CO-OPERATION IN NORTH CENTRAL STATES
Warbasse, J. P.
Co-Operation In North Central States From Michigan To Dahotas Progress Has Been Made With Both Selling And Buying Societies By J. P. WARBASSE THE progress of Co-operation ha3 been nowhere more...
...but such co-operative pyrotechnics end as quickly as they begin...
...Five teachers were employed to teach the 23 students who attended, and the courses continued for five weeks...
...Mayor Daniel Hoan is one of the Directors...
...Enterprises Are Successful SOME of the most successful co-operatives in the country are located in this territory...
...The fifth of these annual schools were given in the autumn of 1923 at Superior...
...Here we have the most soundly established centralized wholesaling agency and educational federation...
...600 Farmer Members THE Cloquet Co-operative Society, member of both the wholesale and the league, is a store society with a membership of about 600 farmers and industrial workers...
...This past year the business done in milk, butter, cheese and ice-cream by these co-operatives amounted to $3,000,000...
...Unfortunately it too often arouses in the' minds of the city workers the suspicion that it is merely a device of the farmers to control the prices of farm products...
...If for no other reason than that these little societies so...
...The co-operative marketing program and achievements are well known to most of the readers of the press of the country...
...The Virginia Work People's Co-operative is almost as large and quite as successful...
...As most of the people interested in taking these courses came from the Finnish societies, the courses were given in that language...
...In Northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota there are now upward of 200 of these consumers' co-operatives: most of them stores, but en occasional bakery, savings bank, dairy or restaurant among them...
...Milk is purchased from the Twin City Milk Producers' Association, the farmers' marketing cooperative, and all middlemen are eliminated...
...Here we have one of the largest groups of societies in the country...
...often get the farmers and the city workers around the same table, studying the same problems, taking their foodstuffs from the same counter—they would be worth much more attention than they now receive...
...Here we have the most varied types of co-operatives working together in perfect harmony...
...The Co-operative Cenh-al Exchange is one of these, and in 1923 did a business of half a million dollars...
...Minnesota, Wisconsin and adjoining states, though they have had their share of these, have clung more steadfastly to the tried and proved co-operative methods, and as a result have now as solid a foundation as any other part of this continent for the laying of a large and permanent cooperative movement...
...Milwaukee also has the well known Garden Homes Association, a co-operative group of 105 families that live in 88 houses recently built on a tract of land at the northern end of the city...
...The Spooner Co-operative Association (Wisconsin) is one of the smaller societies which has been highly successful financially, which includes both farmers and workers in its membership and on its Board of Directors, and which has found the handling of coal very easy and very profitable for its membership...
...Here we have dozens of different nationalities working side by side, and both city workers and farmers putting their energies injp the upbuilding of a common economic structure...
...he merely obtains a perpetual lea^se to it on the first payment of at least $500 toward his stock subscription in the association...
...This educational league is quite distinct from the wholesale and conducts no commercial activities whatever...
...Before the League was established the Exchange started a little Training School for the training of store managers and accountants...
...Co-Operation In North Central States From Michigan To Dahotas Progress Has Been Made With Both Selling And Buying Societies By J. P. WARBASSE THE progress of Co-operation ha3 been nowhere more promising than in the States along the North Cen-tral border of the country—from Michigan through to the Dakotas...
...it has, according to the testimony of the Health Commissioner, improved the quality of the milk and other creamery products distributed throughout the city...
...The business runs about $30,000 a month and none of the profit stores in the neighborhood can begin to catch up with it...
...it has lowered the price of milk throughout tha Twin Cities two and three cents...
...Here the land and houses are all owned by the corporate group and no individual owns his dwelling outright...
...The Franklin Cooperative Creamery Association, Minneapolis, also a member of the Northern States Co-operative League, has more than 6,000 stockholders among the workers of the Twin Cities, and a paid-up capital stock of $1,000,000...
...Minneapolis has a restaurant association which is now operating two branches in the downtown district...
...Rents are remarkably low because the tenants are their own landlords...
...and so we have thousands of city workers looking upon the farmers marketing organization with much the same distrust as the less progressive farmers look upon labor unionism...
...Five or six years ago a small group of these organized a co-operative wholesale at Superior and named it the Cooperative Central Exchange...
...Do Educational Work THE various activities of the two central associations, one for commercial wholesaling and the other for educational work, are many and diverse...
...There are other societies in the territory not yet affiliated with these central organizations, but on a very friendly basis...
...The League has about twenty affiliated societies...
...The Soo Cooperative Mercantile Association, of Sault Ste Marie, in 1923 did a business of $360,000 in its six grocery stores, bakery and butcher department and is the largest retailing enterprise in that city...
...The institution grew out of a strike of milk wagon drivers three years ago, and almost the entire financial backing of the Creamery has come from the working people of the city and from the farmers nearby...
...and here the farmers and the city workers come together and work within the same association, for both groups demand the same foods and clothing and fuels...
...and this city also has a fairly successful little laundry and dry cleaning establishment run on the Rochdale co-operative order...
...Other states .may have had more spectacular displays of co-operative development that spread like prairie fire throughout a large city or an entire state overnight...
...Today more than 60 stores are stockholders in this wholesale and upward of 100 are buying several of these associations called a conference goods through the wholesale...
...and it has become the largest business of its kind in Minneapolis...
...In the organization of such a school as this, the co-operative movement in America shows that it has become highly conscious of its own importance and its destiny and is assuming responsibility for the training of its own future leadership...
...The consumers' co-operative movement, which is the most powerful part of the co-operative movement in almost every country of Europe, from Russia to England, is getting a firm foothold in a few parts of 'the United States, and nowhere is it more soundly established than in these North Central States...
...This school will now be held annually also, and young men and women sent out to the stores with some appreciation and understanding of the principles and theory of Co-operation as well as a working knowledge of the primary problems of buying and selling, organization and administrative problems, and the elementary principles of bookkeeping and accounting...
...Within three years this workers' business has •succeeded in putting many of its competitors out of business and has forced several others to unite in the "Northland Creamery...
...Two years ago which organized an educational federation to be known as The Northern States Co-operative League...
...Development is Rapid IN the Central States, however, the consumers' co-operatives, less well known to the general public, are developing rapidly...
...The Milwaukee Consumers Cooperative Association is another large store society which has five branches in various parts of the city and which does a business close to $200,000 annually...
...Both Milwaukee and Superior have/Mutual Savings Banks organized on the co-operative, non-profit plan...
...The wholesale, however, was one of the prime movers in its organization and is one of its strongest members...
...In September-October of 1923 the first Training School to be conducted in the English language in this country was opened by the Northern States Co-operative League in Minneapolis...
Vol. 16 • January 1924 • No. 1
