CO-OPERATIVE VENTURES
erect a workshop seventy-five feet by thirty feet, equipped with
a steam saw, and to build workers' apartments which would rent
at $3.00 a month. Twenty-five houses actually were built by
methods which suggest the procedures of modern building and
loan associations. A single day's subscriptions in New York pro
duced $3,000 for a German Innkeepers Joint Stock Brewery. In
the same city, a German tailors' association employed two cutters
and forty tailors in the fall of 1850, and the co-operating bakers
were patronized heavily because of the excellence of their prod
ucts.^5
In Philadelphia, the German craftsmen were equally enthusi
astic, and several shops were opened in a relatively short time.
The tailors and shoemakers began operating their own stores in
May, 1850. Pittsburgh had a coach factory, and a German cabinet
makers' shop which opened with a capital of $1,000. In Buffalo
a carpenters' shop employed ten men; in Cincinnati a co-operative
grocery operated successfully with a substantial profit, and the
German cabinetmakers opened a shop in the same city in 1852.
In St. Louis, representatives of the various trades met at Washing
ton Garden in the summer of 1850 to plan a co-operative dining
hall, and the German carpenters of St. Louis lent money to the
bakers to enable the latter to open a co-operative bakery which
would specialize in German baked goods. In New Orleans in
June, 1851, a carpenters' association, composed of 156 members
with $436 in their treasury, invested $335 in partial payment of a
lot on which they planned to build a shop. "The people them
selves," wrote one of the prominent members of the New Orleans
group, "must do business with themselves, and determine their
own prices... ." Another group, writing to Weitling from
Davenport, Iowa, in April, 1852, requested a shipment of gro
ceries to enable them to open a co-operative store; and in Feb
ruary, 1853, a society in Covington, Kentucky, asked him to help
them operate a co-operative boarding house and beer hall.
(^5) See Rep. d. Arb., November, 1850, for a list of German co-operative stores
and shops in New York City and their street addresses.
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