The National Federal Co-Operative Zations

THE NATIONAL (FEDERAL) CO-OPERATIVE ZATIONS The Co-operative Wholesale Societies.—The wholesale so cieties have grown from the retail as naturally as a tree from its roots. It would not be inapt to speak of their relationship to their members as resembling that of the Federal Government in America to the States of the Union. The original English (and Welsh) C.W.S. came into being during the American Civil War, and the Lancashire promoters of the society were influenced by that struggle for federal unity. Unity is the note of the wholesale society, as diversity is of the retail. What would be a medley of local units competing against one another for supplies is trans formed by a C.W.S. into an organized body, buying and selling together. Where the larger local societies would each be setting up rival wholesale departments, the national wholesale pools the strength of all, and supplies all, on open terms strictly equal toward all society-members. On the other hand a C.W.S. has no monopoly of the co-operative market. It is a wholesale de partment, which the retail society may or may not elect to use. Only corporate bodies are members; for no individual in his own right holds any "wholesale" shares or enjoys any C.W.S. control.

The society-members provide capital in the ratio of one £5 share for every two members; and these shares, also, may accu mulate out of the dividend of 3d. or 4d. in the £ on wholesale pur chases. Once a quarter, on Saturday afternoons, several hundred delegates from the society-members attend regional meetings, and the general meetings subsequently held at its Manchester head quarters by the C.W.S., and at Glasgow by the S.C.W.S. The voting power is based on membership qualified by purchases. Salaried full-time directors are elected, 32 by the societies in England and Wales for the C.W.S., 12 by Scottish societies for the S.C.W.S. Independent auditors are similarly chosen. The federations are so far servants that, except by consent, they cannot fix retail prices—maximum prices, and not minima, being desired. On the other hand they possess very great influence. All the directors have been elected from well-known and trusted local leaders. With their officials they represent the knowledge and power of a world-wide business. They can match their national oversight against the strength of local independence. The C.W.S. Bank with its annual turnover of six or seven hundred millions is a giant in co-operative finance. In addition there are the accountants and auditors appointed by the C.W.S., and the managers and travellers, all without any compulsory powers, yet constituting a body of vigilance, while themselves subject to the criticism of the local managers and executives, and of the C.W.S. directors elected by those executives.

Along these lines the C.W.S. conducts a trade that—from semi failure and derision in the days when, literally, the federation employed two men and a boy—has grown to over seventy-five 'Retail societies employees. The total number of employees of all societies in 1927 was 209,616.

millions yearly. From solicitors to artists, from bankers and tailors to land workers, miners and seamen, it employs at home and abroad, approximately, 50,000 workers. In its own workshops, wholly or in part, it manufactures goods to the value (at whole sale prices) of over twenty-five millions, these being supplied only to its corporate members. Besides its depots scattered over the world, in partnership with the S.C.W.S. it cultivates tea estates in India and Ceylon. The Co-operative Insurance Society is jointly held by itself and the S.C.W.S.; and it is also represented on the board of the Manchester Ship Canal and of a colliery com pany. Apart from its own 31,000ac. of English land, held as a consumers' federation, it has dealings with 16o agricultural so cieties, 100 of which are members. In its relations with employees, by resolution of the delegate meetings, it has to insist on trade union membership, however oddly that action may seem to come from an employer ; and though it has no immunity from strikes, no stoppage has been of long duration. Welfare work for em ployees is carried on, with a thrift fund, and a pension scheme is in view ; while with other responsibilities toward the millions who are its ultimate customers and owners, it maintains a con valescent home, subsidizes and conducts publications, and sub scribes to co-operative and guild education and propaganda. The tendency is to enlarge rather than to narrow the scope and re sponsibilities of the most powerful and most experienced co operative organization in the world.

Other Federations.

