The contribution of Helen Foster Snow to the promotion and use of group entrepreneurship and worker cooperatives for job creation, income generation and economic renewal;

              [Paper presented at the Helen Foster Snow Symposium, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, October 26-27,
2000]
The contribution of Helen Foster Snow to the promotion and use of group
entrepreneurship and worker cooperatives for job creation,
income generation and economic renewal
Gary B. Hansen
Utah State University
Introduction
While working for the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland, on sabbatic
in 1991-92,1 studied the use and potential of group entrepreneurship and worker cooperatives
to create employment and income for poor people in developed and developing countries.
During the course of my study, I found that the only major 20th century example cited in the
literature available at the ILO library in Geneva was the well-known and highly regarded
Mondragon worker cooperative complex developed by Father Don Jose Arizmendi and a
group of young Basque engineers in northern Spain in 1956.
However, I knew that Mondragon was not the first 20th century attempt to successfully use
group entrepreneurship and worker cooperatives to systematically create enterprises and jobs.
That honor should go to the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, more commonly known as
"INDUSCO" or "Gung Ho," founded in 1938, eighteen years earlier than Mondragon. The
idea for INDUSCO was initiated and promoted by Helen Foster Snow, a young woman from
Salt Lake City, Utah, who lived in China from 1931 to 1939.
The INDUSCO worker cooperative complex was much larger in scale than Mondragon, over
1,800 enterprises throughout war-torn China compared with 130 enterprises located in one
region of Spain, and developed much more quickly, within two years, during extremely
difficult wartime conditions. Furthermore, INDUSCO included most of the principles later
"discovered? and used at Mondragon.
Origins of worker-owned cooperatives and challenges to their use
The concept of using worker-owned industrial cooperatives to create jobs and generate
income originated in the early 19th century writings and work of several British and French
social philosophers and reformers.2 But the actual practice of workers owning their own
enterprise did not occur until after 1844 when the Rochdale Pioneers, a group of 24 jobless
weavers in Northern England, organized a consumer cooperative to provide them with
groceries at a reasonable price. While the principles developed by the Rochdale Pioneers to
guide their consumer cooperative became the basis for organizing future cooperatives of this
type throughout the world, their subsequent use of group entrepreneurship became just a
footnote in history. This is one of the great ironies of cooperative history, and a metaphor for
the future relationship between consumer and worker cooperatives.
1 A fascinating historical question is whether Father Arizmendi, the founder of Mondragon ever heard or read
about the INDUSCO experience, when designing the Mondragon system.
2 Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Philippe Buchez