The cafeteria now employs sixty-eight workers, most of whom are shareholders and vote as such in membership meetings. The worker receives the same food as the patrons, served at the same counter. Against all restaurant traditions the worker is served before the meal so that she may have the best there is and have it before she is too tired to eat it. The minimum wage is higher than the customary rate for restaurant workers in New York. The forty-eight hour week is the standard, although as yet some of the help work over that time. Overtime is one thing that the management has not yet been able wholly to eliminate. It has been found that the policy determining function of the stockholders and Board of Directors cannot operate independently of the plans of the management. The two in a business organization must be closely inter-related. The stockholders have not tried to supervise the details of the business, as has sometimes been done to the disaster of cooperatives. The general manager instead has gone to the Board of Directors and sits there practically as a full member. As a result the policy function of the Board and the management function are closely linked together as they must be in a business that is to be permanent. The stockholders are not idle, however. Through their committees, they have amended the by-laws. They have recently called a general meeting for the consideration of labor policy, and they publish monthly a little paper known as "The Cooperative Crier." The average attendance at the shareholders' monthly meetings is sixty or sixty-five. To an unusual degree the success of Our Cooperative Cafeteria is bound up with its management, not only because it is technically expert, but because it is thoroughly imbued with the cooperative spirit. Around the first nucleus has grown a staff of intelligent young men and women, usually college bred, who are devoting all their brains and energy to see that this cooperative cafeteria succeeds. They seem to find a peculiar satisfaction in knowing that their efforts will not enrich a few individuals at the expense of patron and employee alike, but will increase the common welfare of the community itself. Like other cooperatives, the cafeteria has found the need for expert and trained workers in place of the hard-pressed volunteer. Much of the work on education and cooperative organization is carried on by trained members of the staff. This interest of the paid employees in things other than mere technical efficiency contributes much to that friendly spirit which makes Our Cooperative Cafeteria unique among the restaurants of New York. * * * * * The Village Cooperative Society, Inc.