The Utica Cooperative Society.

At the corner of Court and Schuyler Streets in Utica stands a grocery store which is different from an ordinary store. It is different because it is a cooperative store and it belongs to those who buy as well as to those who serve. There is no need for the purchaser to be on guard lest the bargain be to his disadvantage, for he is dealing with friendly clerks who are there to help him find what he wants, not to sell him something he cannot use. In this store the purchaser can find all the articles carried by a first-class grocer, canned goods, green goods, dairy products and, in addition, a complete supply of baked goods, baked by the cooperative society itself.

The bakery is to be found behind the grocery. Large, high windows throw a flood of light into the mixing room. The oven is of a modern type, large, easily controlled and economical. Five men work at the baking and a boy wraps bread in waxed paper with a mechanical device which automatically folds and seals. The three delivery wagons bear the cooperative motto, "Each for All, and All for Each." They are used in the morning for the delivery of baked goods and in the afternoon for the delivery of groceries. It keeps three boys busy all day covering the territory between the cooperators' homes. The delivery system is essential because the membership is scattered throughout the entire city.

There are fourteen employees in the grocery and bakery. Hitherto they have received wages higher than those generally prevailing throughout the city for the same kind of work, but recently on their own initiative they voted themselves a ten per cent decrease. In a cooperative all members may know the financial status of the business and the employees found that, due to the diminishing margin of profit, the business could not support such a high scale of wages. Their wage cut followed because as members of the cooperative they were interested not only in their own wages but in the good of the society as a whole.

The Utica Cooperative Society was organized in 1915 by a group of Germans. Half a dozen nationalities are now represented, although Americans predominate. Although they had only ninety-two members and $1,250 to start, they bought out a private store and began cooperative business. Their bakery was originally in the cellar under the store. The former owner was employed as manager. For three or four years they experienced many difficulties. Within two years two managers proved inefficient and had to be replaced. Only the tenacious loyalty of a few kept the society alive. But they had the foresight and determination to fight through those lean years.

Now for five years they have had the same manager. He insists upon scrupulous bookkeeping methods, careful buying, close supervision of his work by the board of fifteen directors, strict regard for the needs and desires of the membership, and exceptional precautions against waste and leakage. The president, a man having a private business of his, own, has an idealism almost religious in quality. These two men cooperate closely on matters of policy and provide much of the leadership which has brought success.

The membership is now 380. The capital stock has increased from $1,250 to $27,594. The business in 1921 amounted to $105,598, forty per cent of which was done by the bakery. Since 1915 the rebates to members on patronage have totaled $8,207, fluctuating from nothing at all in some years to eight per cent and ten per cent in other years. During this period the lump sum saved to purchasers, including rebates, the earnings on stock shares, and reserve fund, amounted to $12,642. This sum would have gone into the pockets of private storekeepers except for the cooperative store.

The Utica Society has succeeded because it has met the prime requirements for effective cooperation. The greater part of the membership was loyal during critical times when the easy way would have been to withdraw and trade at chain stores. The management worked unceasingly to put the business on an economical basis. Finally they won out because they put Service over Profit and carried out that rule in the most practical and businesslike way they could find.

Our Cooperative Cafeteria.

If you should drop in for lunch at any one of the three branches of our Cooperative Cafeteria in New York City the first thing that would strike you would be the friendly spirit of those back of the serving tables. Before you paid your check you would observe further that the food had a variety and flavor not found in the ordinary restaurant. If you were discerning you would detect that a complex machinery was at work which had nearly escaped you because of its smooth operation.

That genial spirit which infects the whole place and those subtle things which appeal to your eye and palate explain the success of the cafeteria. But there are some underlying causes for these things that we must get hold of and to do that we must go back to the year 1919. In October of that year a private cafeteria was started by two women with a record of successful cafeteria experience behind them. The experiment proved successful and the following April a momentous step was taken. It was proposed that the persons who ate there become the owners. A cooperative society was formed and in two weeks shares were sold to the value of two thousand dollars. The new owners took over the cafeteria and the former owners became their hired employees. This was the beginning of Our Cooperative Cafeteria.

The cafeteria had from the outset advantages which are gained by many cooperatives only after bitter and costly experience. They had skillful and experienced management to which they immediately gave over all technical control, holding them responsible through an active Board of Directors and an accounting system devised by experts. The management justified the confidence of the shareholders. On April 1, 1921, after one year of operation they had outgrown the first plant and a new branch had been running for two months. There were in all 379 members. The year's business had been $96,000, of which $6,000 were net earnings. The stockholders had received six per cent on their investment, a reserve fund had been laid aside, and every month the member-patrons had received rebates on the food eaten of from six per cent to sixteen per cent. At the end of the second year the third branch, larger than either of the others, located in the Wall Street business section, had been in operation for three months. The membership of the society had increased to 750. The business for the year had been $190,000 and the net earnings were $12,000.

