lO 



AUSTRL\ - CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 



that of limited liability consortiums, contemplated La the law on consor- 

 tiums of April 9th., 1873. {Bull. Imperial Laws, No.yo). 



Among the results of distributive co-operatiou in the Trent district 

 we shall mention the following: the co-operative distributive societies regul- 

 ate the prices and the quality of goods on the market ; even the merchants 

 have to take account of the prices fixed by the consortiums and the quality 

 of the goods placed on the market by the distributive co-operative societies. 



As regards the financial advantages, an important calculation was made 

 in the newspaper "Cooperazione Trentina", of June 30th., 1889, on the basis 

 of the information supplied with regard to the purchase and consumption 

 of goods by the co-operative societies in the years 1897 ^^^ 1898. According 

 to this calculation, on about 7,600,000 crs. worth of goods bought in those 

 two years from the co-operative societies then existing, a saving of 3 % was 

 made by wholesale purchase and payment in time to profit by the discount, 

 that is 228,000 crs. On the goods distributed (6,200,000 crs.), on which even 

 fair deaHng merchants would have charged about 20 %, the co-operative 

 societies, on an average, realised a profit of 7 % so that their members also in 

 this way gained 13 %; the members would therefore have gained 8 '6, 00 crs. 

 on the goods supplied by the societies, and this, added to the 228,' 00 crs. 

 above mentioned, gives 1,034,000 crs. as the amount of the immediate 

 savings for the two years. 



It is further to be noted that at that date there were only 119 co-oper- 

 ative societies with 17,100 members, while in 1912 there Vv^ere more than twice 

 as many societies with 32,000 members; if the calculation made for 1897 

 and 1898 is correct, the annual saving to the members in recent years wordd 

 be about 1,000,000 cr^. 



* * 



There are also in the Trent district Mixed Di'^tribiUive and Credit Con- 

 sortiums, for example, the Trent Co-operative Union. We give below the 

 situation of these in the last three years. 



Table VII. — Situation of Mixed Distributive and Credit Consortiums. 



Credits 



55 s 



» s 



Cash 



Credits 



Goods 

 Account 



Personal 



Estate 



and 



Securities 



Real 

 Estate 



Total 



1910. 

 1911. 

 1912. 



4«i 

 513 

 531 



2,891 

 5.192 

 4.645 



222,490 



135.705 

 244,476 



67,627 

 118,059 

 126,710 



39.872 

 32.506 

 25,736 



14.767 

 28,152 



332,883 

 307,229 

 429,721 



