BUSINESS EFFORTS. 365 



stores, called co-operative, and sell commodities, as other merchants did, 

 at the prices current in that place at the time. Then, at stated intervals 

 of once or twice a year, the business would be balanced, and the profits, 

 after paying the running expenses and interest on the capital stock, 

 would be divided among the stockholders, on a basis of the amount of 

 goods purchased by each. The object of this system was, therefore, to 

 make a success of the business as a mercantile effort, so as to make 

 money for its stockholders. 



The Exchange did not encourage the people to establish stores. It 

 taught them to consider, before embarking in the enterprise, what object 

 they expected to achieve ; to decide whether the venture should be a suc- 

 cess as a mercantile effort, or a success as an auxiliary to the farming effort ; 

 and whether they should make money at the expense of their brother 

 farmers, or whether they would make the same money by assisting their 

 brother farmers to make equally as much. To make this perfectly plain, 

 note the difference in the following comparison : A Rochdale store in a 

 county in Central Texas, in 1888, declared a dividend to its purchasers, 

 equal to fifty per cent of its capital, on its first six months' business. 

 Suppose it had maintained this degree of prosperity throughout the year, 

 and it had a capital of $5000 paid in by a hundred stockholders, and 

 that the gross trade of the county amounts to about $1,000,000. If the 

 average profit on sales is twenty per cent, then this institution has sold 

 $25,000 worth of goods, and returns to its stockholders $50 each as a 

 dividend, and the gross profits of the other merchants of that county 

 amount to $195,000, as a profit on the other $975,000 worth of business 

 done in the county. This is very satisfactory to all the merchants and 

 newspapers, lawyers and doctors, and especially to the stockholders in 

 the co-operative store, who have got their original investment back, and 

 begin to understand that merchandising pays better than farming. The 

 manager is lionized, and becomes a great man in the county. He is 

 recognized as having a great influence among the farmers. The store 

 will have a fine reputation as a successful mercantile institution, and 

 everybody will congratulate the farmer on having such a good store, 

 and praise him for his co-operative effort. 



Now had an Alliance store been started in the place of the Rochdale 

 store, in the same town, at that time, with a like capital, different con- 

 ditions would have prevailed, and a very different result would have 

 ensued. The Alliance store would have said : " We are strictly auxiliary 

 to the farming effort, and therefore will not charge the membership the 

 usual profits of merchants, and then return it to them as dividends. We 

 will let them keep the profits in their pockets, by selling them the goods 



