Co-operative Plan Defended.

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Several statements in Professor Sabine's letter call for correction or comment.

The Harvard Co-operative Society does not buy for cash; it buys on thirty days time. Its outstanding obligations on account of goods bought average $21,000, and they have been $48,000.

For years past the Harvard Co-operative Society has not been a co-operative organization in the accepted sense of that term, the sense which Professor Sabine employs. It is a misuse of the word co-operation to speak of co-operation among 2500 men, when less than two per cent of those men are willing to attend once a year a meeting called for the purpose of effecting co-operation in the matter of choosing the officers and determining the policy of the Society.

For years past the Harvard Co-operative Society has been a trading concern carried on by a close corporation. With the exception of one year, the persons elected to office in the Society have been nominated by their predecessors in office; there have been no nominations from the members at large. The Directors now ask that the Society be made in law, what it has been in fact,--a close corporation.

Professor Sabine's argument in support of the statement that the Directors' plan is "not co-operative in effect" appears to question the disinterested- ness of the Directors, as well as the wisdom of the policy which the Directors persuaded the Society to endorse at the last annual meeting. The Directors hold that they should consider not only the rate of dividend declared upon the purchases made by the members, but also the comfort and convenience of the members, so far as the latter depend upon the efficiency of the body of persons employed in the Society's stores. To secure this contemplated improvement in the personnel, the Society will have to pay better salaries than it has paid in the past. It may be that the immediate effect of the new policy will be a slight temporary reduction in the rate of dividend. The Directors believe that in the long run the rate of dividend will not be impared; and that the convenience and comfort of the members will be served immediately. In the present year the tailoring department--held up as a warning by Professor Sabine--has increased its sales by 40 per cent., whereas the Society as a whole has increased its business by five per cent.

Some of our best employees are underpaid. They have remained in our service upon the representation of the present Board of Directors that they would try to secure the re-organization of the Society on such a basis that they, the Directors, would be able-not only to pay the salaries prevailing in the open market, but also to give better guarantee of security of employment, and freedom from unintelligent interference in matters of administrative detail at the hands of the Board of Directors. Our Society has not escaped entirely the dangers that beset industrial concerns or trading concerns that are carried on by democratic bodies. Those dangers are: unwillingness to pay the salaries that will retain men of distinguished efficiency; unwillingness to trust the expert; and the belief that the man put into office by accident, or through the activity of an insignificant minority, can intervene intelligently, and is in duty bound to intervene in matters of detail.

As for the vote to pay the President $800 a year, and the Secretary $10 for every Directors' meeting attended. Any scheme which seeks to secure to the consumer the middleman's profit should pay its way; it should not be based on charity. To accept in the form of dividends upon one's purchases, the result of the unpaid labor of President, Secretary, or Director, is to accept charity.  H.R. MEYER