Since the period when the co-operative idea was one function, one organization, amalgamation has re duced the number of separate federations. Of those which remain, the National Publishing Society, the United Baking Society, of Glasgow, and the Co-operative Printing Society, of Manchester, are the most important. The two first, like the C.W.S., are limited to society-members, and come definitely within the consumers' movement. The third includes trade unions and individuals. The Co-operative News and the Scottish Co-operator are both issued (weekly) by the publishing society. Local federations of con sumers' societies for laundering are found chiefly in Lancashire and Yorkshire, one of these claiming to possess the largest laundry in the world. Federations for milk supply form the newest development along the same local lines.

The Productive Societies.

To meet with a picturesque name like "guild of cricket-ball" makers is to have one's sympathies enlisted at once on the side of productive independence. Shoe making, printing and the clothing trades, however, are those which engage most of the societies representing partnerships in the co operative movement between consumers, workers and individual small capitalists. Consumers' societies take employees into mem bership as consumers. The productive societies seek to make their employees direct participants in workshop gains and control. Membership confers no right to work ; but employment, for the adult, does carry a right to membership. The Co-operative Pro ductive Federation, of Leicester, which secures joint invoicing and joint exhibiting, but not joint selling, includes 41 societies with 5,700 employees, and sales reaching two and a quarter mil lions yearly. In 1926, amongst these societies, 22 shared profit with their workers in ratios of from 14d. to 2s. 8d. in the £ on wages. Altogether, of a surplus of £1o7,000 just over 5% (in addition to share interest) was distributed to capital, 25% to labour and 35% to purchasers. The societies' copartnerships thus vary from private forms of copartnership in recognizing the con sumer and not regarding their industry as simply the possession of capital and labour. On the other hand, the consumers' average share in control is only 21%, the remainder being divided between the trade union and individual holders of capital (40%), and employees (39%). In post-war years the societies have not in creased in number, and in the favourable field of bootmaking, for example, their sales have fallen behind those of the consumers' factories; but they hold their ground in the counsels of the movement, and with educational and social committees, and prov ident or pension schemes, maintain the co-operative spirit.

The Co-operative Union.—The defensive, educational and propagandist union of the British co-operative movement exists as the necessary means to those ends, and may be said to have outgrown the moralist and copartnership aims inherited from its Christian Socialist co-founders in the form in which these aims are still expressed. It is a comprehensive body, including the consumers' movement, local and national, the productive societies and their federation, some farmers' societies, and tenants', build ing and recreational societies. There is also an Irish section, and altogether 1,30o societies are affiliated. There is no salaried executive, but a complex control of sectional boards forming a central board which delegates work to smaller bodies. The union organizes co-operative opinion through district and regional con ferences, especially through its great annual three-day congress of 1,700 delegates. Much of its work is done with the other na tional organizations through joint committees, particularly the joint parliamentary committee. The central education committee is another important arm, having control of a co-operative college and a teaching staff, conducting classes and summer schools, and sharing in an international school. Amongst the co-operative millions it is surprising to find the union's yearly subscription revenue no more than £41,000—a quarter of what the societies subscribe to hospitals and charities. The local character of the movement largely accounts for this, while there might be added the value of the regular hospitality given to union conferences by the local societies.

The Co-operative Party.—Political co-operation is relatively a new force, born during the World War, when the congress of 1917 turned from a traditional neutrality to organize a political party that should be the co-operators' and consumers' own. One member of Parliament was elected from ten candidates in 1918; four in 1922; six in 1923 (one of whom held office in the first British Labour Government) ; and five in 1924. In Parliament the group keeps general touch with the Labour Party, which contains many co-operative members, but with its own leader and whips it concentrates on the innumerable issues in modern legislation af fecting the mass of consumers. It also stands for the support of voluntary co-operation against any policy, from any quarter, which might fail in understanding and considering co-operative public interests. Municipal trading proposals it aims at reconcil ing with co-operative commitments, to prevent any clash. Two million out of nearly five million co-operators are collectively affiliated to the party, with a great majority in support in the South and Midlands. Through a relationship rather like that of the Established Church to Parliament, the party is under the authority of the Co-operative Union and the congress.

