Cooper Union

or Cooper Institute, an industrial or technical school founded in New York City by Peter Cooper in 1854. Cooper gave nearly a million dollars for site, buildings, and endowment. Other members of the family have made various gifts which have been supplemented by Abram Hewitt and others. Andrew Carnegie has given $600,000. Instruction is given in engineering, electricity, chemistry, physics, astronomy, mechanical drawing, architecture, free-hand drawing, clay modeling, painting, music, literature, engraving, and pottery. The institute has a museum, an art gallery, a library of 40,000 volumes, and a well appointed reading room. The enrollment of students is between three and four thousand. Degrees are conferred in engineering by the Cooper Institute.

Cooperative Store, a store owned and managed in the interest of customers. What are known as cooperative stores had their origin in Rochdale, England. Twenty-eight weavers decided to make an experiment to better the wretched condition of working people. They laid aside two pence (four cents) a week each, until they had $140 in hand. They rented a ground floor room at the rate of $1 a week. After fitting it up they had $70 left to buy stock. They started with a little flour, a little butter, some sugar, and a sack of oatmeal. They opened December 21, 1844. They sold only to members of their association. They charged $5 admission, payable at the rate of four cents a week. To each purchaser, with each purchase, a brass tag was issued, entitling the buyer to a share, according to the size of his purchase, in whatever profits might be made. They kept open at first two nights a week; they bought for cash; they sold for cash. No clerk hire was paid. Those who managed the store charged nothing for their services. They bought pure goods; they sold at going prices. The attractive feature of the store was profitsharing. The plan took well with the mothers; for there was a general feeling that shopkeepers lived at the expense of their customers. The store prospered. In the following March tea and tobacco were added to the stock. At the end of the first year there were eighty members. The stock on hand was worth $905, and the weekly sales amounted to $150. The store was kept open thenceforth five nights a week and Saturday afternoons. Butcher's meat was added.

The history of the Rochdale Cooperative store is exceedingly interesting. The business increased until the entire building was occupied. In five years' time there were 600 members. In the thirteenth year $400,000 worth of goods were sold. By this time, of course, a competent force of managers and clerks was employed at moderate salaries. All were stockholders in the enterprise. From the very first the store refused to handle any but the very best goods. It never cut prices. It never solicited custom. Working people in other cities adopted the plan. It was extended to many lines of business. In Great Britain there are now cooperative wholesale stores, printing offices, banks, building associations, insurance companies, farms, and factories. One cooperative printing office in Manchester covers a space as large as an ordinary city block. It is said to be one of the most efficient printing establishments in Great Britain. The stores resemble what are known as department stores in America. The largest establishments issue enormous catalogs. Charles E. Russell, who has written interestingly on the subject, enumerates a number of unexpected announcements to be found in one of these catalogs. Funerals, finished houses, automobiles, Chinese carvings, sharks' teeth, jams, jellies, preserves, chewing gum, violins, brass musical instruments, evening suits, and stuffed birds, are included in the list.

The Cooperative Store of Woolwich may be cited as an example of the extent to which the system has taken root. A central store, with ten branches, sells its members two and one-half million dollars' worth of goods a year. Four and one-half million loaves of bread are baked and supplied annually. The society has over 500 workingmen's houses for rent. All this in a town having a population of 40,000 people.

The cooperative movement spread all over Great Britain and crossed to the continent. Statistics for the opening of the year 1906 state that there are 8,000 cooperative societies and workshops in France and 800,000 members; 20,000 societies in Germany; 7,600 in Austria; 3,500, with 150,000 members, in Switzerland; 1,152 societies in Holland; 3,000 in Italy; 1,800 in Sweden; 731 in Servia; 300 in Spain. One company in Bale, Switzerland, has 20,000 customers, that is to say, members. An industrial society in Belgium has 17,000 members and one in Brussels, 20,000. It is difficult to get complete statistics for Great Britain. There are city associations and rural associations. There are 1,637 city cooperative stores, with 2,200,000 profitsharing patrons. They have a union, with a reserve fund of $12,000,000. Fully one-fifth of the entire population of England and Scotland is enrolled in the membership of the various cooperative associations. They are now so well supplied with manufacturing and wholesale facilities of their own, that they are practically independent of the manufacturing associations and trusts. It is now a matter of indifference to the cooperative stores whether the old handlers of the wholesale trade are willing to supply them. It is quite possible for members to supply their families with the necessities of life in which none but themselves have made any profits. In 1902 $45,000,000 in cash was distributed, that is to say, returned, to cooperative English stockholders.

In the United States cooperation has taken root chiefly in farming communities. A large number of creameries and farmers' elevators are managed on the cooperative plan. There are also a number of cooperative stores, but, compared with those of Great Britain, they are small affairs. In Rockwell, Iowa, for instance, a small farming town, nearly all merchandise, including dry goods, clothing, groceries, lumber, grain, hardware, and stock is handled on the cooperative plan.

See Grangers; Communism; Building And Loan Association; Socialism

Cheap railway transport and better conditions of sale can be obtained if the farmers will combine. What has hitherto been lacking is the desire for combination, though in a few localities that defect is being slowly overcome. What characterizes the agriculture of the Continent is the prevalence of combination. Alike in Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Finland, Poland, Servia, we find a network of cooperative societies all over the country--societies for the cooperative purchase of seeds, manures, implements, and machinery, cooperative creameries for the production of butter and cheese, egg-collecting societies, societies for the sale of fruit or grain, export societies, mutual insurance societies, and so on. This voluntary cooperative movement is generally fostered by the State, and has received much aid from landlords and religious bodies.--Fabian Report.