INFORMATION REL,ATING TO CO-OPERATlON AND ASSOCIATION 29 



laws establish that the societ3^ is a commercial enterprise which should 

 fulfil the elementary duty devolving on every such organization, that 

 namely of meeting its working costs, paying fair interest on its working 

 capital, and forming certain funds which will allow it to reach as soon as 

 possible the end it has before itself. 



With a view to this end the society undertakes the following business : 



1. The sale on commission of live stock for slaughter in Vienna 

 and other towns of the province ; 



2. Trade in live stock for slaughter, on its own account and on the 

 basis of the business relations already mentioned ; 



3. The sale of slaughtered stock and meat in Vienna and the pro- 

 vinces, on commission and on the society's own account ; 



4. The sale of breeding and income- producing stock. 



The trade in breeding and income-producing stock, which has existed 

 since the initiation of the enterprise and has become a special branch of 

 the society's business, has affected 20,000 heads of stock a year. The 

 society furnishes an abundant supply of milch-cows from the Alps, Swit- 

 zerland and Holland to Vienna and other large towns. Fiom most farms 

 to which it sends milch-cows, stock intended for fattening and traction- 

 oxen, it receives stock fattened for slaughter. The society has given a 

 most important place on its future programme to the reorganization of the 

 \^iennese market by the formation of regular markets for breeding and 

 income-producing stock. 



The live stock market in Vienna is exclusively occupied by butcher's 

 stock : the cattle brought to it are all without exception slaughtered, whe- 

 ther the}^ be fitted for the butcher's market or not. Naturall}^ many ani- 

 mals always enter it which have not reached the right stage for butchery, 

 and a deplorable state of affairs results. 



The society therefore proposes in the interests of all concerned to de- 

 bar from the slaughterhouse this unfit stock, that is to say to prevent or 

 at least to reduce irrational slaughtering. Such an end might be reached 

 by joining to the markets for fat stock conrplementary markets for breed- 

 ing and income-producing stock. There should be a large weekly market 

 of the latter kind before that of stock for slaughter, into which beasts un- 

 ready for immediate slaughter would thus not enter even although economic 

 or speculative motives caused them to be sent to it. The selection thus 

 practised would cause those interested to procure and sell in the market 

 the animals which they raised, fattened, utilized for traction or otherwise, 

 or which they had bred for these various ends. At the same time a choice 

 could be made of animals suitable to slaughter or unsuitable to be kept, and 

 as soon as the first market closed they could be taken to that for butcher's 

 stock. Thus the latter would secure stock of a very different quality, 

 suited to the demands of the inspectors of meat and the interests which 

 ought to be respected. In practice the course of this trade would be such 

 that most of the animals brought to the market for income-producing stock 

 would be restored to agriculture and would return to the butchers' market 

 from three to six months later, when their condition was better suited to 



