Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor

COOPERATIONSource: Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (FEBRUARY, 1920), pp. 133-137Published by: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of LaborStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41825659 .

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COOPERATION.

Joint Farmer-Labor Cooperative Congresses.1

A

JOINT Chicago, effective

farmer-labor

aid February 12-15,

cooperative whose

and

congress purpose will

will

the be be

"to held

give in

Chicago, February 12-15, whose purpose will be "to give effective aid to strengthening and developing the coopera-

tive movement in America by the establishment of a Nation-wide com- mission, which shall serve in a comprehensive way to coordinate and build up cooperative effort between and among producers and con- sumers, and to unify action in eliminating speculation and profiteer- ing in the necessities of life, and develop, to the mutual profit rjnd advantage of all concerned, permanent good will and understand- ing." It is not proposed, it is explained, to establish any new co- operative organizations, but simply to bring together existing or- ganizations among industrial workers and farmers. The conference will endeavor to work out some system of direct distribution whereby the products of the farmers' and the growers' associations can be brought to the industrial workers in cities, and, later, the products of the workers be sent to rural districts.

At the conference will be delegates from the progressive farmers' organizations, representing some eight or nine hundred thousand farmers, from the various fruit growers' associations, the Potato Growers' Association, the National Nonpartisan League, the Public Ownership League, labor organizations, and the cooperative societies, both wholesale and retail.

The congress is the outgrowth of a similar conference, also held in Chicago, November 21 and 22. At the November conference the " National Cooperative Manifesto "

was adopted. This manifesto affirmed the belief of the conference that the present high prices are due to the " wasteful methods, specu- lation, and profiteering of the middlemen," and declared the remedy to be the elimination of these middlemen through cooperative organi- zations. The growth of cooperation in the United States was noted

1 The data on which this article is based were obtained from the National Cooperative News (Chicago), Jan. 10, 1020, the Cooperative Herald (Fargo, N. Dak.), Dec. 19, 1919, and Mr. Warren S. Stone, grand chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

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134 MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW.

and indorsement made of the efforts to establish a national wholesale society and to unify the cooperative movement along national lines. The manifesto recommended that schools for training cooperative managers and employees and for the inauguration of approved sys- tems of accounting and auditing be established.

The conference authorized the appointment of a committee of 12, representing the farmers, organized labor, and cooperative associa- tions, to act as a joint board in developing the cooperative movement, and to submit the manifesto to the Labor Conference held in Wash- ington, D. C., on December 13. The committee carried out its in- structions and duly submitted the manifesto. The Labor Conference, however, took no action on it, merely referring the whole matter of cooperation to the American Federation of Labor committee on co- operation. In spite of the national body's failure to act, organized labor is giving the February conference its strong support, the rail- road brotherhoods being particularly active.

Consumers' Cooperation.

THAT confusion is

most in of

determining the literature

the dealing

true character with cooperation

of the movement has led to

confusion in determining the true character of the movement is asserted by Albert Sonnichsen, secretary of the Cooperative

League of America, in his recent book, Consumers' Cooperation.1 Because the practical experience of the movement has, until recently, been too limited for a philosophy to be formulated, writers have " in- variably confused its boundaries and extended them into other fields of joint action, associating the movement with enterprises thoroughly out of sympathy with it." They have regarded the cooperative move- ment as having four phases: Productive, agricultural, credit, and distributive - with consumers' cooperation forming the last-named phase.

The author eliminates the first three forms - the productive enter- prises for the reason that " as a movement the self-governing work- shops have ceased to exist," and the agricultural associations because they are not truly cooperative. In the agricultural society the " unit of membership is not a person but a private business interest " ; neither is private profit eliminated, " for the goods are sold at as big a margin above the cost of production as possible, and this margin goes into the pocket of the original seller, the farmer. True this margin is very often not more than a just return for the labor involved in the

1 Albert Sonnichsen : Consumers' Cooperation. New York, 1919. 223 pp.

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COOPERATION". 135

production of the goods, but the margin is not regulated on that basis. It is a purely speculative margin/' The farmers' associations, he de- clares, are " an integral part of the capitalist system," and it is this very system - private profit taking- that the cooperative movement combats. The credit societies organized among the working classes are, he thinks, very closely akin to consumers" cooperation, since they are in the nature of cooperative savings banks. He points ojit, how- ever, that when the regular consumers' societies begin to appear, the credit societies disappear, being taken over as part of the business operations of the consumers' societies. The credit societies are not necessarily truly cooperative in principle, inasmuch as they may be formed by a group of small tradesmen to finance just the sort of enter- prises (i. e., the profit-taking ones) to which the cooperative movement is opposed.

The author therefore restricts the cooperative movement to con- sumers' cooperation.

Part I of the book is devoted to the history of cooperation in the various countries - England, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Ger- many, Italy, Russia, Belgium, and the United States.

