Co-Operation, Vol. 6 January, 1920; The Great Change, the Place of Co-Operation in the Trend of Events, What of the Saving?, the Coming Collapse, an Unnecessary Burden (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Co-Operation, Vol. 6: January, 1920; The Great Change, the Place of Co-Operation in the Trend of Events, What of the Saving?, The Coming Collapse, an Unnecessary Burden
In doing these things we discover that we obtain certain immediate advantages. We are spared the dangers of diseased and adulterated food, short weight, shoddy goods, and all the catalog of humbug which characterizes private business for profit's sake. We may enjoy a certain amount of economic saving if our business is conducted carefully. But these are not the principal advantages. The value of Co-operation lies beyond these.
Co-operation sets people working together with one another - for their mutual good. It gives training in the one ethical principle which must dominate the world if civilization is to proceed. Of all the schools and universities none has a more important teaching function today than the Co-operative Movement.
Co-operators do not aim at the overthrow of any government. We are not concerned with the state. We want to be left alone to harmonize the people and to attend to our own business. We do not want the state to take over anything or to do anything for us. We ask only that it shall grant to Co-operators the same privileges and provide them with the same protections that it grants to private tradesmen, and as it provides for profit-making business. We want to avoid a bloody revolution. We aim to see the great change brought about without disorder. We know that our program will accomplish that because we are doing it.
In this program the function of Cooperation is the training of the people to carry on their own affairs in their own social interest. It is a constructive function.
Labor has learned that it can tie up industry through the trade union and the use of the strike. It can paralyze the machine. It can stop things.
Labor must now take the next step, and learn how to start things. Labor must raise up from its own ranks the men and women who can do the things for Labor in an administrative way which are now done by capitalists for the capitalists. The Co-operative Movement provides the training to do these things. Co-operation has touched every field of beneficent industry. The more of this training the people can get and the sooner they can get it, the better will it be for this sorely disturbed world.
Before me lies a letter from the manager of a co-operative store in a coal mining town where the miners are out on strike. In it are these words, and local banks in certain localities have even refused to honor checks of individual miners, denying them the use of their own money. These banks are profit-making institutions and naturally on the side of profit-making business. Shall the miners hope to solve their problem by asking that the government take over the banks? That is one way; but the Co-operative way is that the workers shall organize their own banks independent of the political government. If these miners had their own banks, as the European workers have, they would not now be confronted by this problem; and if they were now getting training in administering their own banking business, they would be in a position to make banking a part of the Labor Movement as a matter of industrial evolution.
Co-operation is to play its part in the training of the workers for the new society. Each Co-operative organization is an oasis of civilization in the desert of capitalistic chaos. May these islands of verdure multiply and coalesce until the world is covered with plenty and beauty.
What Of The Saving?
"Organize a Co-operative society, and beat the high cost of living " is a common slogan.
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