Communications

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Professor Hart's statement that the audit of the Co-operative Society's accounts was established by a student director, backed up by members of the Society, neither refutes nor weakens the contention that the Society has suffered from "unintelligent interference in matters of detail at the hands of the Board of Directors." The question of an audit, like the question of the publication of a detailed annual statement, is a question of public policy, not a question of administrative detail. The present Board of Directors heartily endorses the statement that the members at large can aid the management of the Society with suggestions and advice on questions of general policy. Indeed, one of the main functions of the Directors will be, as it has been in the past, to keep the management of the Society in touch with the members. As a last resort, members will be able to use the columns of the CRIMSON for the purpose of creating an intelligent public opinion and bringing it to bear upon the shareholders. Confidence in the power of an intelligent public opinion is the fundamental presupposition underlying the proposed plan of incorporation.

The Directors who introduced the audit were elected at a meeting attended by less than thirty members. They had made no general appeal to the Society at large. It so happened that they stood for an admirable reform; but the Society has no assurance that they might not have been elected had they represented a less desirable policy. In other words, given the wide-spread and habitual apathy which characterizes the members of the Society, the power of the members to elect officers and thus determine directly the policy of the Society, tends to defeat government by public opinion, it does not tend to secure it. The mere fact that persons can carry a change of policy by inducing a hand-full of persons to come to the annual meeting makes it unnecessary to acquaint the members at large with the proposal to inaugurate a change. Men who habitually neglect to exercise their right to vote, and yet wish to enjoy the advantages of government by public opinion and in accordance with public opinion, can secure those advantages only by the act of self denial by which they deprive themselves of the power of direct management. For the absence of the power of direct management forces those who would make an innovation to justify their proposal before public opinion.

Men in charge of a business effecting sales of $250,000 a year, from time to time must inaugurate changes of policy as to which there is room for honest and intelligent differences of opinion. Such men are entitled to an intelligent verdict upon their policy. On the other hand, a poorly attended annual meeting affords no guarantee whatever of such a verdict. The men in charge of the Co-operative Society are entitled to an intelligent verdict, not only in their own interest, but above all in the interest of third persons and innocent persons whom they are morally bound to protect. Reversals of policy are liable to mean changes in the persons employed in the Society's stores. So long as the Directors are not secured against being turned out of office by the vote of an insignificant minority who may not represent the permanent judgment of the Society, they cannot guarantee their employees that reasonable permanence of employment that is the right of every capable employee at present; for example, I should feel in duty bound to point out this weakness in the position of the Directors, to any employee of the Society who should ask me whether he should accept a chance to better himself by entering the employment of some one else.

We heartily endorse Professor Hart's statement that none of the proposed shareholders can be familiar with the details of the Society's business; and we add that none of them could afford the time to make themselves familiar with those details. The present Board already has broken with the recent practice under which the Directors undertook to determine within fifty cents a week the salaries to be paid to individual clerks, to say how many clerks were to be employed, and whether those clerks should be boys, women, or men. The Board proposes to deal with questions of policy, and to leave matters of administrative detail to the Superintendent. In return it proposes to hold the Superintendent to stricter account for the character of the service.

At the last annual meeting the Directors distributed a detailed printed statement of the Society's business; they announced at the same time that they proposed to make future statements even more detailed, should that be practicable. They announced also that they proposed to extend the audit so that it should not only afford protection against fraud or carelessness, but should also tell whether the management was growing more or less costly; what was the margin between the price at which the Society bought and the price at which it sold; and how that margin was divided between expenses and dividends. The Directors believe that public opinion will prevent any future body of shareholders from depriving the ticket-holders of those safe-guards of their rights to be found in such statements as were submitted at the last annual meeting.  H. R. MEYER