Part II is a discussion of consumers' cooperation as a factor in the social revolution. Stating that the ultimate aims of cooperation, the realization of an international cooperative commonwealth i; coequal and coextensive with the whole civilized world," are essentially revolutionary, though slow and peaceful in the methods of attain- ment, the author takes up such movements as socialism, syndicalism, and anarchism and shows the differences and similarities between them and cooperation.

The final chapter deals with the relation of cooperation and labor. Under labor the author includes all " whose means of livelihood are

dependent on the remuneration they receive for service rendered, regardless of its social value " ; the difference between worker and

capitalist lies in the nature of the source of their income: the one lives by effort, the other by speculative trade.

The writer remarks upon the capitalistic aspect of the cooperative movement as shown by the fact that although the forty or fifty thousand workers employed by the English cooperative wholesale societies have, on the average, higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions than do workers under capitalistic management, they have, as workers, no voice in the management, and may be dis-

charged at the will of their employer. The stand taken by the societies is that the worters in the consumers' productive plants are

really in the service of the social body of which they are themselves also members, and, as members, have as much control over working conditions as they are entitled to.

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136 MONTHLY LABOE REVIEW.

In spite of this aspect, cooperation is a labor movement, and it is pointed out that in all general labor disputes the cooperative societies have allied themselves with the workers.

The People Organized as Consumers.

TN SO far as cooperation tends to eliminate private profit, it also tends to increase the numbers of the working class. Thus the trans-

formation of all members of society into workers would be the natural result of the complete abolition of private profit as a means of sub- sistence.

Carrying out the cooperative program to its logical conclusion, this would mean that the entire membership of all the cooperative societies would consist of workers, organized as consumers. Thus the workers in the cooperative fac- tories would be their own employees and, through their cooperative societies, would have full power to regulate working conditions to suit themselves. This power the workers in the wholesale societies' factories already have, but, of course, they are now only 1 per cent of the total membership, the other 99 per cent being employed outside the movement. They have, therefore, only 1 vote out of 100 in the regulation of working conditions in their factories, and if the other 99 votes are invariably cast in their favor it is only through sympathy, and not through direct interest. But as cooperative production tends to increase at a faster rate than the membership, this ratio of 1 to 100 will gradually change, with 100 to 100 as a final, though perhaps an impossible, ideal. To all practical purposes the ideal will be accomplished when the ratio is 51 to 100, and that is well within the limits of possibility. Such a situation would give the cooperative workers a majority control of their own working conditions.

For the purpose of indicating tendencies, however, I shall continue to argue f rom the point of view of the ideal ; the possible 100 out of a 100. Here, obvi- ously, the workers and. the consumers would be completely identical. With full power to raise their own wages as workers, there would be no incentive to do so, for the cost of living would rise automatically with the standard of wages. Under a system involving production for use only, labor would get the full product of effort, and there would be no question of either high or low wages. True, a certain portion of the wealth accruing from labor might be utilized in manufacturing machinery, or building new factories, or set aside in the national treasury r for the purpose of carrying on future productions, but all this would constitute social capital and would eventually revert to labor anyhow.

Summed up, and considered in its social aspect, as a universal institution, cooperation would mean the people of the country organised as consumers, em- ploying themselves as workers, producing their own needs on a basis of actual labor cost, for use only. Thus not cwily the incentive, but the means, to exploita- tion of labor would be entirely absent.

Cooperation would not, m the author's opinion, entirely eliminate Libor disputes. " Under universal cooperation, society as a whole would dominate, and all the labor groups would be subservient to it. This would entail no injustice to labor asa whole, because all members of society would be workers, and all of the product of labor would

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COOPERATION. 137

therefore go to labor since none would be devoted to private profit. But there would always be the possibility of dispute between one trade and another." Cooperation would, however, adjust the conflicting (rade interests " as nearly as humanly possible, by. making labor en- tirely subsidiary to the great motive behind it - consumption, the human desire to fulfill the needs and pleasures of life."

As to the destiny of the movement, the writer says : " The basis of the membership is a human being, pure and simple. Potentially, •membership includes all society- it is all-inclusive. Consumers' co- operation is essentially a social movement, for the interests it repre- sents permeate all society." He thinks, however, that cooperation, being entirely voluntary with the individual, will never become " abso- lutely universal." It will never wholly supplant private enterprise. While theoretically it would accomplish the complete socialization of industry, there would always be an opportunity for " the private capi- talist who could, or thought he could, carry on business in competi- tion with the socialized industry," for the inventor, and for the man with originality and individuality in creative work. Cooperation " is based on the happiness, the free will, of the individual. It desires to include no one it can not benefit. When cooperation has spread just so far as it can benefit human beings it will stop, and be perfectly con- tent to stop." The victory of cooperation has been and will be u through its own inherent superiority."

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