The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1920-11-26
They Are Cutting
The Cost of Bread

Up in Utica, New York, % work
ingmen got together in 1915 with
an average capital of less than SIS
each, purchased an old bakery and
remodeled it into cooperative in
stitution. The first year their sales
were $4,000 out of which a cash
rebate of per cent was paid to
members in addition to expanding
the business and laying aside a re
serve fund. By the end of 1919 the
Utica Cooperative Society had over
800 members, was doing business
of more thas $4,000 a year, and
besides paying rebates of from 6
per cent to 10 per cent to members,
had banked a surplus of $4,000,
bought new quarters, and built
modern bakery in conjunction with
handsome grocery store. Since
January /, 1920, the membership has
increased near 30 per cent, business
has doubled, and paid-up capital
of $27 900 was established.
The manager of this very success
full bakery gives some sound advice
for other groups who are planning
similar enterprises:
"The most important thing in
starting a cooperative bakery is
that the bakers working in the coop
bakery are co-operators at heart, so
that they have a sense of working
for themselves and not for boss.
They will then of their own accord
see to it that nothing is wasted and
that the baked goods are as good
CON bo nd with It1a lityy
and right prices, you cannot help
but get the trade and good will Of
your members and others.
whenever conditions permit, CO.
op bakeries should be established
and conducted in connection with
grocery store. Both will help each
other and keep down the overhead,
thereby making the savings returns
larger"
There is only one way to cut the
cost of bread farmers cooperation
ca, eliminate the spectators and
middlemen at their end of the sys-
TEN, while the consumers can stop
the leaks at their end through CO.
operative bakeries. There is no rea-
son why every city in the United
States should not support thriv-
ing cooperative bakery. Bakeries
are one of the commcnest forms of
cooperation all over Europe. In
Christiana, Norway, the citizens
have just opened the largest bakery
the needs of 10000 people. The Bel
gian cO-operators have built their
political, fraternal and cooperative
activities around the bakery. For
bread is an article of such universal
use that every citizen in town prof
its through membership in the CO.
operative bakery.
The grain barons and the wheat
spectators are prophesying bread at
25c a loaf before the next harvest
1t is not the poor farmer who is
getting rich, for he is now being
so mercilessly squeezed by the banks
and the spectators that he is com
PEELED to sell his wheat at from
20 per cent to 80 per cent below
The actual cost of production. A
Congressional Committee investigat-
ing the high cost of living in the
District of Columbia found that one
of the big bakeries made a profit
of $315,059 during the preceding
year, in addition to his own salary
of 100000 not counted as profit.
The farmer who gets 4c a pound
for his wheat and the consumer
who pays 1c an ounce for his bread
are the victims of all the interven-
ing middlemen who make their mil
lions out of the staff of life.
The cost of bread can be cut by
cooperation. While the farmers are
cooperating to slice off the juicy
profits of the wheat spectators and
the milling trust, the city workers
should combine to take the cake"
out of their bakery bills by estab-
fishing their own bakeries.