THE RECONSTRUCTION OF INDUSTRY 261 
Unfortunately, large and important as is this Cooperative 
Movement, it falls far short of the full conditions here laid down. 
The majority of the wage-earners are not members of Cospera- 
tive Stores: those who are members only purchase certain sorts 
of goods at the store: owing to the slighter development of 
productive codperation, a large proportion of the goods sold in 
the stores are bought in the ordinary markets: comparatively 
few of the cooperative consumers are employed in codpera- 
tive businesses. There are large tracts of industry, such as 
agriculture, mining, transport, building,! metal-working and 
machine-making, which the Cooperative Movement has hardly 
touched, nor are there signs of any rapid extension in these 
fields of enterprise. In point of fact, cooperation has almost 
entirely confined itself to trades and industries where com- 
petition is normally free, and where the object of codperation 
has rather been to save and secure as ‘divi’ certain ordinary 
expenses of competitive businesses than to invade the strong- 
holds of highly profitable capitalism where unearned surpluses 
are large. While, then, a considerable proportion of the total 
working-class income is expended upon articles bought in the 
stores > and valuable economies are affected, only a small pro- 
portion of the eleven millions paid in dividends and interest to 
consumers can be taken to represent unproductive surplus 
absorbed into wages. While, therefore, the advance of the 
Cooperative Movement in recent years, alike in membership, 
in volume of trade and in profits, has been rapid, a careful 
examination of the field of cooperative progress does not indicate 
any solution of the main problem of distribution along these 
lines. The areas of really profitable private enterprise are to all 
appearance unassailable by the Codperative Movement. 
§ 8. But we find within the Coéiperative Movement some 
experiences which shed light upon the problem of business ad- 
ministration. If the truly social nature of the ‘business’ is to be 
expressed in its government, the Rochdale plan, upon which the 
! Building Societies are only in a very restricted sense codperative. 
? In 1909 the aggregate sales at the Retail Stores amounted to £70, 423,359, or 
about 10% of the working-class income, and the profit (including interest paid on 
shares) was £10,851,730.