CO-OPERATION AND CORRUPTION.
[To TEE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR." j SIR,—An article in the Spectator of April 25th largely touch. ing on the Co-operative movement and commercial corruption
has just been brought to my notice. As president of one of the most flourishing Metropolitan Co-operative Societies, you will allow me briefly to supply information to the writer of the article which will enable him to restate the following sentence, one which, in my opinion, may mislead some of your readers. He says : " An association managed on the true Co-operative principle—that of returning all profits above the necessary interest on capital to the members in proportion to their purchases—does not, so far as we know, exist in London." At the present moment there are many Societies in the Metro- polis working upon the principle stated by your writer. I need only mention a few of the more important Societies to establish my case. Take first the Woolwich Arsenal Society. This has a membership of over twenty thousand; the sales for the past half-year were £193,165, the profits on which were divided among the members in proportion to their purchases. The same is the case with the Stratford Society, which has a turn- over of about £300,000 per annum. The West London Society, one of the youngest and most flourishing of the Metropolitan Societies, has a membership of about two thousand, with a turnover of about £40,000 per annum. In all these cases the profits are divided upon a mutual basis in proportion to pur- chases. In a well-managed Society the opportunities for corruption are reduced to a minimum. In addition to the Executive Committee there is usually a Store Sub-Committee as .well as a Finance Sub-Committee, and travellers and com- mercial agents are seldom able to deal with individual com- mittee-men in the way suggested by the writer of your article.
President West London Industrial Co-operative Society.
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