much all-around ability that just before his death he was elected a trustee of the great Manchester Ship Canal, which, however, he declined. Salaries in large concerns are quite as liberal in England as in this country. He could, no doubt, have obtained twenty-five thousand a year, had he been willing to resign his more attractive work and dutiful life at the head of the cooperative business. In this country, the chief cooperative stores are the Arlington, at Lawrence, Mass., with thirty-five hundred members, three hundred thousand dollars sales, seven and one-half per cent regular dividends on purchases, besides the interest on capital, and liberal additions to the surplus fund; the Johnson County Cooperative Association at Olathe, Kansas, which is confined to Patrons of Husbandry, but sells to the general public. It is twenty-two years old, has a business of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, has two branches, and from it have sprung the leading bank of the town and a good insurance company. I have been at both of these places and found them unusually vigorous and progressive. There are well-established and important stores at Lyons, Iowa, Trenton, N. J., and Galveston, Texas. There are a great many smaller and younger ones in the East and in the Mississippi Valley. The West is full of cooperative creameries, small flour mills and canneries. Of cooperative colonies, the ones at Ruskin, Tenn., Commonwealth, Ga., and Belfast, Wash., are the more important. They are doing tolerably well. I have visited the former two at different times. I have concluded that there is not much outcome to the colonies when not inspired by anything but economic motives. exceedingly regret that I can give you so very little information, but, as you say, it is harder to get at in this country than in foreign lands. Yours very truly, N. O. NELSON. I In Great Britain cooperation has developed mainly on the lines of merchandising and production. It has had a normal, although surprising development. Beginning with a capital of a few pounds, contributed by workmen, in sums of a few shillings each, for the establishment of a retail store, the movement has grown to the proportions about to be described. The faithfulness of the Rochdale pioneers assured success for their enterprise, and their success led to the establishment of similar stores elsewhere. The opposition of private traders in some cases prevented the cooperative stores from obtaining supplies from wholesale merchants, and this led to the establishment of the great English and Scottish wholesale stores. The capital of these great societies is mainly contributed by the retail stores, to which, only, the wholesale societies sell. As trade has increased, the wholesale societies have engaged in the manufacture of some of the merchandise most in demand. They have branch establishments for buying in all countries in whose produce they deal, and own a fleet of several steamers. Being constantly charged with the custody of the surplus funds of the societies, they were led to open banking departments. They bid fair to, in the end, cover the entire field of manufacturing articles most in demand by the retail trade. The greater part of the capital of the cooperative societies of Great Britain has been derived from the profits of the business. Goods are invariably sold at the retail prices charged by private firms. The profits go, first, to the payment of a small dividend on the share capital, next to the creation of a surplus fund, as security against losses, and the remainder as rebates to purchasers. In some cases the salesmen and other employees, as such, receive a portion of the profits, and in other cases they do not. In most cases regular provision is made from the profits for carrying on educational work, and many of the more prosperous societies own halls, which are used for such purposes. Purchases and sales are made for cash only, thus inculcating a spirit of thrift. The educational work is yearly becoming more prominent, and cooperation among all classes is promoted in the true missionary spirit. The cooperative movement in Great Britain has developed a body of wonderful men, practically all of whom are individually poor, and yet carrying on with great ability, and constantly extending business enterprises involving the wise employment of great sums of money, and the organization and direction of a great force of employees. The English Wholesale Society is the largest strictly mercantile business in the world. There is only space here for a very brief statistical summary, condensed from the report of the Thirtieth Annual Cooperative Congress of Great Britain (1898), which is a volume of 286 large quarto pages. The pounds sterling may be roughly turned into United States money by multiplying by five. III. DISTRIBUTIVE (RETAIL) SOCIETIES. THE POSITION OF COOPERATION IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1898. These figures are made up in the following manner: Societies. ་ Shares. Members. £ £ Wholesale societies. . . 1896 2 1,327 870,524 14,937,638 940,237 16,325,464 Sales. Profits. £ 383,264 1,334 346,040 Retail societies. 1897 2 771,806 2,625,947 156,592 1897 339 42,051 808,465 2,999,687 166,329 17 74,039 536,160 2,700,009 73,067 1897 19 81,251 1896 10 . 1897 16 332 1,255 1,115 112,802 32 221 The following table will show the advance made by distributive cooperation * Under this head are included the numerous Irish Agricultural and Dairy Societies. In Continental Europe the greatest development of cooperation has been in the direction of credit and loan associations-"People's Banks." These had their origin in Germany, but have spread all over continential Europe. There are two forms of these banks, known from the names of their originators, as the Schulze-Delitzsch and the Raiffeisen banks. The latter are the more altrustic in spirit and the most widely extended. The main principle of nearly all these banks is the unlimited liability of every member of an association for all debts of the association. With this security the banks are enabled to borrow money very cheaply, to be loaned to their members, with only sufficient profit to pay expenses upon the most economical scale. There are also, of course, the proceeds of the stock taken up by the members, and the deposits. I do not find, where I write, any late statistics of the business done by these banks, but in the aggregate they amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and form altogether the most imposing display of the power of cooperation in business affairs. Other forms of cooperation are the trade unions and other friendly societies in the matter of life and health insurance, fire insurance societies, building and loan societies, and profit sharing. Taken together, the amount of cooperative business done in the world is astounding to those who first come to the study of it. It has been demonstrated many times over that the aggregate savings of the poor are far in excess of the aggregate capital of the rich, and that there is quite as much capacity for the wise employment of capital, and its profitable direction, among the poor as among the rich. The poor, therefore, having in the aggregate more capital and more business ability than the rich, as well as enormously greater physical strength, have no need to fear the encroachments of concentrated capital. They need only to cooperate to fully protect themselves. Appendix G. I. STATISTICS RELATING TO CURRENCY QUESTIONS. 