This study was originally prepared for the Consumers' League of New Yorkin 1921 by Mr. Cedric Long. It has been revised by the League in April,1922. The Consumers' League wishes to express its appreciation of thevaluable advice and assistance given by Mr. Louis B. Blachly of theBureau of Cooperative Associations of the State Department of Farms andMarkets both in the original preparation of the material and in itsrevision.
The principles established by the Rochdale Pioneers in England in 1844and observed consistently by successful societies since that time are asfollows:
1. Earnings of capital stock limited to legal or current rate of interest.
2. Surplus earnings to be returned to members in proportion to patronage.
3. One vote for each member regardless of amount of stock owned. Noproxy voting permitted.
In addition, the majority of societies adhere to the following principles:
1. Business to be done for cash.
2. Goods to be sold at current market prices.
3. Education given in the principles and aims of cooperation.
The Extent of Consumers' Cooperation.
The Tenth International Cooperative Congress, held in Switzerland in1921, disclosed the fact that since the last Congress, in 1913, thenumber of cooperators in the twenty-five countries represented hadincreased from approximately eight million to thirty million and thatcooperative trade had increased correspondingly.
Today in Great Britain the cooperative societies number more than fourmillion members, nearly one-third of the entire population beingrepresented in these societies. Switzerland, in 1920, boasted threehundred and sixty-two thousand members and a third of the Swiss peoplebought goods through their own societies. Cooperation is still alive inRussia in spite of its unsettled economic conditions. In 1920 there weretwenty-five thousand societies with twelve million heads of families. Inthe same year the German cooperative societies were two million sevenhundred thousand members strong.
In the United States cooperation has had an erratic development. Withinthe past seven years, however, there has been a rapid increase in newsocieties until today it is estimated that there are about threethousand with a membership of half a million. In number of societies NewYork is far behind most of i