clean that
you would be willing to defy anyone to find one speck of dust in the
place. Every article of food is under shining glass. The floor is white
tiled. But the food is what attracts one. The pies swell out as if about
to burst. To look at the bread and rolls makes one hungry and to smell
them hungrier still. This, you are told, is because only the purest
ingredients are used. Many bakers use powdered eggs for baking, commonly
imported from China; this cooperative uses only fresh eggs. They buy a
better grade of flour than their competitors do. The same thing is true
of the meat shop next door. They do not aim to make money on their meat.
Their sole aim is to sell only the best. This policy has been so popular
that the quantity sold the first three months of 1922 was almost treble
that for the same months in 1921. And the meat store, too, has made
substantial net earnings.

The two cooperative apartments which lie adjacent to the business block
house thirty-two families. The apartments contain five rooms and bath
and are thoroughly modern. They are light and airy with high ceilings
and hardwood floors. Needless to say their tenant-owners keep them in
the most immaculate condition. Recently a group of business men, several
of them builders, went through the buildings and many expressed the wish
that they could get similar apartments for three times the money that
these cooperators were paying. For the best apartments the rent has
recently been raised to $31.50 per month. But out of this amount the
tenant-owner is not only paying all upkeep but is paying off the
mortgage at the rate of $1,000 per year. Similar apartments in the
locality rent from $75 to $80 per month. The tenant-owners, of course,
run their apartments on the cooperative plan of one vote per member.

The members of the Finnish Cooperative Societies of Brooklyn are fast
becoming independent of the middlemen, for cooperation touches them on
many sides. They have learned to serve themselves and they get what they
want, honest goods--and clean.

COOPERATIVES THAT FAILED

When one has made mistakes the importance which is attached to them
depends upon the gravity of the consequences. This being the case, the
stones of cooperatives which follow are worth attention, for, as a
result of their mistakes, they are now dead. One of the most pitiful
aspects of cooperative failures is that one group after another will go
on making the identical mistakes