The Battle Hymn of Cooperation
Sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" (which itself was an adaptation of "John Brown's Body", a marching song of the American Civil War), The Battle Hymn of Cooperation was widely popular throughout the American consumers' cooperative movement from the 1930s onward. It remained a favorite until well after the Second World War, for example at the annual meetings of the Consumers Cooperative Association of Missouri, where thousands of members joined in singing it. The hymn can be considered as the official song of the Cooperative League of the USA (CLUSA), later renamed the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA).
The hymn was originally written in February 1932 for a charity revue of the Consumers Cooperative Services, which operated a chain of cooperative cafeterias in New York City. The authors were two CCS workers: Elizabeth Mead (of the bakery) and Carl Ferguson (a busboy), who won a $5 prize for composing “the best song on cooperation”. It is likely that the cooperative version of the hymn was influenced by the popular union song "Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915.
Lyrics
Further reading
- “The Battle Hymn of Cooperation”, Cooperation XVIII,5 (May 1932) 91.
- “A Mighty Army”, Time (December 10, 1951).
- Clarke Chambers, “The Cooperative League of the United States of America, 1916-1961: A Study of Social Theory and Social Action”, Agricultural History 36,2 (1962) 59-81, there 72.
- Gilbert C. Fite, Farm to Factory. A History of the Consumers Cooperative Association (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1965) 130-131.