Norwich bulletin., 1912-12-14
THE ADVANTAGES OF COOPERATION
 ARE MANY
ANE MAIN l

(Written Specially for The Bulletin.)
 One day last week my next-door neighbor bought a ten-pound bag of granulated sugar from the retail groceryman for 65 cents. This Is at the rate of S6.50 per hundred.
 One day last week I went out to my nearest city and bought at whole sale my years supply of granulated sugar-5O0 pounds-at , cents pound, or $500 per hundred pounds.
 One day that same week another neighbor, a manufacturer whose pro- duct calls for the use of a good deal of sugar, bought twenty-five barrels in New York city at $4.S0 per hun dred pounds.
 h my first hand -to-mouth neiehbor uses as much sugar as we do in the course of a year-500 pounds-she will pay for it. at the rate of $6.50 per hundred, just $7.50 more than l paid for an equal amount-because she buys in little driblets. from day to day, while I bought in quantity.
 On the other hand, if l had been able to buy in as big quantity as my manufacturer eighbor-twenty-five barrel at time-I could have saved another twenty cents a hundred, or -dollar more-SS.50 in all-on my 500 pounds.
 Right there | got a tangible and pocket informing illustration of one ruling law of the market-place to wit, namely, that is to say, the law which provides that in any free interchange of produce the bigger the deal the better will be the terms.
 Not that this law may not be highly eommendable: it may not be strictly ethical: it may even be immoral. I'm not going to debate those high propo- sitions for a single line. Though I may, perhaps, be pardOned for re- marking, as an aside that very little of the practice of either business or law or politics can be regarded as the pure application of lofty ethical stand ards. To paraphrase Cleve- lands famous saying, it is a condition of business and not a theory of ethics which confronts us producing -con- suming farmer folk.
 The law is about as 1 have stated 1.-the bigger the deal the better the terms Also and furthermore, as this law is founded on the fundamental conditions under which business is done at present, the law is, at present, and will be so long as conditions re- main what they are. irrepealable. It can't be and won't be affected in the slightest by any act of any congress or legislature or by any decision of any court.
 You and I may think human nature is sadly in need of reformation in this as in many other ways. But we'll never reform it by making laws against it. We might as well try to abolish the Atlantic tides by vote of the selectmen.
 You and 1 and few others who have got to the top of some ethically high mountain may be perfectly right and the mass of people squabbling over worms down in the valleys may be eternally wrong. But it never will happen yet that a hundred million people will obey the laws imposed on them b ten thousand, when 990,- 900 of them don't want laws and don't believe in them. That sort of tail isn't wagging that sort of dog.
 No neople-wide reform can ever be effected by somebody writing a Be- It-Enacted" The reform must first enact itself in the hearts and habits of the people themselves. And that's something which takes time Some- times 1t seems as if it would take eternity!