CO-OPS, CULTS, AND CONSUMERS

...Like all professional do-gooders, they cannot get out of their heads or their words that fatal messianic attitude toward the as yet unreconstructed heathen...

...It is to weep...

...It deserves a better fate...

...That's not being a good cooperator...

...The sole real selling point, the only excuse for existence, of cooperatives is to save their members money by cutting out unnecessary profits somewhere along the production-distribution-consumption line...

...This brief definition will doubtless offend many a devout cooperator by its omission of several of the Rochdale principles...

...Oh but you mustn't do that," shot back Old Faithful...

...But I listened to as much of that series as I could keep awake through, and so far as selling the cooperative movement was concerned, it might just as well have been suppressed...

...In short, if you're contemplating joining the cooperative movement, by all means do it on the simple basis of the economic validity of its major premise, i.e., that cutting out profits cuts costs to consumers— and do it quickly before any of its ardent apostles get after you with the printed page or the spoken word...

...at the best, you'll be bored to death and non-membership...

...But it does get in the road...

...Just think what a smart advertising man or publicity man (oh I know—perish the thought) could do in the way of selling a money-saving scheme like that to the housewives of America...

...And so the cooperative movement keeps trudging along an unnecessarily steep and rocky path...

...Webster's Definition For the basic idea of cooperatives, as I understand it, makes great and simple sense...

...Ever go to a Rochdale-inspired rally, or to one of the more intimate kaffee-klatsches, where good cooperators get together to drum up enthusiasm and new members...

...Solemn sermons and bouncy pep-talks appeal only to a highly selective audience —most of whom are probably cooperators already...

...There is no reason why the boys and the men and, if I may drop the metaphor for a moment, the women—particularly the women—should not be flocking to the cooperative movement in far greater numbers than the Statistics of steady but much too modest membership growth would indicate...

...It may discourage you from joining the movement...

...The breath of the cooperator, his teeth presumably scrubbed with salt and baking soda, smells just as sweet as does that of the ad-reading sucker who squanders his quarters on Colgate's or Kolynos...

...It gets in the road in countless comparatively trivial daily decisions—like the beer-or-no-beer episode mentioned above...

...They keep insisting on converts when they ought to be out for customers...

...A few weeks later, queried about her impressions of the store by an old and faithful member, the young wife allowed as how she liked it fine for most things although she found there were several items she could buy cheaper at the A. & P. supermarket down the street...

...Don't...

...It is something to be "loyal to," something to be "believed in" —like Communism or Christian Science...

...In fact, the cooperative movement constantly reminds me of the good girl who, not quite content with being good, makes a virtue of being unattractive as well...

...One hot Summer not long ago, at a meeting of one of the bigger Eastern co-ops, a brash new board member proposed that the store stock and sell beer...

...And incidentally, it is the consumers' cooperatives, the bulk and the backbone of the movement, with which I am here concerned...

...To cater to these stalwart pillars of the society struck the board as far more important than merely to provide a new service, and new saving, for three or four hundred thrifty but thirsty souls...

...The proposal fell with a dull thud, was kicked around briefly, and voted down...

...Then look at the drop in the bucket of the American economy that our co-operators have achieved...

...Then there was the young wife whose family budget made penny-pinching essential and who joined a coop for just that reason...

...Two Symbolic Incidents Then too, co-ops can—and frequently do—use the good old-fashioned way of putting ideas across by holding open meetings...

...The average citizen is instantly repelled by the sterile and righteous stuff that passes as publicity or propaganda among professional cooperators...

...It is a halitosis of the whole personality of which I speak—a militant absence of oomph that manages to keep the boys away in droves...

...He is interested in any reasonable and legal way of getting more for his money, and he could be sold the cooperative idea if only he were approached as he likes to be approached—by a salesman and not by a preacher...

...It gets in the road, more significantly, in the selection of paid personnel to do the work of cooperatives—supervisors, managers, editors, clerks— where the "good cooperator" is all too likely to get the nod over the abler man with no "cooperative background...

...The proposal was voted down because the sale of beer in the store would have offended a few "old and loyal cooperators"—two or three stiff and ancient ladies and a couple of gentlemen of the cloth...

...That idea, as Webster's dictionary puts it, is of "a business enterprise or society whose object is to enable its participants or members to buy or sell to better advantage by eliminating middlemen's profits...

...Webster went straight to the meat of the matter, regardless of the trimmings...

...For the average consumer—meaning the average citizen—is not the least bit interested in adopting a new religion...

...There is no reason why this should be so...

...At the worst, you'll be made an itty-bitty bit sick...

...And I'm terribly afraid that, as one of the first steps, that will require dressing the prim old movement up in short skirts, a little lipstick, and just a touch of Toujours a Toi behind the ears...

...Nobody asked me to do the job and nobody will thank me for doing it, but nevertheless I'm electing myself a committee of one to inform my fellow cooperators of what even their best friends won't tell them...

...And it gets in the road most disastrously when it comes to building the cooperatives of this country into a true mass movement of consumers...

...The accent should be on the consumers, not on the cooperative...

...Deserves A Better Fate Now there would be nothing wrong with this attitude if it did not get in the road of the practical, down-to-earth job that the cooperative movement ought to be doing for consumers...

...True, the co-ops had to fight, a few months back, to get a short series of programs broadcast on a national network...

...Invariably dull, insultingly clubby, and somehow strangely smug, most cooperative publications sound like a cross between a Boy Scout bulletin and a lower-income-group Junior League journal...

...Nor can this be blamed, as cooperators are wont to blame to it, on the comfortable excuse that ordinary avenues of propaganda are largely closed to the co-ops...

...Nevertheless Mr...

...But it will never achieve one until those who control it learn how to pronounce "consumers' cooperative...

...I think I know why, but before telling all I'm going to relate a couple of symbolic little incidents—and maybe you can guess the answer yourself...

...Not that it would not have been a real service to many members, who bought all their groceries at the co-op and then had to shop elsewhere for beer...

...I refer to the chronic group halitosis of the cooperative movement...

...The mails are open to co-op propaganda...

...Not that it was impractical —for concededly the store would have been helped financially...

...Why is it that American cooperators have made such a mess of a wide-open opportunity for mass appeal...

...Don't...

...Maybe now you get the point...

...Of course "halitosis" is used in a metaphorical sense...

...Briefly and bluntly, consumers' cooperatives in this country are in large part controlled by earnest and consecrated folk to whom cooperation is a cult, a way of life...

...There is no reason—except their own grim and deliberate lack of glamor—why co-ops in these United States should not be as big and plentiful and powerful as they are in many countries abroad...

...Ever read any co-op literature...