Leonard C. Kercher was professor of sociology at Western State Teachers College, Michigan. He spent over four months in 1937 making an intensive field study of twenty local retail stores in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to obtain first-handinformation from managers, members, customers, and townspeople. He made a similar investigation of the parent wholesale of this group of locals – the Central Cooperative Wholesale of Superior, Wisconsin. In 1940 he revisited and restudied every angle of each case. Vant W. Kebker, former instructor in marketing at the University of Kansas, discusses the significance of the cooperative movement in its relation to American economic problems. He has weighed the characteristic features of cooperatives with a view to improving their effectiveness as a control in the economy in which they operate. Wilfred C. Leland, Jr. was instructor in economics at the University of Minnesota. His analysis of the two great Midwest wholesales, the Midland Cooperative and the Farmers’ Union, is based upon a thorough personal investigation of their organizational and financial structure. Roland S. Vaile, the editor of this volume, was professor of economics and marketing at the University of Minnesota, editor of the Journal of Marketing, and author or co-author of a series on retail distribution and other books on our national economy.