THE CO-OPS COME OF AGE
Fowler, Bertram B.
The Co-ops Come Of Age By BERTRAM B. FOWLER OUT of the discussion revolving around the postwar problems that face us now, one fact stands out in bold relief—the Consumer Cooperative Movement has...
...They see the co-ops merely as threats...
...The real reason for the attack on the co-ops by NTEA is to circumvent this necessity...
...WHAT these men understand is that there fs room for both efficient profit business and the co-ops...
...might even be capable of operating such simple plants as feed mills or fertilizer factories, but that when they got into really big business, their lack of experience would ride them for a fall...
...Their method of attaek, however, shows that beside their fear, they have very little ammunition...
...The obvious answer to the wails of private business lies in the amazing record compiled by the co-ops in the past 10 years...
...In 1935...
...In the period of a very few years the plant was all paid for...
...They own their own oil wells and pipe-lines...
...They have failed so far to consider them intelligently as a new and revolutionary form of private business—a business in the hands of the consumers themselves...
...they are now being challenged by a new form of really big business in the hands of the people they dare not push too far—the consumers whom they wish to sell, and, therefore, whose good will they wish to retain...
...Now the co-ops are moving from retailing and wholesaling into the processing field, where, as in the case of the co-op oil refineries and pipelines, The really big savings are to be made...
...IT is this array of facts that has private business jittery...
...These businessmen are not, to repeat, any longer being challenged by small struggling consumer groups...
...If the figures of progress within the co-op movement were not convincing- enough, the battle precipitated by the group of business men behind the National Tax Equality Association should convince anyone that the co-ops have at last emerged as a major threat to the long dominant order of business exclusively for private profit based on a price economy...
...If the private profit business man wants to beat a competing co-op, there is only one way to do it...
...Those same men who gave their answer so casually just 10 years ago are the same men who today are spearheading NTEA and are shouting as they tear their hair that the co-ops now threaten the whole structure of private business...
...They would attempt to do by unfair taxation what they have failed to do by efficient business methods...
...These business men failed to see that in its philosophy, consumer cooperation is actually sound private business, but a private business with a social philosophy...
...Legally there is no way to tax those savings dollars without either changing the Constitution of the United States or violating it...
...Private business for the most part has failed utterly to comprehend the meaning of the co-ops...
...THEN the invariable answer I got from private business men whom I queried as to their estimate of the co-ops was a condescending admission that the little men in the co-ops micrht be able to run grocery stores and filling stations...
...National Coops, Inc., recently set aside $30,000 to design co-op electrical appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, etc...
...The average co-op oil refinery pays for itself in from two to three years, leaving the cb-ops then holding a property free and clear as a service unit owned by the consumers themselves and operating for the consumers, not for men who merely wish to make a profit out of the consumer...
...They failed to see the inevitability of organized consumers some day, as they have done, reversing the fixed and stubborn belief that business must belong to those who run it to make a profit...
...IN other fields the same progress has been going forward...
...That is by cutting "costs and underselling the co-ops and still keep a margin of profit for himself...
...The co-op leaders know the difference and know that that difference is absolutely unassailable...
...In 1935 the oil wholesale co-ops were then dreaming rather vaguely of that great day, years to come, when they would perhaps be operating their own refineries to make further savings...
...Such stores have been appearing rapidly in many cities...
...But the thing that has a lot of business men scared is not so much the rapid expansion in this field, but, rather the really brilliant manner in which these operations were carried out by co-op leaders...
...The co-op store has lost its status as a hole-in-the-wall operation...
...In places like Waukegan, 111., the co-op stores dominate the retail food field, serving consumer owners from shops as modern and decorative as any in the chain field...
...They have been buying big holdings of oil lands...
...Long before the 10 years were up, a group of coopera-tors could nonchalantly hand over about $4,000,000 for an oil refinery...
...These men have looked the co-ops over and have decided that something good has come upon the economic scene...
...The co-op insurance business has grown to giant size...
...makin<r the first journalistic survey of the co-ods on a national scale, I found a network of small retail and wholesale co-ops, at their strongest in the Middle West...
...In this instance the problem of reconversion is not really a problem to the co-op leaders...
...They have their own- geologists out prospecting for more oil...
...And the march of co-ops in this field has only got really under way...
...It is for this reason that the men of NTEA still vehemently profess that there is actually no difference between the profit dollar and the dollar of savings made by consumers...
...They have emerged from the war as a definite and constructive challenge -to every private business man on this continent...
...They have money...
...The change that has taken place in 10 years is best typified by the wholly different attitude taken by private business in regard to the co-oi...
...Actually there is only one way for private business to beat the co-ops and that is by doing a better job...
...The strange fact is that many business men outside NTEA have lately swung over to' the co-ops side and have openly asked that the unfair and violent attacks upon co-ops be brought to a stop...
...Their credit is sound...
...The magnificent record set up by the co-op milking machine plant at Waukesha has convinced all co-op leaders that all they need to do is start operating...
...In Wisconsin there is in operation today a co-op plant that is worth anyone's study who wants to know^ whether the co-op leaders are capable of running a production plant efficiently...
...They have ceased to be timid,little men carefully nursing nickels to advance painfully along a tough road...
...The Co-ops Come Of Age By BERTRAM B. FOWLER OUT of the discussion revolving around the postwar problems that face us now, one fact stands out in bold relief—the Consumer Cooperative Movement has definitely emerged from the war as a major economic factor on the national scene, figures of gains piled up in the war years are little short of amazing, considering that thev have been made in the face of shortages and restrictions cramping them at every turn...
...They see further what many of us have been contending for a long time, that a successful and substantial co-op business will definitely raise the purchasing power of an army of consumers and that additional purchasing power is certainly.'to find its way in part into the hands of private business...
...Operational costs were cut drastically at the same time...
...The co-ops have definitely come of age...
...Private business men knov/that this is so, hence the poignancy of their cries at present...
...Today the various co-ops own 12 refineries, and anyone who has watched the way they have operated these plants, knows that the 12 represent merely the beginning of the expansion of these fields...
...At Waukesha the co-ops bought a milking machine plant...
...But the potential strength of the movement had then only begun to exhibit itself...
...Their dream is of a constantly expanding Wisconsin plant, with, probably, other plants in other locations...
...In 10 years the co-ops have moved from comparatively small operations in the wholesale field all the way back to the source of supply...
...The price of the machine was cut while wages were upped...
...Some of the big wholesale coops, the ones which supply the market and handle the output of co-op goods, have high ratings with the private bankers...
...That record of operation was so conclusive that the co-ops have made their plans to move squarely into one of the most lucrative fields open to them...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 41
