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Consumer Co-operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the Nordic ‘Middle Way’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2013

MARY HILSON
MARY HILSON*
Affiliation:
Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK; m.hilson@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the wake of the Great Depression, Sweden and the other Nordic countries were widely perceived as a model region, a successful example of the ‘middle way’ between socialism and capitalism. Central to this idea were the Nordic co-operative movements, which became the focus of President Roosevelt's Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise in Europe, conducted in 1936–7. Drawing mainly on the records of the Inquiry, the article explores the construction of the ‘middle way’ idea and examines the role of the Nordic co-operators in shaping international perceptions of the region, while also shedding new light on differences within the international co-operative movement during the same period.

Mouvements coopératifs de consommateurs et crise économique: l'enquête de roosevelt sur les entreprises coopératives en 1936 et l’émergence d'une ‘voie médiane’ nordique

À la suite de la Grande Dépression, l'image de la Suède et des autres pays nordiques était généralement celle d'une région modèle, exemple de réussite du compromis sur la ‘voie médiane’ entre socialisme et capitalisme. Cette perception est largement due aux mouvements coopératifs nordiques, qui firent l'objet de l'enquête sur les entreprises coopératives en Europe menée à l'instigation du président Roosevelt en 1936–1937. Largement fondé sur les archives de cette enquête, l'article explore la genèse de l'idée d'une ‘voie médiane’ et examine comment les coopérateurs nordiques ont contribué à forger l'image de leur région dans le monde. Il apporte en outre un nouvel éclairage sur les disparités au sein du mouvement coopératif international à cette époque.

Verbraucherbeteiligung und wirtschaftskrise: die roosevelt-kommission zur untersuchung genossenschaftlicher unternehmensformen (1936) und die herausbildung des nordischen ‘mittelwegs’

Im Gefolge der Weltwirtschaftskrise wurden Schweden und die übrigen nordischen Länder weithin als Region mit Vorbildfunktion, als erfolgreiches Beispiel für einen ‘Mittelweg’ zwischen Sozialismus und Kapitalismus wahrgenommen. Besondere Bedeutung kam dabei den genossenschaftlichen Bewegungen in den nordischen Ländern zu, die in den Mittelpunkt der von Präsident Roosevelt initiierten, 1936–37 durchgeführten Untersuchung genossenschaftlicher Unternehmensformen in Europa rückten. Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt sich gestützt auf die Unterlagen der Untersuchungskommission mit der Konstruktion des Leitbilds vom ‘Mittelweg’ auseinander und analysiert den Einfluss der nordischen Genossenschaftler bei der Ausprägung internationaler Wahrnehmungen der Region. Zugleich wirft er ein neues Licht auf Unterschiede innerhalb der internationalen Genossenschaftsbewegung in dieser Zeit.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 181 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 The 303rd Press Conference, 23 June 1936, reprinted in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 5 (New York: Random House, 1938), 227. See also Piebe Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way: Consumer Cooperation and the Cooperative Movement in New Deal America’, PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2009, Ch. 4, 1–2; Carl Marklund, ‘Bridging Politics and Science: The Concept of Social Engineering in Sweden and the USA, circa 1890–1950’, unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute, 2008, 281.

2 Childs, Marquis, Sweden – The Middle Way (New York: Penguin Books, 1948; first published 1936)Google Scholar; also Bowen, E. R., ‘Consumers' Cooperative Educational Methods’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 191 (May 1937), 76–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 78. On the impact of Childs's book see Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 3, 52–4.

3 As Lars Trägårdh has pointed out, Childs devoted a good third of Sweden – The Middle Way to the co-operative movement: Trägårdh, Lars, ‘Introduction’, in Trägårdh, Lars, ed., State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007), 1–8Google Scholar, 3.

4 Report of the Inquiry on Cooperative Enterprise in Europe (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1937), 1; Hawley, Ellis W., The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 199Google Scholar; see also Marklund, Carl, ‘The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model: Three frames for the image of Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 34, 3 (2009), 264–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 269–71.

5 To avoid confusion I have generally used the term ‘Nordic’ in preference to ‘Scandinavia’ to refer to the four countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden (the Inquiry did not visit Iceland). In contemporary usage, however, the terms ‘Nordic’ and ‘Scandinavian’ were often interchangeable. The name of the organisation Nordisk Andelsforbund, founded in 1918, usually appears in the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) English-language records as ‘Scandinavian Co-operative Wholesale Society’, for example.