Agricultural Co-operation in Great Britain and Ireland. —Before the British farmer is assailed for not co-operating in his business affairs as the Danish farmers do, it should be remem bered that he does not live by exporting two or three staple products, but by supplying variously a varied home market, often close at hand. The national conditions in general prevent or dis courage both large-scale production and mass selling. But it has been estimated that one in every five English farmers is asso ciated for the purchase of requisites; and in England and Wales societies with 6o,000 members, dealing mainly in requisites, show a turnover of eight millions yearly. Societies for marketing dairy produce, eggs and poultry are found throughout Great Britain. In the eastern and southern counties of England organized farmers possess large bacon factories; and auction marts, slaughter-houses, butter factories and retail shops are similarly held. Yet it is diffi cult either to classify or to generalize about British agricultural co-operation. In scattered areas, as in Wales, many societies be come general distributors; and the manager has to hold the scales between member-producers who want a good price for pigs, poultry or eggs, and member-consumers who quote the price at which they could buy in the market town. Everywhere the asso ciations tend to do business, not by system, but as circumstances demand ; while the problem of specially federating for national trading so many varied and often conflicting aims proves insol uble. In England different attempts have failed; but the National Farmers' Union undertakes the duty of promoting co-operation, and the Co-operative Wholesale Society, as already stated, in vites farmers' societies into membership on equal terms with all other members. Generally, British agricultural co-operation is a business rather than a movement. (For details about farmers' co-operative effort see AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATION.) Co-operation in Ireland.—In 1906 in a little cabin amongst the barren hills of Donegal, a few Irish peasants conducted in turn, every evening, a tiny co-operative store. Under the leader ship of one "Paddy the Cope" this Templecrone society has become a peasant consumers' and producers' co-operative, em ploying 7o persons and possessing several branches, a bakery, a hosiery factory and a local hall. Templecrone is an outstanding example of an Irish co-operation which in Belfast and in a few cities and towns is urban and wholly consumers', like the British, but elsewhere is represented by some hundreds of rural societies supplying farmers' requisites along with domestic needs. In the Free State the rural societies are federated for such purchases in the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society. Since the disturbances and losses of the Irish political conflicts, the I.A.W.S. has been brought back to a sound position with assistance from the English C.W.S. Of the two other main forms of co-operation which in the pre-war years inspired poetic hopes of a new social Ireland, the farmers' creameries again are prospering under Government su pervision, but the credit movement has been merged in commer cial banking. In joining a creamery the farmers take shares in pro portion to their cows, guarantee milk supplies, and receive pay ment monthly, or oftener, in proportion to the butter fat from each supplier (less the value of separated milk returned), with the surplus on working costs divided in the same way at each year end. The principle is the simple Rochdale idea adapted; and in abolishing profiteering, distributing material benefit, and re moving the sense of being exploited, is in this form almost as far reaching. The Agricultural Organization Society in the Free State, as a non-trading, propaganda body, represents over i5o,000 farmers.

CO-OPERATION IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE, INDIA, JAPAN AND ELSEWHERE The Two Types: Peasants' and Consumers'.—That the world is so full of a number of things becomes quite an imposing truth when one glances at co-operation as it extends through Europe to Palestine, India and Japan. Socialist, Christian and Liberal societies, credit unions and land banks, distilleries, oil pressing, horse-breeding, cattle-insurance and land-renting so cieties, school and army societies—many unfamiliar forms con vey, perhaps, a more confused than a happy sense of plenty. But the full picture can be put into simple outline. In the main, these all represent two types of co-operation. One is the Rochdale con sumers' type, found throughout the world; but strongest in North western and Central Europe. The other is the co-operation of peasant farmers.

