The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1919-06-07
THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT.


here spoke at the San Carlos hotel and the city
hall in the interest of cooperative stores and
other cooperative measures allied to daily liv
| ing. Miss Noa had travelled abroad in the in
terest of the United States government, had Wis
tied David Lubin in Italy, and other leaders of
advanced thought agricultural and marketing
problems, had been in Denmark, Sweden, Eng
land and Scotland, and many other countries of
Europe with a commission from the United
States, and had received at first hand much val
liable information in regard to the way in which
people of the foreign countries are cutting down
the high cost of living, and have been cutting it
for many years.
At the time of Miss Noas visit to Pensacola,
this country had been aroused to the fact that
the working people of the Old World were far
ahead of the people of the United States when it
came to protecting themselves against the prof.
teer-perhaps because these burdened people had
suffered so long, that rebellion came to them
sooner than here, where wages have always been
higher and work more plentiful.
Florence Kelly, the brainy Irish-American,
whose work along wage adjustment and other
lines has proven of incalculable value in raising
the scale of wages for women, in public talk on
economic questions, stated that there was vast
difference in the standards in America and in
England, as to the laboring classes, and empha-
sized the difference by pointing out the viewpoint
of prominent Englshman visiting this count
try, who could not understand how the children
of the laboring classes could be in need of legis-
lation when they went to school with shoes on
their feet and gay hair ribbons their hair.
Perhaps this simple illustration does fairly give
the keynote of the difference of view in America
and in England Here we want not only food
and roof over our heads but we want, and ex-
pect shoes for children and hair ribbons to
please their aesthetic souls-and, moreover, we
intend to have them.
But would it not be possible to have better
shoes and more of them, and brighter and fresh
er hair-ribbons if did not have to put so much
money into foods and rents in this country?
A great many people in the United States are
waking up to the fact that cooperation, the pool
ing of common interests, the most democratic
principle in the world, has been far more highly
developed, when it comes to cooperative living,
in foreign countries than it ever has in this land
of the free. Which takes again to the reason
Iwhy-which is probably the fact that while prices
are higher here they have meant less suffering,
because wages are also higher.
The magazines and newspapers have recently
given much space to the cooperative stores and
Ither cooperative measures which have spread
all over Europe and which have not only made
it possible to get the same grade of goods at
cheaper price, but have paid dividend to the
purchaser, who is also a stakeholder.
| According to this plan, which is operating all
over the world and fast becoming popular in this
country, belonging to cooperative purchasing
Organization, whether groceries, drygoods, bak-
cry or whatnot, is good investment as one
could possibly make, irrespective of the lower
| ing of prices to the consumer, as at the end of
the year the purchaser receives from eight to
twelve per cent upon his investment.
With prices soaring and cooperative associa-
lions springing up all over the country, like so
many mushrooms, it is apparent that the Unit
ed States government will not have to bother its
many heads very much longer, in its effort to
keep down prices. The people of the United
States are going to see to that for themselves.
! Albert Sonnichson, able magazine and pub
licity writer, in recounting some of his investi-
cations for the Curtis Publishing Company, says:
I'm actual figures it is difficult to sum up the
cooperative movement in the United States.
Years ago the department of commerce and labor
in Washington included cooperative societies in
its statistics, but it has nothing to indicate
the size of this movement. The Cooperative
League of America, which is a federation of
American societies, with an office in New York