6 Marklund, Carl, ‘The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model: Three Frames for the Image of Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 34, 3 (2009), 264–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Musiał, Kazimierz, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modernisation (Nomos: Baden-Baden, 2002)Google Scholar.

7 Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 3, 1–3.

8 Birchall, Johnston, The International Co-operative Movement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 193–5Google Scholar; Parker, Florence E., ‘Consumers' Coöperation in the United States’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 191 (1937), 91–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 91; Donohue, Kathleen, ‘From Cooperative Commonwealth to Cooperative Democracy: The American Cooperative Ideal 1880–1940’, in Furlough, Ellen and Strikwerda, Carl, eds, Consumers Against Capitalism? Consumer Cooperation in Europe, North America, and Japan, 1840–1990 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 115–34, 120Google Scholar; Chambers, Clarke A., ‘The Cooperative League of the United States of America, 1916–1961: A Study of Social Theory and Social Action’, Agricultural History, 36, 2 (1962), 59–81, 60Google Scholar.

9 Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 1, 37–41; Parker, ‘Consumers’ Coöperation’, 98.

10 Badger, Anthony J., The New Deal: The Depression Years 1933–1940 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 23, 29–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Donohue, ‘From Cooperative Commonwealth’, 116. See also Lawson, Alan, A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

12 Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 4, 55–6, 66, 71, 106–7; Report of the Inquiry on Cooperative Enterprise, 81.

13 Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 4, 3.

14 Cowie, Jefferson and Salvatore, Nick, ‘The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 74 (2008), 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Scroop, Daniel, ‘The Anti-Chain Store Movement and the Politics of Consumption’, American Quarterly, 60, 4 (2008), 925–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Jacob Baker to Charles Stuart, 23 Nov. 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library: President's Committee on an Inquiry on Cooperative Enterprise in Europe Records, 1936–1937 (hereafter Inquiry Records): Box 2, appointments and correspondence.

17 Report of the Inquiry on Cooperative Enterprise, 271.

18 See Purvis, Martin, ‘Retailing and Economic Uncertainty in Interwar Britain: Co-operative (Mis)Fortunes in North-West England’, in Baigent, Elizabeth and Mayhew, Robert J., eds, English Geographies 1600–1950: Historical Essays on English Customs, Cultures and Communities in Honour of Jack Langton (Oxford: St John's College Research Centre, 2009), 127–43Google Scholar, 129.

19 Martin Jes Iversen and Steen Andersen, ‘Co-operative Liberalism: Denmark from 1857 to 2007’, 265–334, 279–80, and Mordhorst, Mads, ‘Arla: From a decentralised co-operative to an MNE’, 335–64, 340, both in Fellman, Susannaet al., eds, Creating Nordic Capitalism: The Business History of a Competitive Periphery (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)Google Scholar; Christiansen, Niels Finn, ‘Denmark's Road to Modernity and Welfare: The Co-operative way’, in Hilson, Mary, Markkola, Pirjo and Östman, Ann-Catrin, eds, Co-operatives and the Social Question: The Co-operative Movement in Northern and Eastern Europe c. 1880–1950 (Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, forthcoming 2012), 25–40Google Scholar, 26.

20 Stenius, Henrik, ‘Nordic Associational Life in a European and an Inter-Nordic Perspective’, in Alapuro, Risto and Stenius, Henrik, eds, Nordic Associations in a European Perspective (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2010), 29–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klausen, Kurt Klaudi and Selle, Per, ‘Frivillig organisering i Norden’, in Klausen, Kurt Klaudi and Selle, Per, eds, Frivillig organisering in Norden (Copenhagen: TANO, 1995), 13–31Google Scholar, 20.

21 See, however, Hilson, Mary, ‘A Consumers' International? The International Cooperative Alliance and Cooperative Internationalism, 1918–1939: A Nordic Perspective’, International Review of Social History, 56 (2011), 203–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hilson, Markkola and Östman, Co-operatives and the Social Question; for a comparative study see Friberg, Katarina, The Workings of Co-operation: A Comparative Study of Consumer Co-operative Organisation in Britain and Sweden 1860 to 1970 (Växjö: Växjö University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

22 Mary Hilson, ‘Transnational Networks in the Development of the Co-operative Movement in the Early Twentieth Century: Finland in the Nordic context’, in Hilson, Markkola and Östman, Co-operatives and the Social Question, 87–101.

