conservative are willing to unite, is a hopeful sign for the security of society.

No country ever had a strong and substantial growth of Co-operation until it had a national co-operative organization. This has been the deficiency in this country. To meet this need, The Co-operative League was organized in 1915 and started work in 1916 with headquarters in New York City. It is an organization which collects all possible information concerning Co-operation in the United States; makes surveys of failures and successes; publishes information; gives advice; standardizes methods; creates definite policies of action; prepares bylaws for societies; drafts bills to be introduced in legislative bodies; promotes favourable legislation; sends out advisors to societies; provides lectures; prepares study courses; conducts a school; publishes books, pamphlets and periodicals; and in every way possible promotes practical Co-operation. The League is a federation of co-operative societies, governed by its constituent members. Already the best and strongest of the societies are its members. Through The League the United States Movement is connected with the International Co-operative Alliance which is composed of the similar national unions or leagues of twenty-six countries.

The First National Co-operative Congress held under the auspices of The Co-operative League was at Springfield, Illinois, in 1918; the Second Congress was at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1920; and the Third Congress will be at Chicago in 1922.

The great need in the United States is for the fundamental educational work which The League is doing. The day of propaganda has passed. What is needed is standarized information and practical guidance based upon the sound principles of Co-operation. This movement has been so effectively standardized, that success and failure can be predicted and controlled. It is not more societies that are

needed but more knowledge among the people of the practical principles and technic necessary to success.

In no country will Co-operation have a more difficult path. Profit-making business is in absolute and dominant control. But the fundamental economic changes must come are coming. The salvation of the people must be by one of two methods. They must either learn their lesson by suffering, perhaps, by bloody revolution, with all of the reaction, delays and distress which these have in store; or they must learn their lesson by education-a slower, surer, evolutionary way. Which of these the people of this country will employ on their way to emancipation remains to be seen. It is by the path of education and evolution that the Co-operative Movement would lead.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON CO-OPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES

"Communistic Societies in the United States," 1895, Charles Nordhoff. "History of Co-operation in the United States," 1888, Johns Hopkins University Studies.

"Co-operative Savings and Loan Associations," 1889, Seymour Dexter. "Co-operation in New England," 1913, James Ford.

"Co-operative Credit for the United States," 1917, Henry W. Wolff. "Co-operation," Vols. I to VI, published by The Co-operative

League.

"Transactions" First (1918) and Second (1920) National Congresses, The Co-operative League.

CHAPTER II

THE OBJECT OF A CONSUMERS'

CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY

In a broad sense a consumers' co-operative society exists every time that a number of persons feeling the same need join together collectively to satisfy it better than they could do by individual means.* It would follow, therefore, from this definition that every consumers' society has for its object production, since to supply any need it is necessary to produce; and, indeed, that is the aim of consumers' co-operation, but, as a matter of fact, it only achieves this at an advanced point in its evolution. In its beginnings a consumers' co-operative society is satisfied with buying the requirements necessary for its members; it is a shopkeeper long before it is a manufacturer. Generally a beginning is made with the most important of all needs, the supply of foodstuffs, or in one of the particular branches of this general need, such as the supply of bread, wine, groceries. Thus, Monsignor von Ketteler, Archbishop of Mainz, said that the question of co-operation is summed up in the simple question of food supply; but that does not belittle it. If the consumers' society had no other aim but to enable

*Author's Note. It is almost impossible to give a precise definition of a co-operative society, on account of the great variety of objects aimed at. In any case, in our opinion, it is impossible to include a consumers' and a producers' society under the same definition, because, in spite of the apparent identity of their aims, these aims are really antagonistic, as we shall see later. However, in certain Italian books, by Wollenborg, Pantaleoni, Valenti, Mariani, &c., we find subtle and ingenious analyses which attempt to embrace all forms of co-operation under one synthetic formula.

17

the working classes and the poor to feed themselves better, that would be no small thing. To convince oneself that that is not a negligible end it is sufficient to consider: (1) That a considerable proportion of the working-class population (which Messrs. Charles Booth and Rowntree estimate at 27 to 30 per cent. in English towns) do not get the minimum wage necessary to maintain life; they do not receive the minimum wage necessary to buy the number of food units required for the maintenance of the human body. (2) That the means of purchasing at the disposal of the workman-already very small--are further wasted by his inability to use them with economy. He buys in small quantities--a halfpenny worth of sugar or of coffee from small hucksters, whose goods are sold at third or fourth hand, deteriorated in quality and raised in price, each middleman having taken his profit on the way. When he is forced to buy on credit he submits, either through ignorance or through apathy, to all the frauds which the fierce struggle for life forces on hucksters as poor as himself. He has even to pay an insurance to the shopkeeper, in the form of increased prices, against the insolvency of those of his comrades who do not pay. These conditions are so unfavourable that, as has been pointed out with savage irony, “there are not many rich men who could afford themselves the luxury of buying under the same conditions as the poor."

Consumers' co-operation, above all when it is supported by strong purchasing federations, sweeps away all this misery. If a society aims at cheapness only it can sell goods well below current commercial prices, and even if, as is generally the case, it sells at the ordinary trade price, the consumers buy goods of better quality-more nourishing food and more lasting clothes-and also gain an increase in quantity resulting from just weights used for bread, for meat, for everything. It becomes an institute of social hygiene of the first order, and certainly has been one of the

factors in the remarkable decline of tuberculosis in England. In spite of what Monsignor von Ketteler says, consumers' co-operation is not confined to the supply of food stuffs, but is able to extend to all the needs of human life, such as clothing, furnishing, and, above all, housing (the last is so important a category that the societies for the supply of houses are generally treated separately under the name of building societies). In the United States there are hundreds of towns where consumers' co-operative association has for its object the creation and exploitation of a telephone system. In New York, Brussels, Berlin, and Milan the owners of motor cars have formed co-operative societies to supply themselves with petrol, tires, and other accessories, in purchasing which the consumer has been scandalously exploited. And not only to the supply of material needs, but also to intellectual and moral ones, including all that contributes to well-being, all that adds to the comfort and charm of life. One can well imagine-in fact, there already exist-co-operative clubs, co-operative theatres, cooperative newspapers, and, above all, co-operative churches, that is to say, institutions formed and maintained by those who wish to gain by them, to instruct, amuse, and edify themselves in common.1

What makes the success of consumers' co-operation is the very fact that its ends are most varied. Whatever is wanted of it can be obtained. It lends itself with marvellous ease to any social aim, even the most diverse sometimes, it must be avowed, the most antagonistic-so that we must choose between them. As we shall see, one can seek in consumers' co-operation either cheapness or an increase of income, savings for the individual or the constitution of an

1 In greater New York there are three co-operative schools in which the students (adolescent and early adult) employ their own teachers and administer the affairs of the schools. In the United States there are also two or three moving picture theatres owned and controlled by the patrons.