The Rochdale Principles in American Co-Operative Associations:

TLDR: The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers as discussed by the authors was founded in England in 1844, with twenty-eight members, operated upon principles that since then have been basic to co-operative associations in forty-six of the United States of America and thirtynine countries of the world, serving approximately fifty million co-operators in nearly sixty thousand societies a significant factor in this global Machine Age.

Abstract: ATRONS OF THE AMERICAN free enterprise system who are alert to international projects for world collectivism may perceive certain defenses from such projects in the Rochdale principles which, since World War II, have abided pragmatic tests especially in the Western states. Moreover, during the past century, other Rochdale triumphs have been extended world-wide despite international encumbrances. For the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers as founded in England in 1844, with twenty-eight members, operated upon principles that since then have been basic to co-operative associations in forty-six of the United States of America and thirty-nine countries of the world, serving approximately fifty million co-operators in nearly sixty thousand societies a significant factor in this global Machine Age. In England in the 1950's, the co-operative movement embraced more than ten million members and its annual retail trade exceeded ?500,000,000.1 In the United States during the same years there were approximately six million co-operative association members participating in about $6,000,000,000 worth of annual business through nearly twenty thousand local co-operative associations the memberships in America having increased eight times in fifteen years, the organizations four times, and the business volume eleven times. Accordingly, about 2 per cent of the annual American retailing was through co-operatives. In some communities from 30 to 50 per cent of the retailing was co-operative. This expansion from the original Rochdale model comprised four specific kinds of co-operatives: production, marketing, purchasing, and financing in which labor power, products, purchasing power, and funds respectively were pooled. Likewise, it comprised wholesale as well as retail operations, and various forms of organization: "centralized," with its collective bargaining features; "federated"; and the "co-operative terminal sales agency." These naturally involved a great variety of subject-matter services: housing, health, and insurance, as well as a wide multiplicity of commodity supplies. The essential Rochdale principle of co-operative association economy is that the association shall be operated purely for service and not at all for direct profit as such. Indirectly, the patron may enjoy a quasi-profit in that he may accumulate more savings than he would accumulate in a profit-