In Britain the proportion of consumers' societies' members to population is one in nine—the figure would be one in three if families were wholly included. Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, adding the families, show approximately the same ratio of one in three. Germany, Austria, Estonia, Sweden (including families, one in four to five) are not far behind; and France, Belgium and Czechoslovakia follow—one in five to six. On the Danube, in Hungary, there is a change. The proportion of co-operators is high (one in three), but that is due fo the farmers; and the na tional wholesale society, the "Hangya" is first agricultural and then general. Eastward, consumers' societies diminish until few but peasant societies are found. In India there are some 3,000,000 co-operative members—perhaps more than one in 2o--but they are lightly organized in loan and supply groups which are less societies than clubs. And in Japan, though more developed, the character of the movement is not dissimilar.

The two types are distinct. Socialist or Christian (Roman Catholic), the consumers, by conserving for themselves the value of their customs, in effect seek a reduction in the cost of living for an unlimited number of members. The farmers, also hard pressed, aim at increasing the wages of production by saving for themselves the gains made at their expense by usurers, mer chants caring only to take advantage of markets and even con sumers. Issues such as those of food taxes would, if raised, divide type from type. Yet both bodies work to prevent exploi tation by middlemen. And all are co-operative, in so far as they represent free association, and in each association a government based on equality in membership, and not on unequal capital holdings. The persons rule, and not the money.

Western Europe.—In Continental Europe, France was first in co-operative effort. While Owen appealed to Britain, St. Simon and Fourier laboured in France. In 1835 two disciples, Derrion and Reynier, started a store-keeping co-operative society in Lyons, the Commerce Veridique et Social, as a monument there attests. But French energy turned from the store to the workshop, and founded workers' societies, from which Ludlow took to England the idea of workshop self-government. Neither this eventually State-aided movement nor the paternal Familistere of Guise has led to any considerable result in modern France ; but the consum ers' movement—which began again at Nimes in 1885, derived strength from union in 1912, was conspicuous during the war, and is developing regional societies—has attained a membership of over 2,000,000. Equally successful are the farmers' butter-making and casein societies of Poitou and west-central France.

In Belgium, with its maisons du people, co-operation has been developed by the Socialist movement as providing incidentally a party servant of great value; and this has very naturally led to separate Catholic and Liberal societies, with the result of weakening co-operation as a purely economic power, especially in the smaller centres of population. The peasant movement, including butter and cheese production and rural supply, is almost wholly Catholic, with the clergy taking an active part. In Holland an amalgamation of the neutral and workers' movements has helped to overcome a similar weakness.

Belgian rural co-operation, derived from Germany, where, about 1849, Professor Huber made known the new success of co-operation in England, and where Schulze-Delitzsch and Raiff eisen adapted the Rochdale idea to the more primitive economic conditions then found in Germany. The loan societies of Schulze Delitzsch for the town craftsmen and artisans, and the land banks of Raiffeisen for small farmers, became very successful, and created new movements for co-operative credit in other countries. The rural co-operation extended to the purchase of requisites and the provision of threshing and other machines; while building societies and consumers' societies grew up under the shelter of the General Union established by Schulze-Delitzsch. Following their improved legal position from 1889 onwards, and following, also, a new co-operative enthusiasm amongst German workers previously hostile, and an exclusion of consumers' societies by the General Union, a new Central Union was established in i9o3 for consumers' societies only. This federation represented over 3,000,000 members in 1927; while 75o,000 were affiliated to the National Union—Catholic—at Dusseldorf-Reiszholz. German societies distinguish between management and supervision. Boards of management are composed of a few appointed officials, co operating with elected boards of supervision and both with the general membership. Large societies like that in Berlin, or the progressive Hamburg "Produktion," replace general meetings of members by councils elected from the membership, and these are the final authority. (Comparisons with England, however, show that differences of organizations count for less than the general quality and spirit of a movement.) Joint committees for co-ordinating consumers, farmers and all other forms of co operation are established in Germany, Denmark and Estonia. Denmark, avowing her debt to Rochdale, exhibits a rural popu lation using its double power as producers and consumers to attain a very complete co-operative welfare. Copenhagen, besides its big consumers' society, has a remarkable Workers' Co-operative Building Association. Scandinavia is also notable for the young and vigorous movement in Sweden, which in 1926 ended a rubber shoe monopoly. The Scandinavian C.W.S., established by the trading federations of the three countries, is regarded as a pos sible model for a general international inter-trading association. In Iceland, also, the movement is well-established.

