THE CO-OPS ARE FACING A FIGHT
The Cooperative Movement The Co-ops Are Facing A Fight ANEW PRESSURE GROUP will soon invade lobby-ridden Washington for the express purpose of wiping out the cooperative movement in the United...
...If the co-ops continue the spectacular rate of expansion they have shown in the last 10 years, it isn't going to take long...
...It is another sign that private business, watching the steady growth of the cooperative movement, fears the challenge it has flung down in modern business practices...
...One thing is certain...
...Der Tag Coming Up Meanwhile, they are watching every move the coops make and are especially alarmed at the deep inroads being made not only into petroleum retailing but also wholesale and producer operations...
...When the showdown will come and what its results will be cannot now be told...
...This new organization to which The Progressive called your attention a few weeks ago in an editorial is made up of a small number of selfish retailers and has been incorporated under the name of Central Coordinating Group, Inc...
...By bringing pressure to bear on the big advertising outlets, such as the radio chains, they hope to keep the co-ops at a stalemate while small business groups attack on the political front...
...This is only one of the many recent manifestations of the mounting ill-will among some private business groups toward the co-ops...
...These dividends, which under the present law are tax exempt, are rebates paid back to co-op members from surpluses on the basis of the member's purchases of goods and services from his co-op...
...The co-ops, too, are on the alert...
...CCG's lobby in Washington will give them some preliminary scrimmage to test their strength for the big show...
...And recently they have been giving wide currency to the report that the biggest oil cartel in history is now taking form between American and British oil interests...
...The co-ops admit this advantage, but they say that it is by no means an unfair one since all that is required of the private business men to get in on it is to turn their profits back to consumers on the same basis...
...The big monopoly attack on the co-ops has been more along "defensive-offensive" lines, to borrow a phrase from the military analysts...
...They know what they are up against and are ready for a fight...
...To tax patronage dividends, they say, would be like taxing a man on the money he saves by growing his own vegetables in a garden instead of buying them from a store...
...Big business has been getting ready for this fight for a long time, but to a large extent has avoided making any frontal assaults...
...Share Your Own Profits', Say Co-ops The profit retailers, according to Business Week, a magazine reflecting conservative business opinion, will open up their campaign in the nation's capital with a demand that Congress "equalize tax laws between cooperatives and private enterprise...
...By this they mean, of course, to impose federal taxes on patronage dividends paid by co-ops...
...They know that the monopolies are forming lines to keep them away from the government-built war plants...
...The principal charge leveled against the co-ops by CCG is that they have had the monstrous temerity to offer trade advantages which the private retailers cannot or will not offer...
...Formation of CCG plays right into the hands of big business...
...The acquisition of a $5,000,000 refinery by a pool of Middle West cooperatives caused some eye-brow arching last Summer along Wall Street...
...Shrewd as always, it is leaving it to hot-headed and misguided small businessmen to pull its chestnuts out of the fire...
...The Cooperative Movement The Co-ops Are Facing A Fight ANEW PRESSURE GROUP will soon invade lobby-ridden Washington for the express purpose of wiping out the cooperative movement in the United States...
...Knocking them out by taxation would remove the cooperatives' biggest economic advantage and would go far toward wrecking the whole movement...
...In some instances, thunder these pious lip servants of competitive economics, they sell goods as much as 30 per cent below retail levels...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 44
