Charles Gide

“ One might almost say that it is too much appreciated, because, of the millions of co-operators existing in the world, the large majority only become such owing to this system of dividends. Wherever we find workmen well enough paid to be able to spend freely, well enough educated in co-operation to look for big results from it, far-seeing enough to prefer the future advantage of an addition to their revenue for themselves, or an additional support to their society, to a daily saving of a few pence, there the Rochdale rule of sale at current price can be unhesitatingly applied. ”

“ As has been stated with much insight, the woman with her basket is as much one of the great types of working humanity as the ploughman with his plough, or the smith with his hammer. But she generally prefers the shop round the corner to the co-operative shop, not only because it is nearer a matter of no small importance to the tired housekeeper or one who has little free time between her work but also because she finds there more attention and sometimes small personal discounts which the co-operative system does not permit. ”

“ Is there any need for thus seeking to equalise the advantages which members derive from the division of the bonus? We think not. The apparent injustice is, on the contrary, a striking application of the law of solidarity which ought to govern the societies. In fact, it is generally on articles of luxury that the profits are highest, whilst they are lowest on articles of prime necessity. Thus the poor members benefit from the purchases of the rich, and this is as it should be. ”

“ As for saying that co-operative organisation abolishes the division of labour and brings us back to the primitive times when each man was constrained to produce for himself everything essential for his needs, it is true in so far as one can say that a consumers' co-operative society is an enlarged family which as was formerly the case, and is the case to-day on certain farms makes its own bread and jam, and which also spins, weaves, washes, &c. Yet it is not the consumer himself who does all that, but specialised workers, preferably members of the societies. ”

“ One may say that co-operative association confines itself to transforming that co-operation which already exists in a latent state in all human society into conscious, organised co-operation. It is one of the favourite themes of economists to point out how the play of individual efforts produces involuntarily a general harmony ; unfortunately, facts prove that this harmony is often but a frightful discord. The co-operative society's role is to make each man play in tune ”

“ Consumers' co-operation, above all when it is supported by strong purchasing federations, sweeps away all this misery. If a society aims at cheapness only it can sell goods well below current commercial prices, and even if, as is generally the case, it sells at the ordinary trade price, the consumers buy goods of better quality more nourishing food and more lasting clothes and also gain an increase in quantity resulting from just weights used for bread, for meat, for everything. ”

“ On the one hand, a feeling of humanity makes it difficult for the society to refuse bread to its necessitous member, and, on the other hand, there is always the hope of fighting the traders by attracting their clients through the same advantages. But it is a bad method of vanquishing an adversary to imitate or borrow his bad qualities ; such tactics may be commercial, they are certainly not co-operative. The worst evil is when a co-operative society uses the sale on credit as a means of enticing away the members of a society which sells only for cash. ”

“ But the workman will bear from his society what he would not bear from any other master.
He willingly allows himself to be drawn into a net-work of schemes of insurance, providence and mutual aid, which surrounds him completely from his birth to his death, and follows him into all the actions of his domestic, working, and political life. He is taught how to vote properly and not to drink alcohol. It is in order to keep in daily touch with him and to be able to control his actions more minutely that all Belgian co-operative societies make the selling of bread the basis of their operations. ”

“ A co-operative organisation for the distribution of wealth which had as its foundation a competitive system of production would form a highly unstable, perhaps uninhabitable edifice. They also sought to find in co-operation an equitable division of wealth, enabling the consumers to keep for themselves all the gains of the enterprise. Their system is the inauguration of a new system of the division of wealth ; it would mean that capital would have no more profits. ”

“ Chapter I - The Object of a Consumers' Co-operative Society IN a broad sense a consumers' co-operative society exists every time that a number of persons feeling the same need join together collectively to satisfy it better than they could do by individual means. [1] It would follow, therefore, from this definition that every consumers' society has for its object production, since to supply any need it is necessary to produce; and, indeed, that is the aim of consumers' co-operation, but, as a matter of fact, it only achieves this at an advanced point in its evolution. ”

“ WHEN it is remembered that the type of association created by the Rochdale Pioneers was specially contrived to meet one particular need one cannot fail to admire the way in which this little seed of co-operative effort has been able to adapt itself to all countries, to modify itself to the special circumstances of its surroundings, and to give birth to a wonderful variety of different forms of activity. It flourishes in all countries alike in frozen Iceland and Labrador, and in the burning Islands of the Pacific. ”

“ If the greater number of co-operators only seek from co-operation the means of living better, there are a small number in every country where the co-operative movement has made headway, who seek something more from it the attainment of greater justice in economic relations. It is not for nothing that the Rochdale weavers called themselves the " Equitable Pioneers." ”

