The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1921-11-18
COOPERATIVE
NEWS
Workers Succeed in Cooperative
Home Building

Workers Succeed in Cooperative
Home Building
The Peoples Construction com
pany of st. Paul, a cooperative
building association organized by
the building trades workers last
spring following an American plan"
lockout, reports that the work done
this season totals approximately
100000, on which a small surplus
of $4,000 has been realized, besides
providing steady employment for the
workers at the highest union wages.
During the past year many large
Jobs had to be refused by the COM
pany because the workers were not
organized to handle them; but with
the success and experience now
achieved, the manager predicts that
next years construction will reach
100000.
In Boston the building trades
unions have formed The Construc-
tion and Housing Company of Bos-
ton, which has been incorporated for
100000, divided into SO shares
held by more than 1000 workmen.
A number of important building pro-
iects have been successfully hapdled.
The management and administration
of this important undertaking has
been entrusted to leaders who fit
ted themselves as competent bust
ness men through courses in bust
ness methods, accounting and fl
nance at the Boston Trades Union
College.
A similar movement has started
in San Francisco, California, where
the workers, firing of waiting for
the contractors to provide them with
work, have started building homes
for themselves. Through workers
building and loan association re-
Gently organized, any man can Sc
cure credit to build home by max
ing small monthly payments, In
Jackson, Michigan; Reading, Pen
nsylvania, and Brooklyn, New York,
workers building guilds have sue
cessfully erected many homes at
cost of labor and materials; while
several western cooperative societies
have built cooperative apartment
houses to solve the housing problem
for their members.
The shortage of several hundred
thousand homes throughout the ma
ton testifies to the fact that the
profit system has broken down as an
incentive for real estate spectators
and contractors to provide homes
for the people Cooperative home
building has proved the one way out
COoperatives Multiply in India
The United States consul in the
Department of Sind, India, has re-
Gently reported to the U. S. Depart
ment of Commerce that the most
striking commercial development in
that district is the phenomenal
growth of cooperative organizations,
which have increased from SO in
1918, to 344 in March, 1921. "This
increase in numbers" the consul's
report states, "has been made in
spite of a most acute stringency in
| the money market during these
years and last years failure of
crops"
Describing the nature of this re-
markable cooperative progress. the
consul says: "There is a store So
ciety for supplying the necessities
of life direct to members without the
middleman's profit; salt transport
ers' society, in which the salt manu-
facturers have cooperated and taken
the contract of salt transport from
the government: three unions of
agricultural societies to undertake
control and supervision of societies;
three weavers' societies; four urban
banks; four communal societies for
supplying funds to members of COM
munities; and three central banks to
serve as balancing centers and for
providing funds to societies in case
of need"