from the Cooperative League of America.




THE PRESENT TREND OF COOPERATION

There have been significant developments in the cooperative enterprise
in New York in the last two years. In the first place while a number of
small groceries closed their doors, the larger cooperatives have grown
larger and more prosperous. At last there appear to have developed
cooperatives which have passed that critical stage connected with the
life of a newly-organized business. One of these larger cooperatives,
which did over $200,000 worth of business in 1921, has turned its
surplus into its business ever since it started and is now buying more
land to erect a second business block in order to take care of expansion
which is forced upon it by the growing trade. Another cooperative has
established two prosperous branches and is now doing a business of a
quarter of a million dollars a year. A third, following a profitable
year in which its business amounted to $205,000, is likewise building a
new plant. The balance sheets of each of these associations would be the
envy of most business undertakings.

A second development is the appearance of a new type of management. A
group of younger men and women with a broad background, an intense
interest in cooperation and a capacity of growing up with the business
is working now to make these cooperatives even more successful. The
cooperative movement is likely to grow in pretty close proportion to the
ability of these leaders and the men and women they can attach to
themselves. Heretofore the greatest handicap of the cooperative movement