CO-OPS: SHIELD OF FREE ENTERPRISE
McMillin, Miles
The Cooperative Movement: Co-ops: Shield Of Free Enterprise By MILES McMILLIN *»tT IS TIME for private business interests to un-JL derstand that our present economic system is in dire need of...
...The author is Harland Allen, Chicago consulting economist and editor of the Harland Allen Economic Letter to which many of the nation's top business executives subscribe...
...Unlike the self-centered, overly-individualistic business leaders who see nothing but the growth of another competitor in this trend and who are now organizing to wreck the whole cooperative movement, Allen has sought to find the reasons for this phenomenal expansion...
...But an alert and willing government will find them, especially in their international cartel arrangements...
...Cooperative activity is as yet 75 per cent rural, while the nation is 75 per cent urban...
...Sweden's example, he concludes, should command "serious thought today when the United States is searching for a formula to save us from totalitarianism on the one side or depression on the other...
...His search has produced a remarkably accurate analysis of the movement and its potentialities...
...His appraisal of the co-ops, what they have done, what they stand for, and what they can do, is contained in his Letter of Mar...
...Allen concludes with the statement that although he does not regard cooperation as the final answer to our economic ills, he does recognize that it offers factors of "stability, democracy, and the peaceful pursuit of high standards of living," and that "since a primary desire of all good Americans is to escape extremism in the postwar world, we should welcome and not oppose the efforts of cooperative enthusiasts to expand such factors of stability here...
...But along with them, this country must have a strong, affirmative trust-busting program of the kind Thurman Arnold was beginning when he was kicked upstairs...
...He says, for example, "In 20 years I have not seen a sales chart of more convincing growth, in any field, than that of the Midland Cooperative...
...No institution can expect to be of optimum significance in a country while it remains so unrepresentative of the total economy...
...Although it is true that a greater strengthening of the co-ops would go far toward breaking the hold of monopoly, it is questionable whether that alone is enough...
...2) The importance they place on consumer purchasing power...
...The threat of monopoly is far too grave to depend entirely on the cooperatives for protection...
...It's a sentence dug out of the text of an extremely cool-headed appraisal of the cooperative movement by a hard-headed business analyst who makes no effort to disguise his dislike for the "St...
...Allen candidly admits that his interest in coops goes no further than that which he developed by "studying corporation growth trends for investment purposes...
...Unless the government does, and acts vigorously to break them up, they will hold at their mercy the co-ops, upon which Allen depends to alleviate their evil effects...
...Aa he points out, Sweden has shown that they are...
...Central Coordinating Group, Tax Equality Association, and other anti-cooperators, please copy...
...Georges of liberalism...
...Studying the effects of the last depression on the nations of the world he found that the "degree of punishment . . . and the quality of recovery from its economic depths was in substantial correlation with the extent of cooperative development in respective countries...
...The Factors In Cooperation This is perhaps the weakest point of his analysis...
...The Cooperative Movement: Co-ops: Shield Of Free Enterprise By MILES McMILLIN *»tT IS TIME for private business interests to un-JL derstand that our present economic system is in dire need of some of the qualities which cooperation develops...
...He likes it, he says, "because it does not involve the legal problems of prosecution, in part because it sidesteps the need for defining or 'locating' the oft-illusive monopoly manifestation and concentrates on the job of eliminating monopoly advantage (pulling its fangs so to speak) ; neither does the cooperative method of handling monopoly rely too much on the bureaucratic technique of strait-jacket regulation...
...Nor is it a quotation from a speech by Murray D. Lincoln or some other cooperative leader...
...3) Their technique for handling the problem of private monopoly...
...Midland's Impressive Record Mr...
...The weakness in his argument, in other words, is not that the cooperatives, when sufficiently developed, are not a splendid anti-monopoly weapon...
...After all, as he admits, the movement is still relatively small...
...4) Their plans for international trade on a give-and-take basis, with imports balancing exports...
...15, 1944...
...These are not words taken from an editorial of the Cooperative Builder, or the Cooperative Consumer, or any of the other fine cooperative publications in this country...
...What stirred his interest is the acceleration in co-op expansion in recent years as compared with their "mediocre past performances...
...It is true, as he asserts, that it is difficult to find "the physical existence of monopoly...
...He cites four factors of great social interest in the co-ops today: (1) Their emphasis on practical democracy...
...Of particular interest is his discussion of the cooperative approach to the monopoly problem...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 17
