories in New England between 1875 and 1885. These attempts at coöperative industry contributed largely to the breaking 1 From James Peter Warbasse, Producers' Coöperative Industries. The Coöperative League of America, New York, 1921. down of this splendid old organization. Printing societies, iron foundries, cloth mills, glass factories, laundries, clothing factories, and box factories, have each passed into history. Other producers' coöperative enterprises in the United States have made furniture, underwear, brooms, coal, nails, pipes, lumber, pottery, soap, stoves, tobacco, and most every other American product. At the organization of many of these, twenty-five, fifty and seventy-five years ago, the same language was used and the same plans were made as we find in the case of groups of workers now blindly planning producers' industries. The Coöperative Stove Works of Troy, N. Y., founded as the result of a strike in 1866, developed a capital of $106,000 in twentyfive years, but by that time there were but ten of the original workers in the concern, and six men owned more than half of the stock. The same happened in the Coöperative Foundry of Rochester, N. Y.; organized in 1867, it grew till it had a capital of $200,000 twenty years later and was doing a business of $350,000 a year; but it ended by becoming a capitalistic stock company owned by thirty-five stockholders. A similar history follows the cigar and glove factories. The Coöperative Hat industry of Philadelphia was started in 1887 and went the way of the rest. A coöperative hat factory in New York had capital, enthusiasm and idealism, but it failed for want of an organized market of consumers. The Coöperative Barrel Works of Minneapolis, organized in 1874, had by-laws which voiced ideal standards of industry, and every condition surrounded their enterprise to make for success; [but they ultimately failed]. . . ... In 1919 the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and Railway Shopmen invested around a million dollars in factories for the manufacture of gloves, hosiery, and underwear. Although called coöperative, like all of the above enterprises, they were really not coöperative. The Coöperative League of America advised against the course they were entering upon; but oblivious of a hundred years of failure they went ahead, and the poorest paid of the Railroad Brotherhoods in less than a year have sunk their hardearned savings in a hopeless failure. As has been pointed out, one of the most significant forms of Benefits of coöperation is consumers' coöperation. Where practicable, this consumers' coöperation form of coöperation has several economic advantages, of which the two most important are probably the following: first, the coöperative store enables consumers to get commodities at a lower price than would be possible were they obliged to buy those commodities of a non-coöperative store. Second, to the extent that the coöperative store eliminates unnecessary middlemen, the productivity of the community may be increased. Aside from these and other economic advantages, the coöperative store confers a number of social benefits, which Mr. Fay outlines in the following passage: benefits of the coöperative store: [In the management of the coöperative store,] every member The social has one vote in the general assembly, and no one has more than one vote. . No doubt, as a rule, only the few enthusiasts are regular attendants, but there is not here, as in an ordinary company's meeting, the same probability that the audience will be overawed by one or two big men. From membership to a seat on the committee, from the committee to the presidency, from the presidency to a directorship on the Board of the Wholesale Federation on the one hand, or on the Central Board of the Coöperative Union on the other, there is a ladder of responsibility which the intelligent working man may It teaches climb. In proportion as industry generally becomes more centhe working. tralized and the working man more rigidly fixed to the machine, the man selfcoöperative society becomes more valuable as a corrective to the government. narrowness of his outlook as a worker. The chief business duties of the committee are to control the manager, who fixes prices and is generally given a fairly free hand so long as he makes the expected dividend, and to keep a watch over ingoings and outgoings. (1) (2) It famil iarizes the It is unfortunately considered among most classes a pardonable, if not a heroic, thing to trade on the credit of the storekeeper. The coöperative store, however, being an association of working men, working can forcibly impress on each working man, as he enters the society, that indebtedness at the store is an indirect form of dishonesty to- ments. 1 From C. R. Fay, Coöperation at Home and Abroad. P. S. King & Son, London, 1920; pp. 322-324, 328, 330-331. classes with cash pay |