of societies, and frequently as members of the "educational" committees which manage local propagandist work and lectures, and they have done some of the best work on the elective Board of the Co-operative Union, to which the societies throughout the country affiliate for spreading the co-operative idea, for promoting a good common policy, for joint action with other bodies, and for influencing Parliament.
The special work of the Guild is, in many directions, the same as that of the Co-operative Union, which subscribes £300 a year to the Women's Central Fund for England and Wales. The local work of the Guild "branch" generally is helped by its own cooperative society, but depends mainly on the yearly shilling which is all that can be expected of a married working woman, for no other human creature above compulsory school age has less pocket money. Though a society of women only, the Guild has become so closely identified with the forward policy of the co-operative movement, with all that is soundest and most courageous in the application of the co-operative idea to new and old uses, that nobody would now question its right to official recognition. Its work for co-operation comes very close to the sorest places of poverty. It initiated last year, and has been carrying out conjointly with the Co-operative Union, a scheme to enable co-operative societies to avoid giving credit. In theory ready money is the rule, but in practice most societies allow their members a dangerous latitude, and after years of resolution-passing, it has fallen to the women to begin in
