In the United States, before the war, the development of consumers' co-opera tion had been least marked, though it had a history of effort stretching back through fifty years. In 1916 the Co operative League of America, the edu cational federation of the movement in this country, had a record of only 600 co-operative societies in the United States. To-day, in 1920, its card index directory indicates 4,000 such societies, most of them in the Middle West. In Illinois these societies have already fed erated into a wholesale society, doing a monthly business of $300,000. Another wholesale society has also appeared in Boston, supplying local societies in New England, doing a slightly smaller vol ume of trade. A third federation is located in Superior, Wis., supplying a large number of Finnish societies in that region, while the Pacific Co-operative League operates a central purchasing agency in San Francisco.
Being of spontaneous growth, con sumers' co-operation is not based on any social theory of organization, as is the case with the other collectivist move ments. But the movement itself, by its own practical development, has now sug gested certain laws of social evolution which indicate a system of social organ ization peculiar to itself.
Thus considered, it may be said that co-operation is distinctly a social move ment, in contrast to a class movement; that it is representative of the people as consumers, rather than as workers. Thus, it holds that consumption is the motive behind all industry, and on this element in society only may a true in dustrial democracy rest. In method it is evolutionary, as contrasted to the revo lutionary method of Marxian socialism or the industrial action of syndicalism, or militant industrial unionism. While co-operation does not hesitate to employ political action to protect itself against discrimination, as has been the case in Great Britain, it is essentially an eco nomic, non-political movement, in that it has no tendency to establish its practices by legislation. Consult: Leonard Woolf, "Co-operation and the Future of In dustry" (London, 1918) ; Emerson P. Harris, "Co-operation, the Hope of the Consumer" (New York, 1918) ; Albert Sonnichsen, "Consumers' Co-operation" (New York, 1919).