RETAIL COOPERATION
COOPERATION in buying supplies at wholesale, in standardizing and
shipping crops, in keeping grain in elevators, and fruit and some
meats and poultry in cold storage has reached a high development
among the farmers largely in the Northwest, much ahead of us "city
folks."
There are more than five thousand active Farmers' Cooperation
Associations in the United States. Minnesota alone has over six
hundred cooperative creameries, some of which have a laundry annex.
The associations have six hundred and sixty thousand members and do
a business of nearly a thousand dollars a year for each member.
These are the people that we call "hayseeds"; if we could plant some
more such "seeds," it would be a good job. But in cooperative retail
domestic supply we are far behind England and other countries, even
behind Russia. That is partly because our better retail business
methods leave less room for the savings.
A simple and easy but important beginning of cooperation was where
each one took turns in delivering the milk and fetching supplies.
One farmer might do it all every day for a small charge.
The new South is developing a great business in this line. When you
go to New Orleans look up the stores whose letter head reads:
NELSON CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION, INC.
_Food Suppliers_
OFFICE, 506 So. PETERS STREET. CREAMERY, ERATO ST.
WAREHOUSE, 511 SO. PETERS ST. BAKERY, ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE.
61 RETAIL STORES
4 MEAT MARKETS
In August, 1917, N. O. Nelson of the above concern writes in answer
to my request:
"It does not take 2500 words to tell all I know about Cooperation. I
trust the inclosed may be serviceable for your book, and shall feel
proud if it is.
"I am doing my job here for two very practical reasons; first, the
immediate service of reducing the cost of living to say 15,000
families, mostly poor; second, to introduce economy in retailing.
"The readers of such a book as yours are well aware of the wasteful
ways of retailing goods. In every town and city there is a
multiplication of stores, advertising clerks, teams, and other
incidentals.
"Likewise there is a lot of middle men and drummers, the buyers at
the producer's end, the wholesalers or middle men at the consumer's
end, with speculator and landowner at both ends. All of these have
to be supported by the system, and the dear consumer pays for it.
"The Cooperative store system, which was started in England 73
years ago, eliminates most of these waste expenses. The system has
kept spreading at an astonishing rate; in Great Britain there are
now 3 1/2 million members, and more than a billion of sales a year.
Other European countries are full of these stores. Many of the
retail stores have from twelve thousand to fifty thousand members;
their sales run into the millions. They are federated in a wholesale
agency which buys for them and manufactures on an extensive scale.
"By the economies thus introduced they are able to save regularly
about 15%, besides paying interest on the capital employed, and
accumulating a liberal surplus. It is simply a question of people
getting together (all civilization is), contributing their own money
and their trade, and thus avoiding all the waste expenses.
"It is a very democratic plan; anybody is welcome to join it; every
member has one vote and no more, they elect their directors, the
directors elect the managers, and the managers employ the clerks.
They sell at the market prices and every three or six months take
account of stock and rebate the profits in proportion to each
member's purchases, with half rate to non-members.
"It appeals to the economical sense of the ordinary housekeeper, and
to the ethical sense of those who want no advantage of their
neighbor. It prevents some from getting unduly rich and it helps to
keep many from being unduly poor.
"The same principle has spread into farmer's work, especially
Creameries. In Cooperative Creameries and Stores Russia has grown
faster in the last 15 years than any other country, having at last
reports over thirteen million members. This orderly getting together
for common social needs has much to do with the orderliness of the
Russian Revolution.
"The United States has made large progress in producers' cooperative
associations, but not much in stores.
"I have in New Orleans a system of 65 stores on a modified system;
it is a cooperative association but we sell at as low prices as can
be afforded, for cash in hand. The sales amount to about 2 1/2
millions, the most of it in the winter. The Association owns a
Bakery, a Creamery, Condiment Factory; and Coffee Factory, and a
1550-acre plantation. We are able to undersell the market about 20%.
"People anywhere can make a cooperative store if they take it
seriously. There should be about 200 members and $2000 in cash to
start with: then get an honest and intelligent manager; start with a
grocery, buy and sell for cash, either on the Rochdale plan of
selling at full market prices and dividing the profits periodically,
or on my plan of selling as cheaply as can be afforded. In either
plan it works out into producing a large part of the goods sold,
thus eliminating entirely the superfluous middleman.
"Three acres and Liberty is the correct way of producing a living;
with the adjunct of a cooperative store to do the selling of the
surplus produced and the buying of goods needed, the small farmer is
free from all the waste and trammels of trade."
Now what's the matter with your helping your county and country and
humanity by organizing those two hundred waiting buyers in your own
town? You can be the "honest and intelligent manager" at a decent
salary. If, later, the cooperators want another manager, why you can
easily organize another store. The best information on this subject
is the Cooperative News, Manchester, England; subscription two
dollars.
Evidence is daily accumulating that the food and farm problem is not
so easy as many thought it to be a few months ago. This is made
clear when economists say: "The really important question in the
food problem is not distribution, it is production." It is
unfortunate that this statement should gain belief at this time,
when those who prey upon the producer are watching for any support
from whatever direction.
