The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1922-04-28
W-OPS. OF WORLD
DOING GOOD WORK

(By Albert F. Coyle, Executive Sec
rotary All American Cooperative
Commissions; Editor Locomotive
Engineers JournaD.
So much has been written in this
country about consumers coopera-
tlves that we are prone to overlook
the remarkable achievements of
workers cooperative productive So
cieties, both here and abroad. We
are, of course, familiar with the sue
cess attained by American farmers
in cooperative production. The CEN
sus of 1920 shows that the products
of over one-half million farms val
ued above one billion dollars are
handled comparatively. In d e d,
throughout the Middle West. the
most thriving forms of cooperation
are the producers dairies. creameries,
cheese factories, elevators, flour
mills and meat packing plants. While
not discounting the value of con-
sumers' cooperation. the farmer-pro-
Queer has learned by years of hard
experience that it is more important
for him to unite comparatively to get
fair price for the products he has
to sell than it is to effect small
saving in the goods he needs to buy.
The workers of Europe are look
ing more and more to produce CO.
operation as the basis for just and
stable economic order. Decent men
are sick and tired of a system in
which the sole motive for production
and distribution is greed for private
profits. They see all around them
the social havoc wrought by running
industry "to make money" rather
than to serve the needs of their fell
low 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 today are deter
mined to build a new world in which
service and not greed is the main
spring of human action, in which
gain without labor shall no longer
exist. This is the reason why Amer
lean workers are taking new in
terest in the possibilities of cooper
ative production and are steadily in
creasing the number of successful
! producers cooperatives. 1t is the
basis of the Plumb Plan of railway
control espoused by Two and one
half million American railroad en-
ployes. 1t is the essence of the pro-
posal of the 100000 United Mine
Workers to end anarchy in the coal
| industry forever by operating the
mines of the country 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 employment they are demanding
| that democracy be applied to indus
| try as well as to government. that
they have voice in the direction of
the enterprise in which they have in
vested all that they are and have
their labor and their lives.
The supreme interest of men in
| life is not measured by what they
consume, but by what they produce.
| AS consumer. man is on level
| with all other forms of animal life.
| Like the pig at the trough. he can
| only consume so much and then he
| is through. AS producer. man eX-
ercises the highest talents intrusted
to him by his Maker-the creative
instinct. the desire to produce. This
is what differentiates a man from
brutedom. 1t has been his browning
glory in all ages. 1t is the basis of
civilization. of art, of religion. of all
| that has enriched and inspired the
| life of the human race. Valuable as
| consumers cooperation is in reduc-
ing the cost of the physical and ma
terial needs of life, it is restricted
| and conditioned on every side by the
material limitations upon man as a
| consumer. Its ultimate goal is a
social order in which production and
| distribution would be controlled by
a gigantic consumers trust dominat-
ing all industries and determining
what goods should be made and who
should make them. The aim of pro,
ducers' cooperation is to give control