Chapter two explores how early- to mid-twentieth century New Orleans socialists grappled with two central questions: could an embattled Rochdale consumer cooperative model thrive within a capitalist system, or should it presage a fundamental social, political, and economic transformation? The chapter traces cooperatives overlooked contributions to Progressive female economic institution-building and white women’s enfranchisement during the 1910s and 1920s. White Uptown New Orleanian women studied contemporary American and British socialists who equitably wove women, laborers, and agricultural producers into a national economic plan encompassing cooperative housing, production, health insurance, medical care, and education. Specifically, educated, affluent, and ethnically heterogenous cooperative activists replicated CLUSA’s chain store cooperative networks, which they folded into a broad-based consumer rights platform modernizing and expanding the city’s grocery retail industry and public market system.