ce the state helps
all forms of industry in ways unknown to us, and the French co-operative
producers always declare that what is done for them is a trifle compared
to what is done for other manufacturers. Moreover, they get many large
contracts in open and unaided competition. In these societies the
_auxiliaires_, or workers who are not members, are often numerous; but
no society is now admitted to their federation which does not share
profits with the _auxiliaires_ and facilitate their admission to
membership.

Consumers' co-operation, credit co-operation, agricultural co-operation,
and workshop co-operation, as exemplified in Great Britain, Germany,
Denmark and France, are found in most advanced countries, some in one
and some in another, in forms roughly similar to those above described.
Of co-operation for production it might have been said, a few years ago,
that outside Great Britain it everywhere meant associations of
producers. Except bakeries, there was but little consumers' production;
that, however, seems now to be spreading in foreign countries also. The
most important developments of co-operation not yet described are the
socialist co-operation of Belgium, the co-operative building societies
of the United States, the labour societies of Italy and Russia, the
co-operation of German craftsmen to provide themselves with raw
material, and the letting out of railway construction to temporary
co-operative groups of workmen by the New Zealand and Victorian
governments.

In Belgium co-operation is mostly socialist in the towns and Catholic in
the country. In all the principal industrial centres are very important
co-operative bakeries and distributive societies, owned by co-operative
groups, numbering thousands of workmen of every calling. These _Maisons
du peuple_ are admitted to be well managed, even by those who dislike
their politics. The socialist party look upon them chiefly as a means
of organizing and educating the working classes for political and
economic emancipation, and of providing funds for political warfare.
Like the English stores, and allied societies, they are based on the
consumer, but unlike them they pay no interest on share capital, though
they do on deposits. A much larger part of the profit than in England is
devoted to propaganda and common purposes, though a part is also paid to
the consumers individually in the form of checks exchangeable for bread
or other goods. The workers employed