THEIR CHARACTEK AND OIUEf'T. 439 



latter were permitted to have a share in tlie business. The 

 progress of business education among the masses is shown in 

 ,tlie fact that this phm, in 1897, proved successful with the 

 raisin-growers, although the suspicion and jealousy of the 

 people broke up the California Fruit Union, conducted on that 

 plan, some years before. 



It should be interesting to note, in comparison with 

 cooperative effort in other countries, how identical motives 

 Mud arguments may be employed both to promote societies 

 organized to obtain higher prices and also those to secure 

 lower prices. The California societies are instances in which 

 people of intelligence and sufficient means, although usually 

 greatly indebted, have organized with no great display of 

 altruistic spirit, in the main upon commercial lines,* for the 

 promotion of commercial ends. Such distress as existed was 

 the result of indebtedness, and the fear of future want; and the 

 early appearance of cooperation was due to the general intel- 

 ligence of the fruit-growers. Even among this class the 

 student will note the same jealousy, suspicion, and. disinclina- 

 tion to unite, which the workers in more altruistic coopera- 

 tion describe as existing among the classes whom they were 

 striving to benefit, and which I found precisely the same in 

 some cases of strictly capitalistic cooperation with which I 



*The salaries paid indicate this. The salary of the president of the Kaisin- 

 growers' Association is |500 a month. There are many cooperative officers 

 who are paid at the rate of from $2,000 to $3,600 per aniinm. The usual 

 salaries paid the managers of local oi-ganizations is from f 1,800 per year down, 

 depending upon the amount of husiness and the time required of the mana- 

 ger. It is curious to contrast these salaries with the .salary of $1,-500, paid to 

 the manager of the Leeds Cooperative Society, with thirty-three thousand 

 members, and an annual business of $5,000,000 — the largest cooperative salary 

 paid in England — or, still more, with the salary of $1,000 a year, paid to Mr. 

 J. W. T. Mitchell, for twenty-one years, and until his death, manager of the 

 English Cooperative Wholesale Society, representing, in 1897, one million 

 fifty-three thousand five hundred sixty-four members of affiliated societies 

 and with net sales of $57,693,492. Mr. Mitchell was a man who in 

 competitive business could have commanded a salary of $25,000. He could, 

 of course, have had a larger salary, but, being an unmarried man, would not 

 take it, and his estate, when he died, was probably under $2,000. American 

 cooperation has developed no .such men. 



