CO-OPERATIUN. 26 



Bales, and at manufacturer's rates. They select an indiTidual to 

 serve them, just as they serve the local custom. Moreover the lo- 

 cal store, whicli had kept a mixed stock of goods, open only on part 

 of the time, finds its custom sufficiently large to keep open all the 

 time, and to move into a department building of its own. Here 

 samples may be seen of nearly everything that monev can buy. It 

 has a social, ethical, and unobtrusive air of reciprocity not found in 

 common stores. The emulation seems as great to sell things low 

 as high, and any fluctuation or flaw is as readily pointed out when 

 against you as in your favor. Anyone can send a child, or order 

 goods by mail as by person. The number of the regularly enrolled 

 custom is a guide to the management, but the pool is now trans- 

 formed, so far as consumption is concerned, into organized society. 



B\it, long before this, production and the mobilization of credit 

 have begun. They began almost simultaneously with the store. 

 The farmer first added his supplies, and soon many articles of the 

 store which had been brought from abroad, are now manufactured 

 nearer home. Of coui'se our store-keeper buys goods where he can 

 get them the cheapest. And, in doing so, we patronize those mills 

 which espouse the labor cost principle. In the first place, as in- 

 terest with us, has become one of the lost arts, we pay it no longer. 

 As we pool our consumption, at cost, we are to lop off" 42 per cent. 

 tarifl\ We are not to pay any exorbitant profit for superintendence. 

 For who can superintend better than a skilled workman ? Nor are 

 we to pay for the present waste and antagonism, of strikes and fail- 

 ures, advertising, wholesale dealers, commission men and runners. 

 We have a market for our goods, and there can be no possible risk 

 in supplying them. If producing in large quantities is economical, 

 so is home production, besides conferring independence. And just 

 now electricity is coming to our aid in changing the world's motor 

 power. 



But when these tolls to capital have been eliminated, the farm- 

 ers and wage workers establish the price, which is one of labor. 

 And since the only standard of a reciprocal exchange is a "day's 

 work," we again come to the point where the labor dollar becomes 

 the labor note. The mobilization of credit we found required no 

 establishment, but little organization, and was the easiest part of 

 co-operation. A half dozen financial reformers among the pool 

 first agreed that they would relieve each other in an emergency, by 

 loaning their spare money on deposit. They drew up a chattel 

 mortgage, each to himself, and capable of being available, at any 

 time, by endorsement. They next agreed, under these, to issue so 



