Co-operation- 

 Ithe Answer 



l .■ By Dr. Preston Bradley* 



^TNy^ HERE are 65,000,000 individ- 

 — 7^ uals in the United States at the 

 y_y present time who are living at a 

 mere subsistence level or just below it! 

 They are beginning to get desperate! 

 And their desperation will express itself 

 (unless something is done to alleviate 

 the cause of their desperation) in a man- 

 ner that will throw down and overcome 

 all political lines and all political bar- 

 riers ! 



These 65,000,000 are the ones who 

 are the most susceptible to the class war- 

 fare that is the necessary philosophical 

 principle of communistic growth! They 

 are also the ones who have a sense of 

 inadequacy, so that their own intelligence 

 and ability prevents them from complain- 

 ing about economic and industrial in- 

 justice. Therefore, they are the ones 

 who will flock to a strong personality, 

 saying: "Go ahead!" We will turn 

 everything over to you ! Take control — 

 of the press, of the radio, of everything! 

 You can do so with our permission, but, 

 for God's sake, give us a job . . . give 

 us food . . . give us a means of making 

 a living! 



The danger is evident — it is per- 

 fectly logical. It is exactly what hap- 

 pened in Italy. It is exactly what hap- 

 pened in Russia and Germany. 



Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Fin- 

 land solved this question by smashing 

 the entire rubber monopoly, one of the 

 very important and powerful industries 

 of those nations. They smashed that 

 monopoly. One monopoly after another 

 was undermined and destroyed on the 

 basis that the people who owned the 

 land, who toiled with their hands, who 

 were the real producers of the wealth 

 of the country, should not be forced to 

 see that the wealth which they had helped 

 to create dissipated into the channels of 

 men and institutions that did not con- 

 tribute to the basic wealth but who had 

 only a service to perform, a service which 

 demanded and extracted huge profits. 



These countries put into practice the 

 cooperative system. The cooperative 

 movement is not a new movement. It 

 has been in existence in various forms 

 and places for some time, even in our 

 own country since the early eighties of 



the last century. But the condition of 

 our society and of our economic and in- 

 dustrial set-up has never permitted the 

 drive and the impact necessary to develop 

 an attitude of financing and control such 

 as is demanded by the cooperative ideal. 

 Consequently, only to a very small extent 

 do we find this system operating in cer- 

 tain localities in America. But, it is mak- 

 ing rapid and tremendous development. 



Our neighbor state of Wisconsin leads 

 the entire nation in the actual working 

 out of the cooperative plan as applied to 

 the dairy business, especially and its al- 

 lied and associated industries in the Mid- 

 dle West. 



The person who believes in the co- 

 operative scheme of life says that a ser- 

 vice is a service, and it should be com- 

 pensated, but if the leakage is such that 

 the producer and the consumer become 

 further apart all the time, and the pro- 

 ducer is denied the ability to purchase 

 back that which he produces and needs, 

 then there must be a defect in the sys- 

 tem of distribution. The very gist of 

 the cooperative movement is to lower cost 

 of production, equalize cost of distribu- 

 tion, and give the ultimate consumer a 

 sharing profit in the entire transaction 

 in the nature of less cost for the thing 

 he needs. This is a perfectly logical 

 and not at all an extravagant idea. 



It is now beginning to dawn on us 

 that there are certain industries in Amer- 

 ica, and agriculture in particular, to 

 which this principle of cooperation could 

 be applied. However, a howl is being 

 raised by the interests — controlled 

 means of information, namely, the news- 

 papers — this same institution that is 

 prating about being free, when the fact 

 of the matter is that they don't mean a 

 free press at all but rather a "privileged 

 press." 



I believe in the future of cooperatives. 

 I can detect no justifiable reason why men 

 in this country should not organize co- 

 operative institutions for the purpose of 

 controlling production, distribution and 

 consumption. I believe that it is a form 

 of socialized ownership that is absolutely 

 commensurate with every safe and sane 

 principle of production. 



• Pastor, People's Church of Chicago. 



Through that increased opportunity of 

 the payroll, you are going to find a need 

 for new capital. That means that the 

 "frozen" idle dollars with which the 

 banks all over this country are bursting 

 will be taken out of the vaults in which 

 they are now deposited and loaned out 

 to people who can make good use of 

 them. These dollars are not worth as 

 much as the paper they are printed on if 

 they remain idle in the vaults of banks. 

 For every dollar thus lying idle, there is 

 some man out of work. Until we can 

 put these dollars to work and thereby 

 increase purchasing power of the people 

 by the activity of these dollars, we shall 

 never cure the poverty and the unfor- 

 tunate condition in which so many of our 

 people find themselves. 



It is hard to believe that we allow a 

 social and economic order to exist which 

 causes a family to undergo untold suffer- 

 ing, hardship, and privation, while under 

 the very same system another family 

 is permitted to import more than $3,000 

 worth of lilac blossom for a wedding 

 ceremony, and while the children of still 

 another family can rr.ike a debut in a 

 hotel in this city for which occasion 

 they purchase $5,000 worth of cham- 

 pagne to guzzle up in one evening. Pov- 

 erty can be cured in this country of ours. 

 There is enough oil, coal, iron ore, pow- 

 er, natural resources, brains, physical 

 equipment, farms, and factories in the 

 United States to take care of 702,000,000 

 people on an American standard of liv- 

 ing which is a minimum of $200 a 

 month! 



In spite of this fact, we do not seem 

 able to take care of 120,000,000 indi- 

 viduals, even by having 55,000,000 of 

 (Continued on page 19) 



SEPTEMBER, 1936 



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