pted of calling in
a certain number of girls when there is a special pressure of business
to serve for a short period, these girls being regularly registered, and
thus constituting a sort of reserve corps, from which the permanent
employees are taken as vacancies are made.

The operations of the Association cover all manner of commodities
excepting butcher's meat, it having been found that there are
insuperable difficulties in the way of dealing in butcher's meat over so
wide an area. These difficulties do not exist in the case of what the
French call _charcuterie_. A central pork butchery has been established
just outside the _octroi_ at Anzin, and the business done in that line
now averages about 30,000 kilogrammes a year, the difference per
kilogramme between the buying and the selling prices averaging about
eighteen francs. It is the iron rule of the Association never to sell at
a figure beyond the average ruling retail prices in the shops, it being
quite clear that if it should now and then be necessary, in order to
cover the Association, to sell at prices equivalent with the shop
prices, the members would still have a real advantage in the eventual
distribution of the profits.

It is impossible to examine the statutes, and the rules adopted under
them, without being struck by the precision, clearness, and efficiency
of the methods prescribed to keep the accountability of all the
different agents of the Association within easily definable limits, and
to simplify, in the final adjustment, the necessarily complicated
accounts of so many stores dealing with customers many of whom must,
from the force of circumstances, be allowed a credit of a fortnight as
cash. The proof of all such methods, of course, is the net result. In
the case of the Co-operative Association of Anzin this proof is
conclusive in favour both of the methods and of the men by whom they
have for now more than twenty years been administered.

The operations of the Association for the first semester of its
existence closed on February 22, 1866, with sales amounting to 71,020
fr. 10 c., and with the payment to the members of an 8 per cent.
dividend, amounting in all to 8,228 francs. From that day to this, the
semi-annual dividend has never fallen below eight per cent., excepting
for the half-year ending August 22, 1868, when it was declared at 7-1/2
per cent. By August 1872 it readied 12 per cent. and stood there for
three semesters. It then fell to