ABSTRACT
IT is no mean part of the art of progress to know how to treat outsiders-that is supposing you have a good cause, clear principles, and eamest advocates. Therefore let us look with curiosity and intelligence on outsiders. If conversion is reasonably treated, they will be insiders one day. Here I deal with querulous outsiders-the discontented who are not ignorant-the critics who mean mischief, and know it. 'l'hey swarmed about the Rochdale Society for years. Sometimes the shopkeeper is made an angry adversary by being needlessly alarmed. A co-operative speaker will say, "Look at the great profits made at the chief stores-£20,000, £30,000, or £40,000 a year. All this is rescued from the shopkeepers.'' Nothing of the kind. It is by buying wholesale by combination of capital; it is by purchasers buying largely at the stores by combination; it is by economy in distribution; it is by fewer shops, fewer servants, by avoiding advertisements and costly display, that the chief profits are made. The co-operator gains by avoiding the multiplied shops, the high rents, the heavy taxes, the useless servants, the cost of advertisements, glarish lights, and loss on unsold goods and bad debts. The co-operator grows rich by picking up what the shopkeeper drops, before he touches the tradesman's actual profits.