From Switzerland Eastward.

Switzerland, amongst its equally advanced developments, can point to the creation of a co-operative village at Freidorf, Basle. Austria has the large Vienna society, and the land settlement societies. Poland, with nearly 2,000,000 consumer and peasant co-operators, since 1924 had led in unity by the amalgamation of civil service, labour and Christian workers' co-operative federations. Finland, followed by the Baltic countries generally, shows an active co-operative de velopment perhaps superior to that of Denmark. In the heart of Central Europe racial divisions weaken co-operation, Czech and German members in Czechoslovakia being separately organized. But in Silesia the friendly inter-relations of German, Czech or Polish societies have helped to ease the friction of frontiers. Pass ing to Asia, a similar reconciling influence is found in the credit societies of India, where members of different castes, and even "untouchable" Regars and Chamars, serve together on the com mittees.' In India, however, as in Japan, peasant co-operation has been initiated and furthered from above, by governmental power. Consumers' co-operation in Japan mainly represents em ployers' benevolence, like Owen's at New Lanark, though the Christian social movement led by Mr. Kagawa has created inde pendent societies.

Russia and Italy.

Russia is the most co-operative of all countries in Europe, the consumers' societies—apart from the Ukraine—including 15,000,00o shareholding members, and con ducting 48% of the country's retail trade. The consumers' so cieties buy from State factories and also market rural members' produce; and their trade with the English C.W.S. easily out distances any other in Europe. Yet, measured by employing power, the Centroysoyus falls much below the level of either of the British wholesale societies; while notwithstanding the re stored freedom of 1924, it remains difficult to say how far volun tary co-operation, in a State under a class dictatorship, can be itself. The same question arises more acutely in Italy, where the National Union of Co-operative Societies was suppressed in Nov. 1925, Fascist organizations having been set up instead. In Jan. 1927, the board of management of the large consumers' society at Trieste was similarly dismissed, and a Fascist com missioner installed. Under such conditions the roots of co operation die. What remains is State machinery.

Consumers' Societies in the Newer Lands.

But farmers- to say nothing of the farm labourers, so far omitted—are them selves important consumers; and in 1927 the then premier of Alberta (Mr. Brownlee) declared that, with the pools successful, the next step would be the consolidation and extension of co operative purchasing. In Saskatchewan the important community hall movement, as part of the farmers' co-operation, shows a spirit at work very like that which built the co-operative halls of Lancashire; while the Co-operative Union in Ontario, repre senting the few thousand co-operative consumers between Cape Breton island and the West, enjoys direct relations with the prairie grain growers. Apart from the latent rural power, con sumers' co-operation in the newer countries is naturally weak. It is found in New Zealand and in the Australian capitals, and in South Africa chiefly amongst dockyard and railway employees. In South America, the Workers' Household Credit Building and Consumers' Society, at Buenos Aires had, in 1927, over 7,000 members.

Meanwhile, the U. S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, reporting in 1926, found 700,00o co-operative consumers throughout the United States. These co-operative societies are curious in being organized frequently amongst immigrant races, especially Finns, Scandinavians, Germans and Russians, so that a group of societies possessing their own wholesale federation may conduct a very considerable business while using almost entirely a language for eign to America. This segregation, with the American distances and the consequent difficulties for united and trustworthy efforts amongst a population much more restless, economically, than in European cities, must long delay a powerful consumers' move ment. But cafeterias and housing societies in New York—where the forward movement of consumers' co-operative services is notable—loan societies in the Eastern States, and general con sumers' societies in the Middle West (including the Franklin ;B. L. Mahtur, Wheatsheaf, June 1926.