The cafeteria now employs sixty-eight workers, most of whom are shareholders and vote as such in membership meetings. The worker receives the same food as the patrons, served at the same counter. Against all restaurant traditions the worker is served before the meal so that she may have the best there is and have it before she is too tired to eat it. The minimum wage is higher than the customary rate for restaurant workers in New York. The forty-eight hour week is the standard, although as yet some of the help work over that time. Overtime is one thing that the management has not yet been able wholly to eliminate.

It has been found that the policy determining function of the stockholders and Board of Directors cannot operate independently of the plans of the management. The two in a business organization must be closely inter-related. The stockholders have not tried to supervise the details of the business, as has sometimes been done to the disaster of cooperatives. The general manager instead has gone to the Board of Directors and sits there practically as a full member. As a result the policy function of the Board and the management function are closely linked together as they must be in a business that is to be permanent.

The stockholders are not idle, however. Through their committees, they have amended the by-laws. They have recently called a general meeting for the consideration of labor policy, and they publish monthly a little paper known as "The Cooperative Crier." The average attendance at the shareholders' monthly meetings is sixty or sixty-five.

To an unusual degree the success of Our Cooperative Cafeteria is bound up with its management, not only because it is technically expert, but because it is thoroughly imbued with the cooperative spirit. Around the first nucleus has grown a staff of intelligent young men and women, usually college bred, who are devoting all their brains and energy to see that this cooperative cafeteria succeeds. They seem to find a peculiar satisfaction in knowing that their efforts will not enrich a few individuals at the expense of patron and employee alike, but will increase the common welfare of the community itself.

Like other cooperatives, the cafeteria has found the need for expert and trained workers in place of the hard-pressed volunteer. Much of the work on education and cooperative organization is carried on by trained members of the staff. This interest of the paid employees in things other than mere technical efficiency contributes much to that friendly spirit which makes Our Cooperative Cafeteria unique among the restaurants of New York.

The Village Cooperative Society, Inc.

After nearly two years of discussion and meetings and after long consultation with experts a group composed largely of the housewives in Greenwich Village in the heart of New York City started in January, 1921, a cooperative laundry. The second-hand machinery which they purchased was not a laundry unit, the capacity of the washer being one-fourth that of the ironer; they had insufficient capital, half of it borrowed; they employed an inexperienced manager and a green bookkeeper; and for the first eight months the supervision was almost entirely carried on by volunteers, hard working, but without the foresight and power of control so essential to a new organization. Under these handicaps the cooperative laundry lost money every month.

It existed through those months due largely to two things. First, they were forced almost immediately to employ a new manager who consistently turned out high grade work, and secondly, a small group of volunteers put all their energy into making the thing a success.

Then the causes of the continued failure were one by one eliminated. A business manager who had an intense interest in cooperation was hired to supervise general operations. He took over much of the work of the volunteers and for the first time the laundry developed a well thought out policy. The inexperienced bookkeeper was eliminated and all supervision headed up in the new manager. Better service brought more work, and new machinery made greater output possible without additional labor. The manager found labor cost too high and introduced methods which saved both labor and money. He found the machinery badly arranged. When the plumber told him it would cost twenty-five dollars to rearrange it he spent a dollar and forty cents and did it himself. After a discussion in the Board of Directors which nearly wrecked the organization, a Board policy of leaving all details of management to the manager and chairman of a managing committee was determined upon, while the Board devoted itself to the determination of general policies.

The results of these changes were soon apparent. For the first time the dead line between losses and earnings was crossed and net earnings gradually began to mount. In September, 1921, the amount of business wavered around a hundred dollars a week. In March, 1922, it averaged about $330 per week, and net earnings have run as high as $75 per week.

The laundry is still small and is located in quarters for which it pays a regular commercial rent. It has expanded several times and now has three power washers, an ironer or mangle, a dry room and other equipment. It employs a business manager, who supervises the plant and does everything from keeping the books to collecting the laundry in a pinch, a work manager, a washer, a sorter and marker, four ironers and a delivery boy. It still holds hard to the policy of putting out the very best kind of work and economizing in every particular.

Its very success has in a way embarrassed the laundry. The manager has been offered special inducements to leave. The delivery system has been tampered with. There has even been acid thrown on the clothes by outsiders jealous of its business. But this has only stimulated the whole membership to fight harder to realize their aim of getting their own laundry work done the way they want it, and without profit.

The Finnish Cooperative Societies of Brooklyn.

What is it that makes the Finns so successful at Cooperation? Industry and cleanliness. At any rate those are the striking characteristics of the Finns of Brooklyn.

