AMERICA'S NEED FOR WESTPHALIA
McMillin, Miles
Americas Need For Westphalia By MILES McMILLIN THERE seems to be no great disagreement among those who should know about such things that the cooperative movement will not play too decisive a role...
...But most of us will confidentially tell each other that we aren't risking our patronage dividends betting that that's the way it's going to be...
...He saw cooperatives as the salvation of that little midwestern hamlet...
...One of the American communities that faced this problem was Westphalia, Iowa, until the Rev...
...In this rich country our people have acquired certain profligate cultural patterns...
...Modern, rapid communication and transportation and the centralization of trade and commerce in the large cities have robbed them of their prosperity...
...As the Republican Party found out in 1932 and in three subsequent elections, there is no telling what the American people will take a fancy to once they discover that platitudes aren't a particularly nutritious diet...
...At a recent sectional meeting of the Catholic Rural Life Conference in Green Bay, Wis., Father Duren had some plain words to speak about the need for the extension of the Westphalia idea...
...Co-ops, Christianity, And Democracy He denounced the propaganda that cooperation is communism and stressed the idea that cooperation is the very essence of Christianity and democracy...
...They may have considerable...
...We like to hear each other talk in those terms...
...The farm and industrial strikes of the '30s had to come and they will continue as long as one man's sweat is another's champagne...
...Many of them are withering up and will ultimately die unless a new economic pattern is established...
...Perhaps Father Duren's experience in Westphalia points the way for the co-ops and ultimately for the whole country...
...We have glorified the getter...
...This need is especially acute in the thousands of rural communities in the United States...
...They will have some influence...
...Writers for The Progressive, including such sturdy champions of cooperation as McAlister Coleman and Harry Elmer Barnes, are convinced that the movement is not yet large enough to have a substantial influence in the critical days that will follow the war boom...
...The same men who will gladly have their heads bashed in on a picket line for an increase in wages all too frequently refuse to walk an extra block to a coop store to save the same amount, if not more, by a careful and intelligent use of what they already have...
...On the other hand the co-ops cannot be completely disregarded as a factor in reconstruction...
...He told farmer listeners that American farm land can absorb five million returning war veterans if cooperative principles are practiced in the rural areas...
...It strikes me that the best example of this is the difference between labor unions and cooperatives...
...He began to teach and preach cooperation and to organize a thorough cooperative program...
...Hubert Duren, a Catholic priest, decided to do something a-bout it...
...In this sense the getting habit is healthy...
...Searching for a system that would give them both security and freedom, the American people would find it hard to overlook the example of thousands of Westphalias...
...Those of us who believe that cooperation offers an answer to the great economic challenge of this age, like to think that the postwar era will see a vast expansion in cooperative activity...
...Our emphasis has never been on judicious use of whatever worldly goods we have...
...Americas Need For Westphalia By MILES McMILLIN THERE seems to be no great disagreement among those who should know about such things that the cooperative movement will not play too decisive a role in America's postwar economic reconstruction...
...Unless the rural people of this country begin thinking about their economic problems and adopt cooperative principles to solve them, he said, "some rabble-rouser will take them where they don't want to go...
...Sweat And Champagne However, there's a lot of indigenous habit in the American people that's going to take a lot of overcoming...
...But there is need for greater emphasis on the other side...
...Today Westphalia is a happy, thriving settlement, nationally known for its complete rural life program...
...If in these small communities of 500 or less, the co-ops can prosper and expand, while the fierce competitive struggle between individuals and economic groups rages in the great trade and industrial centers, they may well find the strength they need to meet the challenge that this country will face here at home when the guns are silent again...
...Not that the efforts of striking farmers and laborers to obtain a greater share of what they produce should be discouraged...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 31
