group of patrons and unless there be peculiar need of a
cooperative store that it is not a mechanism which will automatically
secure much lower prices or superior service, for the success of the
enterprise depends primarily on the manager and if he be competent, he
must be paid sufficient to command not only his services but his loyalty
and initiative. The cooperative store will find it good business to have
a profit-sharing arrangement with its manager and employees, if it
expects to secure the same service from them that may be secured from
the better merchants. On the other hand, if by pooling their buying
power a group of farmers can throw their business to one merchant in
consideration of his selling at a specified profit, even if only for a
particular line of goods, they get the advantage of their collective
purchasing power and have none of the responsibility for maintaining the
business. Although it is my belief that the cooperative principle is
essentially sound and must ultimately dominate our business life, yet it
will need to find means of giving larger incentive to its managers if it
is to compete with the best individual business men. After all, what is
wanted is to get business on a functional basis, and if this can be
accomplished by means of collective buying through an established
business which furnishes its own capital and management, the farmer is
the gainer. The essential thing is that business be put on the basis of
public service rather than private profit. When that principle is
recognized as being the only sound basis of our economic system, then
the methods of business organization will be determined by what
experience shows to be most advantageous to the community, and it may
well be that true "_cooperative competition_" between individual
merchants and cooperative stores may exist side by side with advantage
to all concerned.

Another factor in rural community life is the increase of industrial
establishments in villages and small towns. There can be no question
that the centralization of industry in our large cities, which has
proceeded so rapidly since the development of steam power, has now
passed its maximum and that there will be a considerable
decentralization of certain industries which can be operated profitably
in small units. The metropolitan city has passed its maximum of
economic efficiency for many phases of manufacturing, if economic
efficiency is judged by its power to produc