Creamery Association of Minneapolis), have laid solid founda tions. There are also negro societies amongst negro students from New York to Colorado. Since 1915 the Co-operative League of America, with New York headquarters, has federated for all non-trading purposes American societies genuinely conforming with Rochdale principles, and has also linked up American co-operation with the international movement.

International Co-operation.

Because of its million-f old memberships, its roots in home, farm and workshop, its forward possibilities and its everyday constructive work, the co-operative movement is imposing in a way hardly to be guessed from co operative store windows and advertisements of goods. The Inter national Co-operative Alliance, first suggested by the French pioneer, de Boyve, and constituted in 1895, is a minor league of nations, representing 85,00o societies in 36 countries. Kept in being formally during the World War, the alliance resumed its triennial international congresses in 1921. It has headquarters in London, issues a monthly Bulletin in English, French and German, and at Stockholm in 1927 found it necessary to promise to con sider a wider lingual basis. The International Co-operative Whole sale Society, based on the C.W.S. headquarters at Manchester, solidly represents 26 national trading federations, covering 28,000,00o individual members, and since 1924 it has explored the possibilities of international co-operative trade. The Inter national Co-operative Women's Guild, pioneered in 1921, and established in 1924, speaks for the new place and new interests which women are finding through consumers' co-operation in Europe and America, as well as in Britain. An international co operative summer school (held annually) and a students' fellow ship, are fresh evidences of growth. All were active at Stockholm in 1927; and they look to Vienna for 1930.

The Future.

The question of the future of co-operation is of particular interest. The movement never was more vigorous. In Great Britain its recovery from industrial depression has filled its supporters with confidence. Where numbers of its own mem bers once anticipated its supersession in trade after trade by the "larger co-operation" of the municipalities, the Congress of 1928 showed a unanimous belief in the power of voluntary co-operation to perform the services required. What might be a source of weakness in the division of the societies into political and non-political, appears to be proving, instead, a stimulus to healthy rivalry, since both wings remain united through the general federations, while vying with one another in producing results. And the extension of credit trading in the form of "mutuality clubs" was in 1928 too successful to create fore bodings.

The case is not dissimilar with consumers' co-operation abroad. In Germany, especially, not only industrial depression but the more disastrous inflation had to be surmounted; in 1928 success in both tasks inspired the German co-operators. In Sweden, recent co-operation has encouraged its supporters by enlisting a higher artistic skill than that which co-operative societies often command. Yet there, as throughout Europe, the movement still has far to go in supplying those articles into which individual taste and skill in design (as well as fashion) enter: In Great Britain 8o% of the societies' trade is in groceries; and the Continent has advanced less than Great Britain. Meanwhile the strike of employees in the model Finnish Society, Elanti, in May, 1928, together with the challenge of the Russian conception of co-operation as a workers' instrument for the socialism of a class, constituted a warning of the task that lies before co-operation in leading its whole membership to understand and respond to the common interests of the millions and to bring over sectional and individual interests into serviceable relation to the whole.

These underlying issues of the individual and the mass, the section and the whole, the class and the community, form the real problem of co-operation's future. Avowedly neutral in religion and politics, the international movement does not regard itself as excluded from pursuing—although on a vaster, world-wide scale— the original aim of a co-operative community proposed by the co-operative fathers, the pioneers of Rochdale. How far is that aim practicable? It does not stand as the design of a theorist; to any friendly constant observer it must appear as arising from the social instincts of the masses. But amongst the masses themselves, there are multitudes bound to the co-operative movement only by self-interest and monetary ties. To make economic democracy widely effective, the co-operators evidently need to find profounder means than those yet employed for arousing disinterested human enthusiasm.

