Co-operation has replaced
competition. We are reorganizing and regulating our industries, our
business, making sacrifices and preparing to make more sacrifices in
order to meet the needs of our Allies, now that they are sore beset.
For a considerable period after the war is ended, they will require our
aid. We shall be better off than any other of the belligerent nations,
and we shall therefore be called upon to practice, during the years of
reconstruction, a continuation of the same policy of helpfulness.
Indeed, for the nations of the world to spring, commercially speaking,
at one another's throats would be suicidal even if it were possible.
Mr. Sidney Webb has thrown a flood of light upon the conditions likely
to prevail. For example, speculative export trade is being replaced by
collective importing, bringing business more directly under the control
of the consumer. This has been done by co-operative societies, by
municipalities and states, in Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom,
and in Germany. The Co-operative Wholesale Society of Great Britain,
acting on behalf of three and a half million families, buys two and a
half million dollars of purchases annually. And the Entente nations, in
order to avoid competitive bidding, are buying collectively from us, not
only munitions of war, but other supplies, while the British Government
has made itself the sole importer of such necessities as wheat, sugar,
tea, refrigerated meat, wool, and various metals.
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