Passing by the obvious fact that production must precede
distribution, notice that, with all the energy that has been devoted
to production of farm products by the government experts, it is
clear that not only is there a shortage, but that it has required
all kinds of inducements, from the President down, to get the
farmers to increase their output, the most potent of all being the
cry of patriotism.
Some explain this by showing how land monopoly prevents men going
back to the farms. While this is perfectly true, it does not answer
the question why farmers now in possession of farms are not working
them near their capacity.
The answer of the ordinary man to this is inefficiency on the part
of the farmer, and up to the present this idea has passed as
sufficient to account for the situation. The publicity given the
whole farm question during the past six months, however, has to a
large extent dispelled the inefficiency answer, as the farmer has
responded so completely to the call, and the amateurs are beginning
to realize that there is something in farming besides tickling the
earth with a feather. All the facts so far brought out show the
farmer abundantly able to produce all the foodstuffs needed,
provided he has a reasonable certainty that he will be able to
dispose of his produce at a price that will give him a fair return
for his labor. This being the case, it is easy to see that putting
more men back on farms would not remedy the condition we are now in;
but would rather increase the difficulty.
The fact is, the two blades of grass theory has been exploded, the
increased production cry has been tried out, carried to its logical
conclusion, and found wanting, and the inefficiency explanation has
been proved a falsehood on its face. It is, therefore, obvious that
with a proper system of distribution, the entire question of
production will take care of itself; but just so long as the
producers find it unprofitable to produce food, just so long will
they have to figure carefully not to grow too much, or it would be
better for them had they grown nothing at all.
The reason why we have such divergent ideas on this subject is that
so many people write about it who have had no experience in farming,
while on the other hand there are few farmers who can state the case
so the public can grasp the most obvious facts.
Finally, it is a question of the government doing what it ought not
to have done and leaving undone those things it ought to have done.
It has granted to a few monopolies transportation and terminal
facilities which enable them to hold up deliveries and thus control
prices. The remedy lies in seeing that the government attend to its
own business, which is securing equality of opportunity for all, and
special privileges to none.
It follows that cooperation should not stop either at production or
at distribution. It must embrace the source of both, nor even stop
at governmental plans of small holdings.
As a business enterprise, combining philanthropy and percentage,
capital has an opportunity.
Accordingly an option should be secured upon a large piece of land
not over forty miles from a large city, near a railroad station. The
transportation at first is not important, as the new commuters will
make a demand for it, and cheap autos will largely fill the gap; it
will improve rapidly.
If possible it should have a lake or a fair stream on it for
irrigation and small water power; the soil should be examined by
experts, to see that it is suitable for trucking and market
gardening.
The object should be to make a sort of vacant lot gardening plan on
a grand scale. Heretofore the trouble has been that we have been
unable to get land where there was any assurance that we could have
it again the second year, and that the limited amount of land makes
it impossible to give the men as much as they ought to have. They do
not need much land, because a man working at intensive culture with
only the rough plowing done for him cannot take good care of much
more than one acre of land. He will probably make as much money out
of one acre of land as he will out of two. Those who are willing to
work should be given one acre of land, with the assurance that they
can have it as long as they work it faithfully and comply with the
simple rules which we have found so effective in the Vacant Lot
Gardening work,--which are practically, that a man should attend to
business and not annoy his neighbors. No contract or lease should be
given the men, or indeed the women, for both work such gardens, as
they have been doing for the past twenty years in several large
cities, making at least a living upon the land and often a very
large return.
There must be a competent superintendent, for everything depends
upon him, who would show the men what land they should use, what
they should put in, instruct them how to do it, and market their
products cooperatively. Experience in Philadelphia, and in some
score of other cities where they have established Vacant Lot
Gardens, shows that about ten per cent annually of the people prefer
to work for others, and consequently take places in the country
after they have learned to do market gardening. Some others, being
dissatisfied with so little land, and wanting to own their own
place, go off and buy land or lease it for themselves. This makes a
constant drain from the gardens, leaving openings for others who
will learn in time their trade; it is possible to make in this way a
steady drain out of the cities to the country, and what is better
still, an automatic drain.
The land must be so near to a center of population that it may be
possible to take a gang of men down there in the morning, show them
what it is, and send back those who do not seem likely to make good,
or who are dissatisfied; and that when men get their gardens
successfully running, they may be able to bring their friends there
to see what they have done, and say to them, "Go thou and do
likewise."
I have been at Trudeau, Saranac Lake, and at Stony Wold, the
consumptive sanitariums, and found there both by observation and by
testimony that to send back the convalescents to the bench or the
workshop from which they came is practically to repronounce upon
them the sentence of death from which the sanitarium has offered
them a reprieve. The only practical thing to do with such
convalescents, and with such persons who are not capable of their
ordinary avocations, is to get them in some way upon the land. There
is a large demand for persons who understand the new intensive
gardening, and places can be found for more than we can hope to
educate in that line.
There should be buildings upon the land sufficient to bunk one
hundred to one hundred and fifty men; accommodations could be made
with the small timber for a considerable number. Many of these men
would need some help, but most of them would shift for themselves if
only they could get the opportunity to build upon the land and to
have a secure tenure of it. A mere tenant knows that it is bunkum
when he says "Our Country."
