12 



Mr. McCarthy. Well, I could not say, because I am not 

 familiar with the system here, but I imagine that when you 

 take the Co-operative Wholesale Society of England, buying 

 that way in a large lot for, we will say, a thousand grocery 

 stores, it comes very much nearer than anything we would have 

 here. 



Mr. Wheat. That is, the co-operative association is similar 

 to the Liverpool market, isn't it? If we want onions there we 

 buy them in Liverpool. 



Mr. McCarthy. In the manufacturing districts over there 

 the people unite and have their own grocery stores and trading 

 stores of all kinds, and these little units are united in a great 

 big wholesale co-operative society. They own the stores them- 

 selves so there is no profit in that except the salaries of the 

 officials that the people themselves hire; there is no money that 

 can come out of it in any other sense. 



Mr. Wheat. They are strictly co-operative? 



Mr. McCarthy. Strictly co-operative, on a one man, one 

 vote, basis. They own their own vessels, have their tea 

 plantations in Ceylon, have organizations in Canada for buying 

 cheese and apples for them, and I think they have some 

 agency in this country. It is a great big organization that the 

 people themselves own, and it lias existed sixty years or more 

 and does a business of between $700,000,000 and $800,000,000. 

 Of course when they buy that way the process is very much 

 cheapened. Professor Mezes, of the City College of New York, 

 reckons that the Danes, by selling that way, reduce the cost of 

 selling from 35 to 2| cents on the dollar. 



Mr. Wheat. They sell in large quantities? 



Mr. McCarthy. Yes, sell in large quantities and do away 

 with jobbers and middlemen. I met a man in Wisconsin who 

 sold produce, and he told me that he knocked out two middle- 

 men between Wisconsin and New York by coming to New 

 York and guaranteeing the standard of a million pounds of 

 butter. He said he did not go to Chicago at all, but sent the 

 article on to New York and knocked out two or three of these 

 men. 