Up to the present time they have never paid any dividends. It has been explained to them, as their manager says, that if the business is to serve them properly it must grow, and in order to grow it needs all the surplus earnings for expansion. And so, because the members are industrious and far-sighted, they have foregone their dividends. The cleanliness of their stores, too, is an inspiration not only to their membership but to hundreds of others who have visited their plant. This is one of the biggest business assets they possess.

These virtues have enabled the Finnish group in Brooklyn to build cooperatively a three-story modern business block, to run therein a wholesale bakery, a retail bakery, a meat shop and grocery store, a cooperative restaurant and a cooperative pool room, to build adjacent to this two modern cooperative apartment houses and to lay the foundations for a third now under construction. Outside of the housing venture the business done last year was $175,000 and today there are nearly two thousand members.

Although these undertakings are practically a part of the same group there are three separate corporations. The largest of these is the Finnish Cooperative Trading Association, Inc. The restaurant is operated as the Workers' Cooperative Restaurant, Inc., and the housing association as the Finnish Homebuilders' Association, Inc.

The restaurant is the oldest. Seven years ago a group of Finns in this locality boarded together. Their capital was a hundred dollars which some one had loaned to them. They ran their little business on a cooperative basis, paying for the meals and putting back any surplus into a reserve. No one contributed anything, but before long they paid back the one hundred dollars. Early in 1922 they incorporated. They then owned a fine modern restaurant, had done $70,000 worth of business in 1921, and had three thousand dollars in the bank. And no one had ever paid a cent into the business. With all this they sell their food at unusually low prices, well cooked, wholesome, and clean.

In 1917 a larger group determined to have a bakery which came up to their standards. In 1919 they had raised enough money to start construction. Then they faced their first test Their money gave out. Undaunted they organized a money raising "army," as they called it, of thirty or forty men. The money was raised. By the time the new bakery was opened they had fourteen hundred members and had raised $140,000. The total organization expenses for three years came to $400, less than three-tenths of one per cent for promotion expenses.

The new business block was opened in May, 1920. All but the restaurant was under one general manager. He was bonded for $10,000. He had had business experience in running a cooperative bank in Wisconsin. To him was delegated a large degree of freedom, but he was held strictly accountable to the Board of Directors. A thorough and comprehensive system of bookkeeping and accounting was installed. Each separate business, the bakeries, the pool room, the meat shop, was put on a cost accounting basis and the manager knew just which one was making or losing money.

All the branches of the business, however, have made money. Over $12,000 in net earnings, after allowing for interest on the investment, have been made since the business started. Last year the bakery did business to the extent of $135,000, the meat market and grocery $58,000, and the pool room $12,000. Already the business has outgrown its quarters. A new oven has been added to the bakery. The third floor, which was used exclusively as a pool room, has been invaded and the thirteen pool tables rearranged and put closer together so that more room may be had for bakery products. Adjacent land has been purchased so that the building itself may be added to. The membership of the Trading Association alone is eighteen hundred and forty.

The employees of the association work among almost ideal conditions. The twelve bakers are all union men and members of the cooperative association as well. They work seven and one-half hours a day and are paid from forty-five to fifty dollars per week. The light, airy bakery is always kept spotless. Adjacent to it is a commodious room with lockers for each man and two shower baths make it easy to keep clean. Down on the first floor the retail bakery is so immaculately clean that you would be willing to defy anyone to find one speck of dust in the place. Every article of food is under shining glass. The floor is white tiled. But the food is what attracts one. The pies swell out as if about to burst. To look at the bread and rolls makes one hungry and to smell them hungrier still. This, you are told, is because only the purest ingredients are used. Many bakers use powdered eggs for baking, commonly imported from China; this cooperative uses only fresh eggs. They buy a better grade of flour than their competitors do. The same thing is true of the meat shop next door. They do not aim to make money on their meat. Their sole aim is to sell only the best. This policy has been so popular that the quantity sold the first three months of 1922 was almost treble that for the same months in 1921. And the meat store, too, has made substantial net earnings.

The two cooperative apartments which lie adjacent to the business block house thirty-two families. The apartments contain five rooms and bath and are thoroughly modern. They are light and airy with high ceilings and hardwood floors. Needless to say their tenant-owners keep them in the most immaculate condition. Recently a group of business men, several of them builders, went through the buildings and many expressed the wish that they could get similar apartments for three times the money that these cooperators were paying. For the best apartments the rent has recently been raised to $31.50 per month. But out of this amount the tenant-owner is not only paying all upkeep but is paying off the mortgage at the rate of $1,000 per year. Similar apartments in the locality rent from $75 to $80 per month. The tenant-owners, of course, run their apartments on the cooperative plan of one vote per member.

The members of the Finnish Cooperative Societies of Brooklyn are fast becoming independent of the middlemen, for cooperation touches them on many sides. They have learned to serve themselves and they get what they want, honest goods—and clean.