CO-OPERATIVE TRADE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 202, 27 August 1936, Page 11

CO-OPERATIVE TRADE

GOVERNMENT KEENLY INTERESTED ' [ Per Press Association. ] WELLINGTON, Aug. 29. I In a message read on his behalf by Mr. B. Roberts, M.P., at the opening of the National Co-operative Conference, the Hon. D. Sullivan said he felt one of the greatest bulwarks that could be created against exploitation and maldistribution of income was the development of trade along cooperative lines. He gave an assurance that the Government was taking a keen interest in the activities of the alliance, realising as it did that the co-operative movement lay at the heart of Socialism. Socialism had manifested itself in various developments that had not always been coordinated, and it seemed to him that the time was ripe for a general realisation of the need of linking up and developing those forces that enable them to tap and effectively distribute the fruits of the earth lying ready to hand. The Government would foster any movement that would make distribution more effective and at the same time restore to the individual that confidence in himself that had been lost owing to subjection to a system to which he was still largely a slave. Mr. Roberts, in an address afterwards, said the co-operative principle was a higher moral principle than the principle of individualism. Those supporting the co-operative movement in New Zealand were probably harbingers of the next hundred years of New Zealand’s history. Mr. Backhouse, who presided, said that the Hon. Sullivan’s message wa< very encouraging. The organisatitf” 1 wanted encouragement and help ar was expecting it from the me nt.