The Bee-Hive. — 1871-01-21 (London, England)

OPERATIVE STORES.  CO-OPERATION has put on broad-cloth, and decked itself in silk and satin. Long Acre, it appears, is choked with carriages waiting to set down or to take up line ladies bent on cheap goods at the stores of the Civil Service Supply Association in that thoroughfare. The "honest tradesman" is crying out, and certain of our contemporaries are helping him to make himself heard in his distress or alarm. We wonder what it may cost a draper whose own shop is as big as a bazaar, to have his name mentioned in one of these public-spirited leaders. But why, for the benefit of individuals, should people pay three shillings for  a pound of tea, when they can get it with as much ease, and greater certainty of having what they want, for half-a-crown? The obvious lesson taught by these natural preferences for good articles at moderate prices, is, to keep genuine goods and to offer them on fair terms. In this way only can the individual tradesman hope to compete with the Co-operative store, or any similar association for mutual benefit. The increase of such establishments ought to convince him, that he must either refuse credit altogether, or make a declared distinction in the prices of the same articles to thoso who take credit and to those who pay ready money, so as to give to the latter the same advantage in return for prompt payment that they get at the store. The fact is, shopkeepers are ruled by different policies under different circumstances. Sonic go for casual custom. Planting themselves in a crowded thoroughfare, they dross an attractive window, and ticket it with great promises—the maximum of excellence at the minimum of price. All who enter must pay ready money; but, as the man behind the counter does not care whether he over sees their faces again or not, he fobs them off with bad things at bold figures. He, on the contrary, who would have now customers become old ones, must vend what will satisfy, and at a rate not preventing repeated purchases. These are the dealers who conic to keep books, and, before long, to have too many names upon them. Thu giving and taking of credit tend always to one result. It destroys frugality in the customer, and prudence in the shopkeeper. Nay, it undermines probity in both. For nut simply does the customer got beyond his depth, and fall into etubarrassment, but he carries his ready money elsewhere; while the shopkeeper, for the losses incurred from runaway debtors, recoups himself by skilful adulterations, which he imposes upon the ready-money frequenters of his nefarious factory, at the highest. charges which a blunted conscience gives him audacity enough to lay  These different modes and forms of extortion have put many in the working class, and not a few in the middle class, upon starting Co-operative stores. For both classes the expedient has one grand recommendation, in the deadly blow it deals to that great social evil, the credit system. At the shop you order and got your goods, and pay for them a quarter, a year, or two years after, and, in certain cases, never at all. At the store, you pay your money before you can even get your goods. It is manifest that, while the shopkeeper is taking, because giving credit, the storekeepers are going to market with money in their hands, and are pocketing discounts on every, purchase. This enables the latter to buy the very best goods on the lowest term s, and to sell them to exolusively ready-money customers at the most moderate profit, at so little, in fact, as is required to pay managing and counter expenses. Those writers who exhort the shopkeepers not to despair, have hit upon an unfortunate word in designating them as "the niallem en who stand between the wholesale dealer and the public." We working men, whether we be mechanics, operatives, miners, or agriou 1turista, have learned to associate with the name of " middlemen " all that is odious in selfishness, greedy in avarice, and cruel in op pressiou. We pity the retail .tradesmen that this repugnant denomination has been given them by their gauky auxiliaries. The obsequiousness of the order to middle-class and upperclass patrons, "the nobility and gentry of Slaveborough," deserves as little at our haLds as does the miserable snobbishness of the poor and proud. We should like, nevertheless, to see the one relying upon their own integrity, and the other recoiling from their self-destructive follies ere the suicide be complete and irreversible. It is a healthy sign when men and women of any grade are husbanding their resources, and consuming only what they have honestly paid for. The Civil Service Supply Association is as welcome a sign of the times as the Rochdale Pioneers, or any other working men's store that has followed in their wake. Time was when Government clerks were notoriously the dupes and victims of moneylenders, and among the most reckless pur emsers on long credit. Their establishments, therefore, in the Haymarket, Long Acre, and Sionkwell-street, must be taken as proof of a great mend and social improvement ; and, if, by arrangement, the advantages of them are extended to persons and families not dependent upon fixed salaries, but in possession of incomes d erived from property of their own, still the influence cannot but be good; for experience shows that incomes of the largest class may tall short in an age of reckless profusion, fashionable rivalry, and enervating luxury. The very complaints made against stores in comparison with shops, as served with less servility, as presenting a more limited variety, and as giving to the purchaser " the exact article for which he pays and no other, " are, in fact, moral and social as well as economic recommendations of the order of esetablishments against which they are urged. We working men, it may be thought, ought to feel grateful that the journalists • who have undertaken the cause of the West-end tradesman deserted by his customers, should not yet have accepted a retainer from those country shopkeepers whose returns may have been diminished by the institution of Co-operative stores. On the contrary, it is stated by them that these establishments are selfdefences against the grinding oppression of the Truck system, the intolerable tyranny of the Tummy Shop ; as it is also confessed by thorn, that the protective measure has engendered a great deal of frugality and self-reliance. The Co-operative Store, then, it is agreed, has revived, stimulated, and fostered the blighted and decaying virtues of a great people. in other respects, they have profited from the experiment suilleiently to encourage them in extending it as far as possible in the way of Cooperative Consumption, and in applying it with equal breadth and not inferior results to Cooperative Production.