23 Report of the Inquiry on Cooperative Enterprise, 7; Finnish statistical yearbook: Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja / Statistisk årsbok för Finland / Annuaire statistique de Finlande, 36 (new series, 1938), 142–3, also available at http://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/69245/stv_1938.pdf?sequence=1, last accessed 10 March 2013.

24 Christiansen, ‘Denmark's Road to Modernity and Welfare’, 29.

25 For their biographies see Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 4, 25–7.

26 Hilson, ‘A Consumers’ International?’, 223; Ruin, Olof, Kooperativa Förbundet 1899–1929: En organisationsstudie (Lund: Rabén and Sjögren, 1960), 215Google Scholar.

27 Howe, Frederic C., Denmark: A Cooperative Commonwealth (New York, 1921), pp. vi–viiGoogle Scholar; see also Grimley, O. B., The New Norway: A People with the Spirit of Co-operation (Oslo, 1939), 101Google Scholar.

28 Watkins, W. P., The International Co-operative Alliance (London: ICA, 1970)Google Scholar; Rhodes, Rita, The International Co-operative Alliance during War and Peace 1910–1950 (Geneva: ICA, 1995)Google Scholar; Hilson, ‘A Consumers’ International?’, 210.

29 Hilson, ‘A Consumers’ International?’, 208.

30 ICA: General Secretary's report to ICA Central Committee, 24–5 September 1936: Helsinki: Työväen arkisto KOL 334.5 (hereafter TA), Box 11.

31 See for example, Peter Stadius, Resan till norr: Spanska Nordenbilder kring sekelskiftet 1900 (Helsingfors, 2005).

32 Katalin Miklóssy, ‘The Nordic Ideal of a Central-European Third Way: The Finnish Model of Hungarian Modernisation in the 1930s’, in Hilson, Markkola and Östman, Co-operatives and the Social Question, 137–52.

33 Marklund, ‘The Social Laboratory’, 267.

34 Marklund, Carl and Stadius, Peter, ‘Acceptance and Conformity: Merging Modernity with Nationalism in the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), 609–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eriksson, Sofia, ‘A Rarity Show of Modernity: Sweden in the 1920s’, Annals of Tourism Research, 37, 1 (2010), 74–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Marklund, ‘The Social Laboratory’, 269–71.

36 te Velde, Henk, ‘Political Transfer: An Introduction’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 12, 2 (2005), 205–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 210.

37 Jonsson, Pernilla and Neunsinger, Silke, ‘Comparison and Transfer – A Fruitful Approach to National History?’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 32, 3 (2007), 258–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 266; te Velde, ‘Political Transfer’, 217.

38 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 179; John H. Vuorinen, review of Sweden – The Middle Way, in Political Science Quarterly, 52, 2 (1937), 283–4.

39 Eriksson, ‘A Rarity Show of Modernity’, Review of International Co-operation (1936), 282–3.

40 Howe, Denmark: A Cooperative Commonwealth, p. iii; Howe, Frederic C., Denmark: The Coöperative Way (New York: Coward-McCann, 1936)Google Scholar; Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 197–8. Among other books on Scandinavia discussing the co-operative movement, see Jackson, J. Hampden, Finland (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938)Google Scholar; Rothery, Agnes, Sweden: The Land and the People (New York: The Viking Press, 1934)Google Scholar; Rothery, Agnes, Finland: The Country and Its People (London: Faber and Faber, 1936)Google Scholar; Grimley, The New Norway.

41 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 21; Andersson, Jenny and Hilson, Mary, ‘Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 34, 3 (2009), 219–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Ottosson, Sten, ‘Sverige som förebild: En diskussion om svenska självbilder med utgångspunkt från tre reseberättelser/reportage från andra hälften av 1930-talet’, Scandia, 68 (2002), 109–20Google Scholar.

43 Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 3, 11–12; ‘USA:n osuustoiminta valtavassa nousussa’, Elanto, 21 Aug. 1936.

