Sentence Summary

SURF Final Research Summary

I am interested in researching the history of Workers’ Cooperatives, particularly in the United States throughout the 20^th century.

The focus of my summer project was primary source research on the American Self-Help Cooperative movement during the Great Depression. The goal of my research was to achieve a thorough historical understanding of significant American cooperative movements, so that I may illustrate their effect on the lived experience of participating workers in my senior honors thesis. To this end, I analyzed multiple articles from ten different mainstream and alternative newspapers. Additionally, I consulted government and other publications from the time period dealing with the Self-Help movement. Through my research, I learned that large numbers of people unemployed by the Great Depression organized into cooperatives out of practical need to acquire certain goods and services through barter and without the use of money. Furthermore, I learned that these cooperatives were eventually endorsed and funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, given that Self-Help was viewed as a cost-saving relief measure. I was able to conclude that cooperation was a way for unemployed people from all socio-economic backgrounds to improve their immediate situation, motivated primarily by practicality, and less so by ideology.

When I began my project, I intended to study American worker cooperatives in the 1930’s and 1970’s. I chose those two eras because my preliminary research indicated that highest amounts of worker cooperation correlate with times of economic recession.¹ I sought to compare the motives, strategies, and outcomes of both eras’ cooperative movements in order to gain insight into the effectiveness of alternative models of economic organization. I set out with four main research questions. Firstly, I wanted to examine how exactly workers were motivated to organize. I wanted to see if cooperative organization arose out of just general poor economic conditions, or if workers felt particularly exploited and organized in reaction to the actions of their employers. I had read about cooperatives being started purely out of ideological motives and also by workers who simply deemed it the most practical choice and I hoped to see what results both of those situations have led to. Second, I wanted to examine how exactly workplace democratization was achieved. I had read about many cooperatives following models set by other successful cooperatives, and I wanted to see if that was always the case or if there were instances of workers inventing their own ways to spread power in the workplace. Third, I wanted to see how exactly certain cooperatives achieved successes. I wanted to see if cooperatives were actually able to improve income distribution or raise the average workers income. Also, I wanted to look for primary evidence that workers felt the work experience bettered by democratic practices in the workplace. Lastly, I wanted to examine the factors that lead to the demise of certain cooperatives. Specifically, I wanted to look at competition with traditional firms as a possible source of problems for cooperatively owned enterprises.

Aside from historical newspapers, I was also able to acquire several other primary and secondary sources through the university library’s resources. Some primary sources of interest include a series of articles in the federal government publication Monthly Labor Review as well as two annual reports from the California State Relief Administration. Both of these sources provided valuable statistical information on Self-Help Cooperatives for valuable context to interpret the newspaper sources. Another interesting primary source I came across Upton Sinclair EPIC Plan for California, a series of pamphlets Sinclair published in support of his run for Governor of California, in which he celebrates the Self-Help movement and discusses it as a potential sustainable cooperative model in a more economically just society. Secondary Sources were also very helpful in directing my research this summer. I was especially fortunate to have access to the University’s inter-library loan services, through which I acquired two seminal studies on the Self-Help movement written in the 1930’s.

Overall, my research this summer was very productive in helping my answer my research questions in regards to the Self-Help Cooperative Movement. My first question dealt with how worker cooperatives were motivated to organize. I learned that severe unemployment and significant deviation from economic normalcy motivated workers to create new models of work that allowed them to provide for themselves without money. Through the evidence I examined, I was able to conclude that cooperation as a relief method came naturally as the best way for these unemployed people to barter for the goods they needed was to pool their resources and skills together. My second question dealt with how workplace democratization was practiced in cooperatives. The sources I looked at made little mention of previous cooperative models being used as a theoretical foundation, especially given that the size and extent of some of the Self-Help cooperative barter and production operations were unprecedented. However, I suspect that the Self-Help movement had to take some influence from 19^th century cooperative models, and this is an idea that I will be investigating in more detail as I progress with my thesis research over the next year. I also learned that as the Self-Help movement grew and cooperatives began to receive funding from the federal government that the method of governance transitioned from town hall-esque meetings of worker members to a city-manager model with elected managers and a hierarchal chain of decision making. As I continue with my research, I will look at the ways in which these two different styles of governance affected worker experience. My third research questions what kind of successes cooperatives have achieved. The Self-Help Cooperatives I studied were interesting in that their expresses goal and biggest success was bringing relief to the unemployed. The articles I read almost universally celebrated the Self-Help movement for its ability to save the government money in relief funds, given that unemployed people were helping themselves and not dependent on direct aid from government sources. The Self-Help Cooperatives were not so much focused on raising the average worker as they were on making sure the heterogeneous masses of unemployed could have the things they needed to survive. My last research question was concerning what types of factors lead to the demise of worker cooperatives. The Self-Help Cooperative movement slowly died off in the second half of the 1930’s as its members were able to find steady wage work with the Works Progress Administration. Beginning my research, I suspected that competition with traditional firms would be the biggest source of problems for worker cooperatives, but my research showed me that competition can also come from government agencies like the WPA.

This project was made all the more exciting given that I will be able to continue my research on this topic as I continue forward with my senior honors thesis. I was able to come to significant conclusions in regards to my research questions with respect to the Self-Help Cooperative movement. However, as I alluded to above, there are still several details left for me to investigate in order to form more complete answers to my questions. While I originally planned to study cooperative movements from several global examples in order make my thesis a comparative study, I may instead continue to study the Self-Help movement as to make my thesis a comprehensive case study. As I learned throughout my summer research, the Self-Help cooperative movement was rather unique in that it garnered much mainstream attention and eventually even government support. I have seen that these conditions provide valuable insight into the capability of worker cooperatives to provide an effective response to negative ramifications of the business cycle. Therefore, I have concluded that I will be able to craft a rather comprehensive thesis on the effectiveness of worker cooperatives by focusing primarily on the Self-Help movement. I still plan to place the Self-Help movement in the context of a larger international cooperative movement, but my thesis will be more of a case study and less of a comparative work. Overall, one of the most important things I learned from the dynamic trajectory of my research this summer is that when undertaking a project like this, there is much more to learn than you might expect.