"Organization and Cooperation"--

which was ruining their business and came out in a newspaper ad telling the whole r,vorld, "Just because we have g.ranted starvation prices trying to meet cut-throat compe- tition, really doe_s not justify the public in continuing to receive them. Conditions finally forced many tired -and discouraged laundry men to come together and lhake hands and.say 'let's bury the hatchet' just the same as many other 'bodies of men in many other industries. Our entire set-up is based ol _t!e golden rule, and the real old-fashioned golden rule of 'Do unto others as you r,vould have otheri do unto you.' It is not good for any community to have commodities sold in any line of business below the cost of pro- duction: If all the experienced, matured laundry o*ners failed and left the industry and there were only-inexperi- gnced beginners leftin the field, equipped with old, cheap, obsqlete buildings, machinery and equipment, the public #orrld be very poorly and badly s..,reci. A few r.*.b-"r, beliive they can maintain some of the old prices which the majority of laundry owners irr this communily are all agreed cannot be maintained and be fair to laundrv industrvl ' "If these old prices lvere maintained, the'laundries would gradually eat themselves up: Their machinery, equipment, buildings, etc., would become scrap heaps and they could not render efficient service to the public. All we ask is enough money to maintain our plant and buildings, pay small returns for capital invested.and pay labor good-wagei, so we.can render the public the. right service and maintain our progress on the right basis."

I realize thal you probablv r,vould not clare print such an adver.tisement in Arizona because of having- an old-fashigned,.l.aw on your bobks that prohibits anylhing looking like price co-operation between competitors, but"I quoted it toyou because it emphasizes to yorimv points that ihings can be accomplished by educatior-r. I would like to inter- polate right here the suggestion that one of the helpful things that your organization could do is to work with other aggressive trade organizations in Arizona to secure the_ adoption by your law making body of an enlightened and modern act rvhich would permit co-operation fetween competitors to maintain sound conclitions in an industrv and_ to fix prices so long as they rvere fair prices. llowever, even when you are permitted to fix prices there remains -always the problem of getting them observed just as. you have the problem here rvithorrt being able to' fix prices, of getting members to know costs and apply a proper markup in fixing their retail sales price, which ii prbperly and intelligently done will secure just as efficieni results as. maintaining a fixed price. The ability to legally fix a price is a help to these ends but it is by no meanJa cure.all. Here again is wherb your small iocal groups have a chance.to do a better job.than a larger morJloosely joined together organization might have. It is in small''groups that there is the best opportunity to do efiective work ln breaking. down_economic illiteracy and making uninformed competition informed; in rouncling off the s{uare corners of the outsiders who have not yet learned that the onlv road to profit, today, lieq in working together- and teaching one another by example, as rvell as by precept, how to co-operate.

The greatest immediate teaching job, that it seeins to me, ,we all have before us, is to oloerc'ome the bug-a-boo of ex, cess capacitl.At first it \,vas a reasonal:le and ,logical explanation of the cause of many of our,business ifls but it has.become an overlvoiked alibi. It has become too' popu. lar a peg upon which to hang all our troubles. lt is itre pet excuse of everyone who cuts prices'or vioiates established trade practices. We should endeavor to get every-

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