Co-operators and their Critics • That private traders should resent
the appearance of any new competitor is natural enough, but it is difficult to make any genuine- grievance out of the decision of the Co-operative Wholesale Society to open retail shops in various districts where.' there are signS of a demand. The co-operative movement as a whole is a powerful force, which exists and has to be accepted. There is indeed much to be said, for the principle on which it rests, and it has done a good deal to inculcate thrift by an easy and indirect method. There is no more reason on the fade of it against the Wholesale Society opening a shop in a new locality than against a retail society starting operations there, or—from the point of view of the *private trader—against the opening of a branch of a multiple shop concern.: The private trader often has a difficult time and his kit commands :general sympathy, but the tendency today is plainlY in the direction of large units, whether it be private concerns- like Chemicals or C,ourta,ulds, or public 'utility corporations, and among experiments. in these larger enterprises the co-operative movement can quite properly claim a -place.- At the same' time, if some of the opposi- tion to it is based on political prejudice that is a not unfit retribution for its own close association with politics.
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