Word: co-ops
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...example: John Smith has a 700-lb. heifer ready for market. If shipped to the stockyards, it would net John about $30. Instead, he takes it into the co-op and has it butchered at a cost of $7. It provides him with about 330 lb. of prime beef which the butcher cuts into convenient-sized steaks, chops and roasts. These are frozen quickly and put for storage in John's locker. The same meat, bought over the counter, would cost him $90; his total cost now is $40, including locker rent. If John Smith is expecting a threshing...
...Co-operatives are even bigger business in Britain, where about half the families are co-op members, and co-operative stores do about one-eighth of the total British retail business. As a whole the British co-operatives employ about 300,000 people, sell more than $1,000,000,000 worth of goods annually. The English Co-Operative Wholesale Society, corresponding to Sweden's K. F., is the biggest distributing organization in the British Empire. It has a $700,000,000 bank, a $100,000,000 insurance company. It owns its own steamships, coal mines, olive groves, and, with...
...which usually costs from $5 to $25 per share, is limited usually to 5% or 6%. The store sells at prevailing prices, strictly for cash. A record of each member's purchases is kept, sometimes in a little book like a bankbook carried by the member. If the co-op is successful, a periodic "dividend" from the "profits" is paid in proportion to patronage. Thus a member might buy $100 worth of goods in a year, get back $10 as a rebate...
Aside from taking profit out of price, the strongest co-op appeal is quality. The quality may be low, though it is usually high, but the buyer knows precisely what he is getting. In most standard lines the product is manufactured to specifications laid down by the cooperators. This is one reason why co-operative buying has be come rooted so firmly among U. S. farm ers, who well know that fancy brand names do not alter the tested formulas for fertilizer or laying mash. One-eighth of all U. S. farm supplies are now sold through coops, the volume...
...Britain, the U. S. has only a few communities cooperatively self-contained, notably Maynard, Mass., where co-ops can furnish nearly all consumer needs. There are two small co-op mail-order houses. Co-operation has been adapted to rural telephones, power plants, personal loans (credit unions), groceries, trucking, insurance, undertaking. But except for farm supplies the most conspicuous success has been with oil & gas. Co-op gas stations have multiplied two-thousand-fold since the first was founded in Cottonwood, Minn...