ROUND-TABLE CLUB

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 302, 17 September 1936, Page 6

ROUND-TABLE CLUB

Address on Co-operative System An Interesting address on the co-op-erative movement in Industry was given to the Business and Professional Women’s Round Table Olub luncheon yesterday by Miss Huntingdon, secretary to the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Miss Huntingdon said that she felt she could best approach her subject through the Christian commandment, “Lov e thy neighbour as thyself.” So long, siie said,'as profit-making for the Individual was the chief object in business this Christian Injunction woulfl be Impossible to carry out. The beginning of the co-operative system of business had begun in the early twentieth century, the time of Robert Owen, when 28 miners and their wives, victims of a strike and lockout decided to change conditions for themselves and others. By hard sav* Ing for a year they managed to amass £2B capital which they invested in staple food and products such as sugar, tea, flour and candles.

The tiny venture was a success, any small surplus of money being distributed among the 28 shareholders and from this effort had spread a movement which has reached many countries, notably Sweden, where the principle has developed to a remarkable extent and made for much stable prosperity. In America, the speaker said, the cooperative movement was sweeping the middle west and being strongly backed by President Roosevelt. In England there were over 7,200,000 shareholders controlling 15 per cent, of the' turnover of Great Britain. In New Zealand the movement was spreading rapidly and groups were continually applying for organisation to the central control. Miss Huntingdon explained that goods were purchased by their controlling organisation and sold at current market prices in their own group stores,, to the shareholders, any surplus of profit being handed to the shareholders every six months in the form of a dividend, this naturally depending on the size of the turnover of the particular group. The movement was non-secretarian and non-political, and was based on the practical theory that if people could be fed, clothed and housed in comfort then life would be free to develop through aesthetic, mental and religious channels. The movement especially appealed to women, being the home buyers, and in England they had adopted a slogan “the woman with a basket" Wherever, there was the spirit to work and organise for mutual assistance the co-operative movement supplied the method of organisation.