44 Report of General Secretary to ICA Executive on visit to Canada, 26–7 July 1928: TA: Box 0.4.

45 ICA: Report on Executive Committee meeting 27 Sept. 1936: TA, Box 11. It is possible, though not confirmed by the available sources, that Tanner's reluctance was at least partly due to the links between the Finnish-American co-operatives and communism; perhaps he feared that his association with these would introduce unwelcome ideological strife into the delicate political situation in his own country. See Kostiainen, Auvo, ‘For or against Americanisation? The Case of the Finnish Immigrant Radicals’, in Hoerder, Dirk, ed., American Labor and Immigration History, 1877–1920s: Recent European Research (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 259–75Google Scholar.

46 ICA: Report of General Secretary on visit to USA, 1936: TA, Box 12.

47 Teeboom, ‘Searching for the Middle Way’, Ch. 4, 43.

48 Inquiry Records: Interview with Väinö Tanner, 20 July 1936.

49 Inquiry Records: interview with Albin Johansson, Anders Hedberg, Axel Gjöres and Vitalis Johansson, 14 July 1936; visit to International Co-operative School, 15 July 1936; visit to co-operative dairy etc. on Sjælland, 28 July 1936.

50 Rothery, Sweden, 110, 114.

51 The importance of co-operative architecture and design remains relatively under-researched: see Whitworth, Lesley, ‘Promoting Product Quality: The Co-op and the Council of Industrial Design’, in Black, Lawrence and Robertson, Nicole, eds, Consumerism and the Co-operative Movement in Modern British History: Taking Stock (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 174–96Google Scholar, 174; see also Purvis, ‘Retailing and Economic Uncertainty’, 142.

52 The programme for delegates attending ICA meetings in London in October 1929, for example, included dinners hosted by the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) and the Co-operative Union, a theatre visit, a motor-coach visit to the CWS chocolate factory, and attendance at a league football match. ICA: Programme for meetings in London, Oct. 1929: TA, Box 0.5.

53 ICA: Report of Executive meeting, 26–7 June 1935: TA, Box 9.1.

54 ‘Kooperativa strävanden bland finnarna i Amerika’, Samarbete, 6 Aug. 1936.

55 Inquiry Records: Box 1, Jacob Baker to Lynn W. Meekins, 31 July 1936.

56 Inquiry Records: Box 6, Preliminary report on Scandinavia, 7; Box 5, guest list for KF dinner 15 July 1936.

57 Inquiry Records: Box 5, interview with Marcus Wallenberg, 13 July 1936.

58 Inquiry Records: Box 5, interviews with Josef Sachs and others, 13 July 1936; with Axel Persson, 14 July 1936; with Crown Prince, 17 July 1936; with the Gunnar Myrdal, 17 July 1936.

59 Ruin, Kooperativa Förbundet, 197; Eriksson, Fredrik, ‘Modernity, Rationality and Citizenship: Swedish Agrarian Organisations as Seen Through the Lens of the Agrarian Press, Circa 1880–1917’, in Wawrzeniuk, Piotr, ed., Societal Change and Ideological Formation among the Rural Population of the Baltic Area, 1880–1939 (Huddinge: Södertörns Högskola, 2008), 141–68Google Scholar, 146.

60 Ruin, Kooperativa Förbundet, 203, 207–8; Eriksson, ‘Modernity’, 166.

61 Ytterborn, G. R., ‘Agricultural Co-operation in Sweden’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 197 (1938), 185–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 198. Ytterborn had connections with the US: the journal's author biography reveals that he had an MA from the University of Wisconsin, and he had studied American agricultural co-operation.

62 Inquiry Records: Box 5, interview with S. Jacobson, 21 July 1936; interview with Poul Kongstad, 30 July 1936.

63 Inquiry Records: Box 5, interview with G. R. Ytterborn and Helge Gräslund, 23 July 1936.

64 Inquiry Records: Box 5, interview with V. M. Aaroe and H. H. Gräslund, 21 July 1936.

65 See Aaltonen, Esko, Finlands konsumenter i samarbete, trans. Malmström, Stig (Helsinki: KK, 1954)Google Scholar.

66 Inquiry Records: Box 4, interviews with Väinö Tanner, 13–15 August 1936.

67 Inquiry Records: Box 4, interviews with Hugo Vasarla and K. W. Gottberg, 14 August 1936.

68 Hilson, Mary, ‘The Nordic Consumer Co-operative Movements in International Perspective, 1890–1939’, in Alapuro, Risto and Stenius, Henrik, eds, Nordic Associations in a European Perspective (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), 215–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 224–5. This was also the case in the labour movement: see Jansson, Jenny and Österberg, Mirja, ‘Att resa i politikens namn: De svenska och finländska landsorganisationernas resor under mellankrigstiden’, Arbejderhistorie/Arbetarhistoria, 1 (2011), 44–9Google Scholar, 46.