It is perfectly practicable to sell about one half of the land in a
year or two, and have a thousand acres or more left free and clear,
which will cost the promoters nothing. Renting this out or selling
it will repay the whole cost, and probably bring a large profit
besides.
This is no experiment, it is only to do the thing that we have been
doing under various conditions with various sorts of men in
different localities for the past twenty years in the Vacant Lot
Gardens: namely, to give men the opportunity of living upon and
cultivating land, putting up their own tents, shacks, or bungalows,
and giving them such instruction and such help as does not cost
anything more than the salary of the superintendent. There are
abundant men who can make good and shift for themselves under those
circumstances; the men who are available are single men, such men as
those for whom Mr. Hallimond, a clergyman working in the Bowery, has
been finding rural employment in the past ten years. Also many
families will come to us through the Vacant Lot Gardens and the
Little Land agitation. People such as these will increase the land
value, for every decent man carries around with him at least five
hundred dollars' worth of increase in land values which his presence
adds to somebody's holdings of land. The struggle to pocket this
increase accounts for much of the human drift from the field to the
factory.
God made the country; man made the city--and the devil made the
suburbs, by the aid of the speculator.
Alpha of the Plough says in the London _Star:_ "I was walking with a
friend along the Spaniards-road the other evening talking on the
inexhaustible theme of these days, when he asked, 'What is the
biggest thing that has happened to this country as the outcome of
the war?'
"'It is within two or three hundred yards from here,' I replied.
'Come this way and I'll show it to you.'
"He seemed a little surprised, but accompanied me cheerfully enough
as I turned from the road and plunged through the gorse and the
trees towards Parliament Fields, until we came upon a large expanse
of allotments, carved out of the great playground, and alive with
figures, men, women, and children, some earthing up potatoes, some
weeding onion beds, some thinning out carrots, some merely walking
along the patches, and looking at the fruits of their labor
springing from the soil. 'There,' I said, 'is the most important
result of the war.'
"He laughed, but not contemptuously. He knew what I meant, and I
think he more than half agreed.
"And I think you will agree, too, if you will think what that
stretch of allotments means. It is the symptom of the most important
revival, the greatest spiritual awakening this country has seen for
generations. Wherever you go, that symptom meets you. Here in
Hampstead allotments are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn. A
friend of mine who lives in Beckenham tells me there are fifteen
hundred in his parish. In the neighborhood of London there must be
many thousands. In the country as a whole there must be hundreds of
thousands. If dear old Joseph Fels could revisit the glimpses of the
moon and see what is happening, see the vacant lots and waste spaces
bursting into onion beds and potato patches, what joy would be his!
He was the forerunner of the revival, the passionate pilgrim of the
Vacant Lot: but his hot gospel fell on deaf ears, and he died just
before the trumpet of war awakened the sleeper.
"Do not suppose that the greatness of this thing that is happening
can be measured in terms of food. That is important, no doubt, but
it is not the most important thing. I am confident that it will add
more than anything else to the spiritual resources of the nation. It
is the beginning of a war on the disease that is blighting our
people. What is wrong with us? What is the root of our social and
spiritual ailment? Is it not the divorce of the people from the
soil? For generations the wholesome red blood of the country has
been sucked into the great towns, and we have built up a vast
machine of industry that has made slaves of us, shut out the light
of the fields from our lives, left our children to grow like weeds
in the slums, rootless and waterless, poisoned the healthy instincts
of nature implanted in us, and put in their place the rank growths
of the streets. Can you walk through a working-class district or a
Lancashire cotton town, with their huddle of airless streets,
without a feeling of despair coming over you at the sense of this
enormous perversion of life into the arid channels of death? Can you
take pride in an Empire on which the sun never sets when you think
of the courts in which, as Will Crooks says, the sun never rises?
"And now the sun is going to rise. We have started a revolution that
will not end until the breath of the earth has come back to the soul
of the people. The tyranny of the machine is going to be broken. The
tyranny of the land monopoly is going to be lifted. Yes, you say,
but these people that I see working on the allotments are not the
people from the courts and the slums; but professional men, the
superior artisan, and so on. That is true. But the movement must get
hold of the _intelligenzia_ first. The important thing is that the
breach in the prison is made; the fresh air is filtering in; the
idea is born--not still-born, mind you, but born a living thing. It
is a way of salvation that will not be lost, and that all will
travel.
"We have found the land, and we are going back to possess it. Take a
man out of the street and put him in a garden, and you have made a
new creature of him. I have seen the miracle again and again. I know
a bus conductor, for example, outwardly the most ordinary of his
kind. But one night I mentioned allotments, touched the key of his
soul, and discovered that this man was going about his daily work
irradiated by the thought of his garden triumphs. He had got a new
purpose in life. He had got the spirit of the earth in his bones. It
is not only the humanizing influence of the garden, it is its
democratizing influence too.
"When Adam delved and Eve span
Where was then the gentleman?'
You can get on terms with the lowliest if you will discuss gardens."