tely, it is impossible to add here reliable figures regarding
the wealth of the great and growing cooeperative movement. In Britain,
Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as in the
Northern countries of Central Europe, the cooeperative movement has made
enormous headway in recent years. The British cooeperators, according to
the report of the Federation of Cooeperative Societies, had in 1912 a
turnover amounting to over six hundred millions of dollars. They have
over twenty-four hundred stores scattered throughout the cities of Great
Britain. The Cooeperative Productive Society and the Cooeperative
Wholesale Society produced goods in their own shops to a value of over
sixty-five millions of dollars; while the goods produced by the
Cooeperative Provision Stores amounted to over forty million dollars.
Seven hundred and sixty societies have Children's Penny Banks, with a
total balance in hand of about eight million dollars. The members of
these various cooeperative societies number approximately three
million.[AH] Throughout all Europe, through cooeperative effort, there
have been erected hundreds of splendid "Houses of the People," "Labor
Temples," and similar places of meeting and recreation. The entire
labor, socialist, and cooeperative press, numbering many thousands of
monthly and weekly journals, and hundreds of daily papers, is also
usually owned cooeperatively. Unfortunately, the statistics dealing with
this phase of the labor movement have never been gathered with any idea
of completeness, and there is little use in trying even to estimate the
immense wealth that is now owned by these organizations of workingmen.

America lags somewhat behind the other countries, but nowhere else have
such difficulties faced the labor movement. With a working class made up
of many races, nationalities, and creeds, trade-union organization is
excessively difficult. Moreover, where the railroads secretly rebate
certain industries and help to destroy the competitors of those
industries, and where the trusts exercise enormous power, a cooeperative
movement is well-nigh impossible. Furthermore, where vast numbers of the
working class are still disfranchised, and where elections are
notoriously corrupt and more or less under the control of a hireling
class of professional political manipulators, an independent political
movement faces almost insurmountable obstacles. Nor is this all. No
other country allows its ruling