69 Report of the Inquiry on Cooperative Enterprise, 186–200.

70 Rothery, Finland, 117–8.

71 ‘Pres. Rooseveltin osuustoiminnallinen tutkimuskomissioni Helsingissä’, Helsingin Sanomat, 18 July 1936.

72 Inquiry Records: Box 6, Preliminary unpublished report on Scandinavia, 10 Aug. 1936, 2, 6.

73 Inquiry Records: Preliminary report on Scandinavia, 2; Box 4, interview with Hugo Vasarla, 20 Aug. 1936; Box 5: interview with Albin Johansson et al., 14 July 1936.

74 Inquiry Records: Box 5, interviews with Josef Sachs et al., 13 July 1936; Axel Persson 14 July 1936; Helmer Sten, 14 July 1936. A whole chapter of the final report was devoted to a discussion of the successes of co-operation in breaking monopolies.

75 Inquiry records: Box 5, interview with M. Cleuet, 14 Aug. 1936.

76 Inquiry records: Box 4, interview with CWS Directors, 20 Aug. 1936.

77 Inquiry records: Box 4, interview with Mr Webster, 17 Aug. 1936.

78 Inquiry records: Box 4, conference with Board of Directors of Scottish CWS, 24 Aug. 1936.

79 For example, Lawrence Black and Nicole Robertson, ‘Taking Stock: An Introduction’, in Black and Robertson, Consumerism and the Co-operative Movement, 1–9; Robertson, Nicole, The Co-operative Movement and Communities in Britain, 1914–1960: Minding Their Own Business (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)Google Scholar.

80 Report of the Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise, 22.

81 Report of the Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise, 35, 54.

82 Inquiry records: Box 5, visit to monthly meeting of St George Co-operative Society, 25 Aug. 1936.

83 Inquiry records: Box 4, meeting at Grocers’ Federation, 19 Aug. 1936.

84 Inquiry records: Box 4, interviews at Smithfield meat market, 8 Sept. 1936.

85 Johnston, Clem D., ‘A Business Man's View of Consumer Coöperatives’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 191 (1937), 186–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 190.

86 Birchall, Johnston, The International Co-operative Movement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, Ch. 3; Brazda, Johann and Schediwy, Robert, eds, Consumer Co-operatives in a Changing World (Geneva: ICA, 1989)Google Scholar, Vol. 1, 22; John K. Walton, ‘The Post-War Decline of the British Retail Co-operative Movement: Nature, Causes, Consequences’, in Black and Robertson, Consumerism and the Co-operative Movement, 13–31.

87 Glover, Nikolas, ‘Imaging Community: Sweden in “Cultural Propaganda” Then and Now’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 34, 3 (2009), 246–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Jansson and Österberg, ‘Att resa i politikens namn’, 49.

89 Vuorinen, review of Sweden – The Middle Way, 284; Howe, Denmark: A Cooperative Commonwealth, Ch. 13.

90 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 178.

91 Includes the Irish Free State.

92 Swedish population data are taken from Statistics Sweden (www.scb.se).

93 This figure is the combined membership of societies affiliated to SOK and OTK. The Finnish consumers’ movement had split in 1916 into two factions: the so-called ‘neutral’ Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta (SOK), representing mostly the smaller co-operative societies in the rural districts, and the ‘progressive’ Suomen Osuustukkukauppa (OTK), representing mostly the larger societies serving the urban working classes. Each wholesale had an associated central Co-operative Union for propaganda purposes. The distinction was very complex socially and politically; neither organisation was formally affiliated to a political party. See Aaltonen, Esko, Finlands konsumenter i samarbete, trans Malmström, Stig (Helsingfors: KK, 1954).Google Scholar