[12] Where Consumers' Cooperation has worked under most favorable
conditions as in England, its achievements have been all that its most
ardent champions could have desired. Such is the picture presented by
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in the following glowing terms:
"The organization of industry by Associations of Consumers offers, as
far as it goes, a genuine alternative to capitalist ownership, because
it supersedes the capitalist power, whether individual or joint-stock,
alike in the control of the instruments of production by which the
community lives, and in the absorption of the profits, which otherwise
support a capitalist class. The ownership and control are vested in, and
the profits are distributed among, the whole community of consumers,
irrespective of their industrial wealth. Through the device of dividend
on purchases the Cooperative Movement maintains an open democracy,
through the control of this democracy of consumers it has directly or
indirectly kept down prices, and protected the wage-earning class from
exploitation by the Credit System and from the extortions of monopolist
traders and speculators.
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