Tue success of the large ce-operative stores at home, such as the Army and Navy and the Civil Service, has often induced the suggestion that it would be a good idea to establish a similar institution in Shanghai. Since the transformation of the old firm of Hall and Holtz into a public company, there has been here a so-called ce-operative store, but it is practically ce-operative in little more than the name, On referring to the last report of this company, we find that the total net sales for the year ending 28th February last were Tls. 829,000, and as the amount returned to shareholders on contributed business was only lls, 2,068—being five per cent. on their purchases—those purchases can have only amounted to a total value of some Tls. 41,000, or less than one-eighth of the whole business. Ifwe could say for certain why buyers generally do not possess themselves of at least one share in the company, which would cost them at the present quotation Tls. 28, and almost certainly pay them a fair dividend, besides entitling them to a reduction of five per cent. on all their purchases, we should know why a really ce-operative store has never been started here. The root of the matter is probably indifference to what looks like a petty saving on each purchase, though it might amowut to a: substantial sum on a year's business. There is still enough left here of the traditions of the old days of quick money-getting and lavish expenditure to make too many people careless about small economies; and the really careful buy at the China stores, where the reduction in prices is supposed to be quite equal to the discount received by shareholders in the Hall & Holtz Company. On the other hand there are disadvantages connected with purchasing at China stores, a doubt about the quality of the goods and uncertainty of finding the exact thing required, that make the majority of buyers still prefer to deal with foreigners, even if their prices are slightly higher. Even with the moderate prices generally current in the foreign stores, and the large facilities offered by the Cantonese shops, we still feel inclined to wonder sometimes if a ce-operative store would not be a convenience. It is said that we are sometimes paying a dollar for what we could buy for a shilling at home, and as the lowest practical coin among foreigners in Shanghai is a five-cent piece, against a halfpenny or even farthing at home, it would seem that there is room for an institution from which, if we still paid too much at first for a thing, we should get back the excess in a "return to contributors " at the end of the year. This is a system which, according to certain home financial papers, is specially liked in China, and they ate never tired of abusing us for following it in the conduct of our insurance offices, though we do not find them so ready to condemn it.when it is employed, as it is almost universally, in the periodical distributions practised by home life insurance companies.
The real reason, we take it, why a ce-operative store could not succeed in Shanghai is that we have no idle or semi-idle class from whom its managers could be selected. At home there are hundreds of so-called active, and retired, civil servants and others, who have still talents and capacity for business, and are glad of the occupation which the directorship of a ce-operative store gives them. Even these stores, as we Team from Professor Murshall's recent address to the twenty-first Ca-operative Congress at Ipswich, well protected as they are by the preferential dealing of thousands of customers, cannot crush out the individuals with a genius for the conduct of a Jarge retail shop like Boucicaut or Wauamaker or White-ley. he directing committees, he says, do not possess either the originality, or the courage, or the decision which belong to first-rate individuals, and are unable at present to procure those qualities for pay. As Professor Marshall admits—-we quote from the last Economist. rever individual energy or brain is indispensable individuals can beat the societies, which are a good deal hampered and vexed by the sort of parliamentary goverment which is of the essence of ti oustitution. They might perhaps hire the necessary capacity, but they will not pay for it, or leave it alone to dictate, and the conquence is, that though they utilise much humdrum ability of the organising kind, when by any chance they have developed a man with special qualifications, he obeys a motive power stronger and older than theirs, and sets up for himself, to the general benefit of the world, for if he can succeed by himself it must be because he supplies in his isolation something the world wants." Here is the clue to what would be the difficulty in the successful operation of a ce-operative store in Shanghai. Good buying, buying what the customers are sure to want, which will not remain on hand and deteriorate fast as everything does in this climate; keeping the store supplied with goods which will tempt customers and prevent their going off to opponents, demands a special eapcity which it would be hopeless to attempt to find in a group of men whose regular business' would leave them the time to become directors of a ce-operative society. It would be possible to find a paid man who would do this, but in the first place his pay would have to be high, and he would be inevitably be tempted, when he realised his own value, to set up for himself, in spite of agreements which, however stringent, are practically useless when they begin to gall. And if stores owned by individuals-who may be supposed to have a special capacity for the business find it hard work to compete with the Chinese, the amateur directors of ce-operative'store would find it much harder, The facilities, too, that are provided nowadays by the steamer companies, the acceleration of the mails and the extension of the parcels post and money order systems, have greatly diminished the demand, if it ever amounted to that, for a ce-operative store here. The prudent housewife knows what her-wants will be three mouths or four mouths hence, writes to the Anny and Navy or the Civil Service, and has exactly what she wants fresh and new at a very moderate expense. 'I'he imprudent people who put off their purchases to the last moment, are just those to' whom the little saving they would make by buying at a ce-operative store would be no attraction; and to repeat, this is most clearly seen in the small proportion of sales made by the existing ce-operative Society to its shareholders. And then there are those who recognise the convenience it is to have such good foreign stores as Shanghai possesses, and who consider it in return a duty to buy from them what they want as they want it, instead of making the inevitable unnecessary accunulations from home.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.