Montana labor news., 1947-10-02

UAW-CIO Local ~ is arranging to sell
groceries to its members on a non-profit basis
in an effort to hit back at the high cost OF
living.
Federal Labor Union 1886 and Brass and
Copper Workers Local 1892 are making a
study of the same thing as are other unions
elsewhere.
In Detroit leaders of ALL. CLIO, veterans
and consumer groups formed a new consum-
ers' co-operative-Motor City Co-op-whlch
will manage purchases of groceries and leas-
ing of warehouses for buying clubs and
unions. Foodstuffs and other supplies Will
be bought wholesale and sold at cost to union
members.
UAW-CIO Local 400 of Highland Park
adjacent to Detroit started the movement
with the successful selling of groceries at
wholesale cost in the union headquarters.
Now the international unions education
department is offering assistance to locals
all over the country in starting similar stores.
The international makes no secret of its aim
to transform the spontaneously formed buy
at-cost stores into regular Co-ops which can
affiliate with established national Coop
wholesale organizations.
All this is going on at the same time that
the reactionary forces of the country are try
ing to smear the Co-Ops as "monopolles
1t is a sweet irony!
A Republican threaten-and-smear commit
tee, headed by Rep. Walter c.. Ploeser of St.
Louis, is busy these days Investigating"
Co-ops with the pretty clear intention of pro-
noting legislation to cripple the Coop move
ment.
Back of this smearing job is the National
Tax Equality association which also has been
assiduous in pushing avs in the various states
to destroy the Co-ops.
The irony is that in spite of the prodigious
efforts of the reactionary elements to smash
the co-ops-to smash them by name-calling,
threats, probes and legislation-popular in
terest in co-ops is growing by leaps and
bounds and the cooperative movement is get
ting stronger and stronger.
StOOges Of the real monopOlies fail in their
efforts to harm the co-ops by calling them
"monopolies" because the high prices of COM
modities fixed by the real monopolies are
causing people to turn to the co-ops!
That there is a real importance to the i'm
promptu buying at wholesale by unions is in
dictated by the editorial comment in the daily
press.
Newspapers, always on guard for big
business, are telling their readers that SUCH
efforts won't work. The Chicago Tribune
said that plans to buy and sell at cost are con-
trary to union tradition. Imagine that!
Well, it is true enough that the impromptu
buying clubs will not in themselves provide
the solution to the high cost of living-not
as long as the principal sources of supply are
held in the iron grip of the real monopolies.
But the experiments in group buying will
prove to be educational.
The very shortcomings of such efforts will
lead many more persons to clearer under
standing Of the monopolistic character of our
economy.
From this will follow, it may we'll be ex-
pected, greater interest and growth of the
cooperative movement.
Consumers will see that organized buying
by democratically operated organizations on
a national, non-profit scale is the way the job
Of beating the real monopolies must be accom-
plished.
That the real monopolies, through THEN
greed, have given impetus to the growth OF
the Co-ops is truly poetic justice.