Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1922-09-22
COOPERATION MAX
ING A new WORLD

fBy Albert F. Coyle, AI-American
COOPERATIVE Commissions; Editor
Locomotive Engineers JourneD.
So much has been written in this
country about consumers eO-opera-
tiyes that we are prone to overlook
the achievements Of workers cooper
alive productive societies, both here
and abroad. We are, of course, famil-
lar with the success attained By Am
erican farmers in cooperative produc-
ton. The census Of 1920 shows that
the products Of over one-half million
farms valued above one billion dol
lars, are handled operatively. In
deed, throughout the middle west the
most thriving forms Of cooperation
are the producers diaries, cheese fac
tories, creameries, elevators, flour
mills and meat packing plants. While
not discounting the value Of consum-
erS cooperation, the -produe-
er has learned by years of hard ex-
perenee that it Is more important for
him to unite comparatively 10 get a
fair price for the products he has to
sell than it is to effect a small saving
in the goods he needs to buy.
The workers of Europe are looking
more and more to productive coop
GRAFTON as the basis for a just and
stable economic order. Decent men
are sick and tired of a system in
which the sole motive for production
and distribution is the greed for pri-
vate profits. They see all around
them the social havoc wrought by
industry Ito make money"
rather than to serve the needs of their
fellow men. Even the dullest worker
is prodded out of his Indifference in
times of industrial depression, when
he has no work and his family has no
bread because the men who own the
jobs close their factories until the
need for goods is so acute that society
will again pay them the profits they
demand.
These are the reasons why the |
workers of Europe are determined TO !
build new world, in which service |
and not greed is the handspring of /
human action, in which gain without /
abor shall no longer exist. This is |
The reason why American workers |
are taking new interest in the pos
sibilities of cooperative production |
and are steadily increasing the num-
Der of producers co-operatives. 1t
IS the basis of the Plumb plan of rail-
way control espoused by two and one
1alf million American railroad EN-
Dloyes. Ii is the essence of the pro-
Dosal of the 100000 mine workers to
md anarchy in the coal industry for
,ver by operating the mines of the
for service and not for profit.
The men who do the work of the
world are demanding not only Just
wage and decent security of employ
nent; they are demanding that demo-
,racy be applied to industry as well
Is to government, that they have a
,oice in the direction of the enterprise
n which they have invested all that
hey are and have--their labor and
heir lives.
The supreme interest of men i'm life
S not measured by what they con-
sumo, but what they produce. As a
consumer, man is on a level with all
)ther forms of animal life. Like the
pig at the trough, he can only con-
sumo so much and then he Is through. !
As producer, man exercises the |
highest talents entrusted to him by I
his Maker-the creative instinct, the
desire to produce. This is what diff
ferentiates man from brutedom. Ii .
has been his browning glory in all
ages. Ii is the basis of civilization, !
Of art, of religion, of all that has en-
riched and inspired the life of the
human race. Valuable as consumers
cooperation is in reducing the cost of
the physical and material needs of
life, it is restricted and conditioned
on every side by the material limita-
tons upon man as a consumer. Its
ultimate goal is a social order in
which production and distribution
would be controlled by a gigantic
trust dominating all in
dustries and determining what goods
should be made and who should make
them. The aim of producers CO.
operation is to give control of the in
dustrleS and professions to the men
who actually do the work, who know
better than anyone else how to oper-
ate them efficiently, and whose pur-
pose is not merely to turn out the
possible product for the con-
sumer, but the creation of the best
and finest product that human ingen-
uity and devotion can devise. Just as
men find their souls not in what they
eat, but in what they create, so will
men find the long sought era of
brotherhood not in saving pennies on
their purchases, but in the dedication
of their highest abilities to the salts
faction of their wants and needs of
their fellow men. This is the essence
of producers cooperation.
In England and Wales there are al
ready 81 thriving cooperative So
eieties with over $4,000 members, a
share capital (raised by the workers
themselvesl exceeding 100000 and
an annual trade of $4,000, 900
These producers co-opesatives fall in
to five main groups: Textile mills,
boot and shoe factories, the metal
trades, wood work and building con-
struetion, and printers establishments.
Their report for 1921 shows that after
paying SS6,7S5.60 as interest on the
- al Ill a