ABSTRACT
The greatest social need of the present time is disciplined life, good home management and wise expenditure, and in securing all these co-operative societies has helped not a little. In general, it has stood for 'fairness' in industrial life, and although those buying on behalf of co-operative societies have often, like the members themselves, evaded or ignored their obligations in this matter, the extent to which the dangers and evils of excessive cheapness and excessive competitive pressure has been recognized is very greatly to its credit. It might appear that the co-operative attitude towards articles that are economically suspect would be normal in a movement controlled by a class of consumer that in its own industrial experience must be alive to the exceptional dangers of disorganization and excessive competition. Disorganized buying by the comparatively well-to-do workingman's wife, with cheap bargains as the sole consideration in her mind, is the most fruitful sources of disorganized selling and disorganized making.
