The Co Operative Secretary

Excerpt from The Co-Operative Secretary: A Manual of Co-Operative Administration The business of a secretary in a co-operative society is not now what it once was. In the early history of the movement the secretary was often the one man in the group who was possessed of enthusiasm for the formation of a society. Out of his desire to see the society a success he evolved a method of working which he, as secretary, in those early days could make successful, simply because it was his own. At that time, too, the operations of the society were so limited, its scope so meagre, and its lookout often so narrow, that no great claim was made upon what we nowadays would regard the technical side of a competent secretary. Early records tell curious tales of the struggles these men had with business methods. Their correspondence was carried on under such difficulties as may be easily seen to be inseparable from the type of men that became secretaries in those early times. But those days have passed away. The societies we now regard as small are huge in comparison with their own beginnings, even though among these there are many whose operations filled their devotees with admiration and wonder. In many instances to-day one society is doing business to an extent that could hardly have been equalled by ten societies in the early times, and doing this business, too, under conditions that the founders of these very societies would never have dreamt of. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.