“ That among the consumers' societies there are many which do not set themselves out to increase their members' incomes, but simply aim at selling at a low price, or have one of the various other aims which we shall consider later ; That among the three million co-operators there are many who are only co-operators in name, and, since they never go to the shop, obtain no bonus. It is the nature and honour of free social institutions that they can be useful only to those who wish and know how to use them, and they cannot be asked to give their services to those who do not want them. ”

“ The system of sale to the public is most generally preferred : [56] First, because it is believed that selling to the non-member is the most efficacious means of propaganda on behalf of co-operation ; secondly, because according as it increases the takings of the society so it enables the society to reduce its working expenses, to increase the rapidity of its turnover, and, finally, to enlarge its spheres of operation. If it is the ambition of co-operation to take the place of ordinary traders it will have to enter the lists by carrying war into the enemy's camp. ”

“ Woman is at once the strength and the weakness of the co-operative movement ; she has no more idea of the true aims of co-operation than has that most individualist of living creatures, the domestic cat. ”

“ We must recognise that it is the application of this rule which has ensured the successful development of consumers' societies, since it gives to each member a reward proportionate to his co-operative zeal, to his loyalty to his shop. Besides, it is founded on one of the most certain of economic laws, the law that the success of a business enter- prise depends less on its capital than on its customers. It is therefore just that the profits should belong to those who by their acts ensure the prosperity of the society. ”

“ He buys in small quantities a halfpenny worth of sugar or of coffee from small hucksters, whose goods are sold at third or fourth hand, deteriorated in quality and raised in price, each middleman having taken his profit on the way. When he is forced to buy on credit he submits, either through ignorance or through apathy, to all the frauds which the fierce struggle for life forces on hucksters as poor as himself. He has even to pay an insurance to the shopkeeper, in the form of increased prices, against the insolvency of those of his comrades who do not pay. ”

“ One often hears the somewhat academic question discussed : Is co-operation an end, or only a means? For the great majority of those who rally round the co-operative movement " bourgeois M co-operation, as it is often called, is only a means, a means of living better without spending more or, as we shall see later on, of saving without denying oneself. For those collectivists or anarchists who support co-operation it is also only a means, a means of preparing the advent of the collectivist or anarchist regime by training and arming the people for a class war ”

“ I do not say insurance against accidents, because in most countries the employer is liable for compensation in such cases. The worker who wishes to guard against these risks has to join either a mutual aid society or a trade union, if not both at the same time, and to pay to each subscriptions which form a fairly heavy tax on the income of the worker. Well ! the bonus gained from the consumers' society will provide money enough to meet such misfortunes, for, by a happy compensation, while other forms of association cost money, this one brings it in. ”

“ Unfortunately one cannot say the same for those of France; [86] they have not the same courage. They give as an excuse that if they stopped the sale of alcohol drinking would be in no way reduced, but their members would go to buy dearer and worse drink at public-houses, and this would be worse both for their health and their purses ; possibly they would even be lost to the society. Possibly, but if so, so much the worse for them, for to subordinate its moral and educative action to its commercial instinct is to degrade and kill the co-operative movement. ”

“ The manufacturers know their business ! This law cannot act in the present economic conditions, because a thousand obstacles under the form of legal or actual monopolies obstruct it, but if under an imaginary regime of absolutely free competition all these obstacles were removed, the sale price and the cost price would be identical. So that, paradoxical as such an assertion appears, it may be said that if co-operation were universal the end which is vainly imagined under free competition would be attained. ”

“ To drop metaphor, they believe that each co-operative society which obeys the laws that it has made for itself already constitutes a little world organised in conformity with justice and social benefit, and that it is sufficient to let it develop spontaneously, either by growth or imitation, to realise in the more or less distant future the best of all possible worlds. ”

“ If the working population of a locality is really reduced to living from day to day, and has not the ready money to make its purchases, if it is obliged to wait for its fortnight's wage to be able to pay for its food, it would be better to form near the distributive society a loan society, either philanthropic, or preferably a mutual aid society, which could make advances to the necessitous workman. ”

“ Co-operative education, to have any effect, ought to be made available to women, not only for the general reason that it is they who educate the men, but also for the special reason that women have naturally little sympathy with co-operation, although co-operation cannot live without them. There are hardly ever any bachelors among the members of co-operative societies, as they nearly all live in boarding houses. It is therefore necessary to convert the women ; it is they who run the household, who make the purchases, who carry the market baskets. ”