The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1911-02-08
How the Plan Works.

How the Plan Works.
These stores, with one exception,
have paid from to 8 per cent. And
all the capital has been furnished by
the customers themselves, who are
also the sole owners. Anyone can
become a partner in one of the
stores by buying a s. share of stock
and then dealing in that store. In
return the retail cooperative store
divides among it's customers about
Is per cent of whatever profit i
makes, each customer receiving
share in proportion to the amount
he or she has bought at the store.
Furthermore the American Whole
sale Cooperative returns to. the re-
tail cooperative store that buys mer-
chandise of it about Is per cent Of
the profit it makes on each store. g.
The plan on which the co-Opera-
tive stores are built up is simple. The
prospective customer pays S. for his
single share and agrees to do all his
purchasing at the nearest store. He
gets a pass book somewhat similar
to a savings bank book, whose pages
are ruled into squares. Each time
| he makes a purchase, whether Of a
! hat or a can of sardines, the amount
| expended is entered in one of the
squares. At the end of certain peri
| DDS, generally six months, dividends
are declared. Each customer then
presents his pass book. The total
amount of purchases is footed up
and he receives his share of the divi-
| dends on that total For instance
/ if a customer has bought 500 worth
of goods in six months and the store
| has declared that it is able to pay
a dividend of per cent the customer
! is credited with SIS. Anyone who is
not able to pay s. in lump sum fol-
the first share is permitted to come
in, but at first receives only hall
the declared dividend on his pur-
chases. The d&her half is retained
by the store, but credited to the pur-
chaser until enough has been accum-
ulated to entitle him to a full share
in the store. Thereafter he receives
the usual dividend on all purchases
Cooperation in Europe.
In Europe the cooperative move
ment has grown to tremendous pro
portions. In England, for instance
one system has more than 5000
stores, owns its own coffee planta-
lions, operates its own line Of steam.
ships, conducts its own factories, and
does a business of several hundred
million dollars a year. Another CO.
operative system in Germany in the
year 1908 did a total busi-ess OF
20S, 900, 900 marks. In Belgium the
cooperative stores are established
so firmly and their customers are sc
loyal to them that a working woman
buying in scab" store, as the 9th,
er stores are called, is likely to have
her hair pulled by some of the wo
men who patronize the cooperative
stores.
But cooperative stores never have
made much Roadway in America
There were some established in the
days when Virginia was a colony
They went % smash. Others were
operated in New York shortly before
| the revolution. The men who were
the prime movers in the scheme wen
to jail for their populations. There
have been hundreds of other coop
erative store projects launched il
New York since then, and prObabl,
: thousands in other parts of the
United States They We're all RICH
in theory, but somehow turned GU
all wrong in practice. Maybe tn,
socialists in making support of tn,
: stores one of the forms by which
their party will be supplied with
: war chest have struck an idea tina
will work ont well. At any rat
: they have introduced something nov
, ell in politics.