LABOUR'S MONEY [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I have not read Mr. Richard Boeckel's book but I wish I could share the optimism of your excellent review of it in your issue of last week. It is not easy to see how the extension of " Labour banks " can be sufficiently rapid to cope with our present discontents. What, moreover, have the Trade Union banks which Mr. Boeckel describes done which has not already been done for years past by co-operative societies in England and other countries ? The United States in Trade Unionism, as in most other democratic move- ments, is about two generations behind Great Britain. There has been a co-operative bank in England for over fifty years, and the achievements here of the co-operative movement (with its turnover of well over one hundred millions sterling per annum—a dozen times that of the largest private enterprise concerns) one had supposed were common knowledge.
British co-operative societies run their own factories, housing schemes, steamships, tens of thousands of shops sup- plying all the needs of life, newspapers, banks, tea plantations and quite recently (1924) there has been formed the First Co-operative Movement Trust giving facilities for small savings and permitting its shareholders to take an interest in all sorts of undertakings which were formerly beyond their range. This Trust has already many hundreds of shareholders,
some of whom are domestic servants and miners with holdings of £5 or less ; incidentally, it has established connexions in the United States and its bankers there are one of those referred to by Mr. Boeckel.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ERIC G. UNDERWOOD (Ex-President Oxford University Co-operative Society, Ltd.). Woldingham Chace, Surrey.
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