Furthermore, to have great effect in life's varied field, a move ment must be complex, as well as extensive. Conscious mass power is a new thing, tremendous and far-extending, but it is not every thing. Individual and personal integrity and skill will not be submerged ; the side which enlists this latter power will also be hard to defeat. As a free movement, neither class-bound nor State-bound, co-operation appears to have before it a magnifi cent opportunity. Both producers' and consumers' co-operation present, it is urged by co-operators, a solution of the industrial problem by showing capital as a hired yet contented servant. Consumers' co-operation further offers the outline of a new eco nomic society in which the workshop is related to the home and economic surplus to human needs, and where industry begins to look to its human ends instead of simply to profits and money wages. Whether the movement can lead a stubborn world deci sively along this co-operative road, probably will depend more and more not only on its numbers, but also on its power to enlist intelligence, and develop in all ranks a leadership capable both of creating enthusiasm and producing everyday conviction amongst the masses of mankind.

BIBLIOGRAPIIY.-A. H. Enfield, Co-operation a popular Bibliograpiiy.-A. H. Enfield, Co-operation a popular outline, with bibliography ; Acland and Jones: revised by J. P. Madams, Working-Men Co-operators (Manchester), used as a text book in Co-operative Union classes; Catherine Webb, Industrial Co operation (Iith ed., 1928), handbook for students, with statistics and bibliography ; S. and B. Webb, The Consumers' Co-operative Move ment (1921) , the most complete critical modern survey ; C. R. Fay, Co-operation at Home and Abroad (2nd ed. 1918) ; P. Redfern, The Story of the C.W.S. (C. W. S., 1913) ; J. A. Flanagan, Wholesale Co-operation in Scotland (S.C.W.S., 1919) ; J. Lucas, Co-operation in Scotland (C. Union, 192o) ; F. Hall, British Co-operation: Recent Developments (C. Union, 1927) ; L. S. Woolf, Co-operation and the Future of Industry (1918), discusses for general readers the social sig nificance of the consumers' movement, as do Ernest Poisson (trans. W. P. Watkins), The Co-operative Republic (Co-operative Union, 1925) ;•C. Gide, Consumers' Co-operative Societies (C. Union, 1921), the English edition of a French classic, of which a new French edition was published in 1924; P. Redfern, The Consumers' Place in Society (C. Union, 1921) ; J. P. Warbasse, Co-operative Democracy (New York, end ed. 1927), discusses co-operation from an American stand point ; A. Sonnichsen, Consumers' Co-operation (1919) , another Ameri can survey ; A. Barnes, M.P., The Political Aspect of Co-operation (C. Union, 1926) ; Co-operative Marketing; Co-operative Purchasing of Agricultural Requisites (H.M. Stationery Office, 1925) ; George Russell (A.E.), The National Being (1915), Irish economic life from a co-operative standpoint; for the general reader, Year Book of Agricul tural Co-operation in the British Empire (1928) ; N. H. Cornish, Cooperative Marketing of Agricultural Products (1929). For current information also see The People's Year Book (C.W.S). (P. R.) CO-OPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES Speaking generally, the co-operative movement in America is far less developed than in Europe. It came into prominence at the beginning of this century and reached its zenith about 192o, when the instability of economic conditions caused the failure of many co-operative stores; those which did survive have prospered. Co-operative organizations are most developed in the Middle West, the majority being in towns of less than 2,500. They operate retail and wholesale stores, gasolene (petrol) filling stations, bak eries, laundries, restaurants, creameries, etc. The capital for such stores is raised through non-returnable entrance fees, the issue of non-assessable capital stock and money borrowed from members and others. The entrance fee, usually ranging from 25 cents to $2, covers the cost of organization work; any balance forms a reserve fund. Most stores sell at current prices to avoid the antagonism of competitors. From the profits, a fixed rate of interest is paid on the share capital after which a percentage is put in reserve for losses, etc. The remainder of the profits is then returned to the members in proportion to their patronage. Co-operative stores tend to check profiteering in local merchants, to raise the quality of goods sold and to encourage fair wages for clerks. The system purports to apply the principles of democracy to business enter prises.

CO-OPERATION, AGRICULTURAL: see AGRICUL TURAL CO-OPERATION.

CO-OPERATIVE INSURANCE: see AGRICULTURAL IN SURANCE.