THE CHAMP CHANGES HIS MIND
McMillin, Miles
The Cooperative Movement The Champ Changes His Mind By MILES McMILLIN THE Wall Street Journal, that old battler for the Four Freedoms for the Four Hundred, has recovered from its attack of...
...It is the democracy of which we are all talking...
...From there he proceeded with a detailed recitation of co-op progress during the war...
...At least there were no stories in the papers about an upper crust picket line around the Journal's editorial rooms...
...But if and when any cooperative or any group of them seeks government support or favor, their status immediately changes...
...It stands over against the laissez-faire capitalism by competing successfully with it...
...It stands out in the sharpest contrast to all disputants...
...We already have enough of the self-seeking pressure groups or rather too many...
...The champ, it appears, is getting scared...
...Two days later the Journal picked up the line of the newly-organized, anti-co-op Central Coordinating Group and suddenly perceived that the cooperative movement is a political bloc seeking "special privilege...
...On that day the Journal came out with an editorial praising the democratic practices and aims of the cooperative movement and nominating it as the answer to many of the world's economic problems...
...He pointed out that the co-ops, far from collapsing under the restrictions of war economy, were breaking all sales records and—more alarming still—were expanding into fields of production which private business has always regarded as its own exclusive sphere...
...The Wall Streeters, it was obvious, had discovered noblesse oblige...
...It was on Sept...
...Wall Street's Noblesse Oblige Although many a cooperator was left gasping in amazement at these words from the lord-high spokesman of big business, there were no signs along Wall Street that anyone was disturbed...
...2, 1942, that our nomination for Ripley's Hall of Fame first appeared in the Journal...
...The Cooperative Movement The Champ Changes His Mind By MILES McMILLIN THE Wall Street Journal, that old battler for the Four Freedoms for the Four Hundred, has recovered from its attack of noblesse oblige and has taken back all the nice things it had to say about the cooperative movement just about a year ago this time...
...The cooperative movement," the editorial ran, "is today, as it has never been before, a living answer to some of the problems over which logomachy rages —planned economy, for instance, and even democracy itself...
...Some-of them appear to have done just this and have been successful in the attempt...
...For a whole year that position was allowed to stand...
...With war profits mounting to unprecedented heights this was the least to be done...
...It Is The Democracy' "It stands against the whole socialist and communist notion for the compressing of all men into a rigid 'cooperative commonwealth' by uniting all who care to join it in a voluntary common effort and leaving everyone else to go his own way...
...But last month a staff correspondent for the Journal, prowling around Washington, chanced upon some frightening statistics...
...As a form of private enterprise the cooperatives must expect to sink or swim by their own inherent advantages to their members and not in any degree by the political pressures they may be able to exert...
...Thus, they enjoy certain tax exemptions, for no apparent reason other than the very considerable number of votes they may command...
...it is not interested in 'politics,' it has no 'blocs' in legislatures anywhere...
...The co-ops, he reported, "which considered themselves portentous rivals to private, business in peacetime are doing an even brisker wartime trade...
...It stands oyer against all 'pressure groups' seeking nourishment at the public trough, by seeking and accepting none for itself...
...It asks no special laws to protect it...
...It began a hundred years ago with a mere handful of men and an idea...
...As we remember it, the stock market wasn't even depressed...
...There is not the smallest sign that its growth may not continue wherever there is any real freedom for action...
...It looks as if we cooperators are going to have to plug along as best we can without our Wall Street cheering section...
...So long," said the Journal editorially, "as the coops seek no favored position under law it seems to this newspaper that they represent merely a form of private enterprise...
...The champ, confident that the ravages of the war would put an end to the career of this young upstart, was making a gracious bow in the direction of the challenger...
...Whether all their activities are within the confines of the anti-trust statutes is a question for the Department of Justice to deal with...
...When the present war broke out it was in every civilized country in the world and numbered a hundred million adherents...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 49
