242 



CO-OPERATION. 



died this year. It is known that most of the 

 societies give no share of their profits to non- 

 stockholding workmen ; but the demand on 

 the part of co-operators is rapidly growing. 

 Of the 77 productive societies that had been in 

 business or were just beginning in England, 

 Wales, and Scotland at the close of 1887, 17 

 were in cotton, linen, silk, and wool, 12 in 

 leather, 10 in metal, 9 in flour, 6 in farming, 

 4 in printing, and 19 in as many different kinds 

 of manufacturing. 



If the announced aims of the leaders of co- 

 operation in England are realized in any such 

 degree in the next twenty-five years as they 

 have been in the past twenty-five, we may look 

 for a great growth of that for which previous 

 success has .prepared the way, namely, co-op- 

 erative production, wherein labor shall share 

 in the profits of manufacturing, and, through 

 the organization of consumers already secured 

 to the extent of over 800,000 families, shall be 

 able to deal a serious blow at the sweating 

 system and other devices of those employers 

 who, in the rage to produce more cheaply 

 than their rivals, offer their employes ruinous- 

 ly low wages or unhealthful conditions of em- 

 ployment. 



The great success in the United States has 

 been in building and loan associations, which 

 are as distinctively American as the credit- 

 unions are German. Still, there are some suc- 

 cessful and now rapidly growing stores, and 

 these as the simplest and historically the earli- 

 est form of co-operation in this country may 

 be first considered. 



Distributive Co-operation. The co-operative 

 store, and much later the factory, were intro- 

 duced and fostered for a long period by organ- 

 izations of workingmen. Most of these organ- 

 izations have given place to others having dif- 

 ferent objects, until to-day nearly all successful 

 co-operative enterprises are carried on inde- 

 pendently of any organization and even of 

 each other. The first attempts at co-operation 

 between 1847 and 1859 were made in New 

 England by the New England Protective 

 Union. Nearly all failed after a time, from 

 lack of the co-operative spirit and from igno- 

 rance of the best methods. In trying to sell for 

 cost, as did these union stores, the average 

 manager is usually confronted with a deficit at 

 the end of each year because of unexpected 

 but inevitable depreciation of goods and from 

 other losses. The bitter rivalry of private 

 stores is also aroused. The latter will sell 

 some staple article even below cost, and, by 

 widely advertising this particular article, will 

 draw off the trade of unthinking men from the 

 co-operative store, which may, on the whole, 

 be selling cheaper. 



The next attempt at co-operation was made 

 by the Patrons of Husbandry, known also as 

 Grangers, and in the South recently as " The 

 Wheel." (See " Annual Cyclopaedia " for 1886, 

 page 42.) This is often associated exclusively 

 with the celebrated granger legislation against 



the abuses of the railroads, but in reality it 

 has accomplished a great deal for its members 

 in education upon practical farm topics and in 

 many other ways, not the least of which has 

 been the result of its co-operative features. 

 These features have been in part represented 

 by purchasing agencies, which bought ma- 

 chinery, groceries, and dry goods for the farm- 

 ers or sold their products in the large cities on 

 orders from the local unions. Still more im- 

 portant and common has been the concentra- 

 tion of all the trade of the members of a local 

 grange or even of a State grange on a strictly 

 cash basis at such wholesale dealers and manu- 

 facturers as would sell at the lowest prices all 

 things needed on the farm and in the home. 

 In hundreds of cases, too, grange stores have 

 been established on the faulty plan just de- 

 scribed of the old union stores that is, selling 

 at or near cost. Some of these stores continue 

 prosperous, as at Torrington and Lebanon, 

 Conn., but most have failed from the same 

 ignorance of approved methods, from inability 

 to find managers who possessed the knowledge 

 lacking in the members, and from the same 

 absence of the co-operative spirit which caused 

 the downfall of the union stores. Yet, aside 

 from the great educational value even of fail- 

 ure, these grange stores, as well as the methods 

 of concentrating trade upon establishments that 

 would give special discounts, have been a great 

 help to the farmer in forcing down in private 

 stores the general level of prices, which in ihe 

 seventies were often exorbitantly high. 



To the now extinct order of the Sovereigns 

 of Industry belongs the credit of having prop- 

 agated extensively in this country the best 

 methods of distributive co-operation embodied 

 in the Rochdale plan. The essential superior- 

 ity of this plan over others lies in its provision 

 that goods shall be sold at regular retail prices, 

 and any profits above what is sufficient for a 

 reserve fund and interest on capital are paid 

 to customers annually or semi-annually, in pro- 

 portion to their trade for the period, though 

 stockholders may receive a larger per cent, of 

 dividend on their trade than outsiders. The 

 other provisions, such as shares of small value, 

 limitation of the number that one can hold, 

 and the allowance of but one vote to a stock- 

 holder independent of his shares, are common 

 to other systems. This is the plan on which 

 most of the English and permanently success- 

 ful American stores have been managed since 

 it was introduced in England by the Rochdale 

 Pioneers in 1844, and brought to general at- 

 tention in this country thirty years later by 

 the Sovereigns of Industry. 



The latter organization, founded by William 

 II. Earle, of Worcester, Mass., in 187i, devoted 

 most of its strength during its six years' life to 

 the spread of distributive co-operation. For 

 two years paid lecturers, well acquainted with 

 the most approved methods of co-operation, 

 were kept in the field to organize local coun- 

 cils and help them to establish stores in the 