1. OBJECT AND METHOD OF STUDY.-A popular study of the "Currency Question" is generally understood to have for its object the formation of a judgment in regard to the effect of changes in the character and volume of the currency upon the standard of life. From the standpoint of the farmers who, in the aggregate, always carry an enormous permanent indebtedness, secured by mortgage, nothing more directly affects the standard of living than the ease or difficulty with which they are able to meet the interest and principal of this long-time indebtedness; nor is there any better index of the farmer's material prosperity or want of it, than the extent of his ability to meet these engagements promptly. The farmer whose debts do not trouble him can, and usually does, enjoy the comforts of life, and many of its luxuries. For the farmer, therefore, nothing is more important, in connection with the currency, than its justice as a standard of deferred payments. But it is not the only important thing for the farmer to consider, for like the day laborer, who may own no property, the farmer is also a large buyer of commodities, and profits by the cheapness of such as he has to buy. A very common method of conducting such a "study" is to first form the "judgment," and then diligently hunt for the "statistics" to sustain it. Sometimes people do not even "form" their judgments, but accept them ready made at the hands of some political or social orator or publication. It need not be said that this is a very bad way indeed to "study "a question. No good can come from such a method. A much better way, and indeed the only good way, is to obtain, so far as possible, all the statistical facts bearing on the problem, arrange them in an orderly and logical way and then sit down and try to see what, when they are all taken together, they prove. Such a brief paper as this appendix must be, can contain only a few summaries from the vast quantity of the statistics which have been gathered upon the currency question, nor will it be possible to include as much of explanation as would be desirable for those not familiar with these studies; but an attempt has been made to include what is most important, including all that are commonly used in popular discussion in this country, with such explanatory matter as will enable a person of ordinary education to reach an independent judgment, and feel that he is able to defend it. A wrong judgment which is the result of independent study is of far more value to a man than a correct judgment accepted from somebody else; for one man's error can do no great harm to society, while the acquirement of the art of study will be of infinite value to the man, and probably enable him, in due time, to correct early erroneous judgments, perhaps founded on insufficient, or inaccurate data. The proper order of topics for the study of currency questions seems to me to be, first, the statistics bearing on the volume of currency; secondly, those relating to the ratio, past and present, between gold and silver, and finally, those relating to prices. 2. SOME CAUTIONS ABOUT THE Use of StatiSTICS.—It is, perhaps, desirable to say something about the use of statistics. In the first place they are not always entirely accurate, because in the nature of things they can not be made so. The receipts and expenditures of governments can be stated to the smallest fraction, but valuations of exports and imports, for example, are not nearly so accurate. Valuations made for the purpose of assessment of ad valorem duties are substantially correct, but those assigned to importations to be sold upon commission, and upon which the duty to be collected is "specific," are sometimes hardly rough approximations. A cargo of lemons, for example, may be certified by a consul in Sicily at $1.50 per box, and yet not actually sell for much more than freight money. We know exactly the amount of gold and silver coined in all countries, for a long period back, and the amount of government, and, usually, of bank paper money in circulation, but we do not exactly know the movement of the precious metals, coined or uncoined, from one country to another, the amount used in the arts, or the stocks of them in the world at different periods, or at present. For everything not the subject of actual bookkeeping and balance sheets we are dependent upon estimates. These estimates, however, are not made at random. They are the work of capable men whose profession is the compilation and arrangement of statistics, who are fully aware of, and carefully consider the danger of, error, and give, after careful consideration, their judgment of the facts. In such matters as the amounts of the precious metals in the world, four hundred years since, when the study of statistics was hardly thought of, we can place little reliance upon the tables, and we do not know very well, even to-day, the quantity of gold and silver annually used in the arts. The production of these metals, however, has for many centuries been a matter of government record in all civilized countries, in most of which a royalty upon the product of mines is exacted by the government, and a rigid accounting required. In our own country no such accounting is kept, but the authorities of the mint, with the aid of the express companies and banks, make a very close approximation to our production. From such semi-civilized countries as China statisticians get the best information possible and make up their judgments upon it. Gold and silver passing from one country to another by sea, as freight or express, must be entered upon the manifests of the vessels, and is recorded in custom houses. That which passes to and fro upon the persons of travelers must be estin.ated or disregarded. In the main the monetary statistics of the past fifty years, so far as they are those of civilized countries, may be regarded as reliable, for what they purport to be. |