604 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 
were quoted as varying between about J1 and 17 per cent. during the period 
studied. It was suggestsd, in conclusion, that the measurement of the extent of 
the average change in prices over any prolonged period cannot be done with great 
precision. 
TUESDAY, AUGUST 6. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. Co-operation. By C. R. Fay, B.A. 
In a sense we are all co-operators, just as in a sense we are all Socialists. With- 
out ‘co-operation,’ without, i.e., the organisation and interchange of services, 
human activity is ineffective. But co-operation in its technical sense signifies a 
peculiar organisation of business activity, As a trading body, the co-operative 
society differs from the trade union, which is organised for collective bargaining 
and friendly benefits, and from the friendly society or mutual insurance society 
(la Mutualité), which make provision among their members for occasional acci- 
dents and periodic needs. The co-operative society is essentially a trading body, 
but, as distinct from the joint-stock company, it is a union of persons knit 
together by a common need rather than by a material capital, and prepared to 
grant the profits of membership to all those who perform its duties, in proportion 
to the loyalty with which they make use of the society. Co-operation is, in effect, 
the means whereby in the last fifty years or more over the continent of Europe 
generally the weaker members of the population have successfully assumed 
certain functions of organisation and management, hitherto ineffectively or 
harshly performed by independent parties. (Co-operation may be organised from 
the standpoint of the producer, both in the country and in the town. 
The rural credit-bank provides the producing farmer with capital, just as the 
supply society supplies him with his raw materials, and the machine-owning 
society with the use of machines. These societies, together with the different 
forms of productive societies, dairies, distilleries, wine societies, bacon societies, 
societies for the sale of corn, vegetables, or fruit, have made the small cultivator 
the business equal of the big farmer and the townsman. 
The counterpart of the rural productive society in the town is the labour 
co-partnership, as it is called in England. In the labour co-partnersbip, the 
working members are organised in a single business concern, whether it be a 
boot and shoe society, such as flourishes in England; or a society of builders, 
such as in France; or a labour (.e., navvy) society, such as in Italy. , They are 
not independent producers and do not therefore require supply societies or credit 
banks like the farmers. In Germany, where the town credit-banks flourish, there 
are practically no labour co-partnerships. The two are in a measure opposed. 
The former tend to keep the small independent producer small and independent, 
their chief active members being small artisans and shopkeepers; the latter 
assemble their workers under one roof and try to educate them up to the delicate 
task of conducting a modern business in the double réle of employers and 
employed. The labour co-partnership obviously makes very severe demands on 
the character of the worker, and it is unlikely in the future to be a common 
industrial type. But its organisation has, in England especially, roused employers 
to imitate its methods by introducing into their businesses schemes of profit- 
sharing and representation of workers. 
Co-operation may also be organised from the standpoint of the consumer. 
This is the form which predominates in Great Britain as the ‘store,’ and which, 
as first established by the Rochdale Pioneers, has been faithfully and consciously 
imitated by almost every country of Europe. 
The Association of Consumers is uninterested in the occupation of its members 
as such, since it exists to provide them with the necessaries of life as cheaply and 
efficiently as possible. It begins in the store with retail distribution; it then 
goes one stage back to wholesale distribution; and finally to large scale produc- 
