This thesis is an analytical narrative of the establishment and evolution of cooperative wholesaling in the Maritime Provinces between 1934 and 1965. It traces how co-operators overcame geographical, class, and philosophical divisions to create one, Maritime-wide co-operative wholesale. Based on the Canadian Livestock Co-operative (Maritimes) or CLC(M) in Moncton, by 1938 the new organization sought to supply the burgeoning needs of proliferating local co-ops and livestock shipping clubs. It also examines the subsequent fragmentation of co-operative wholesaling in the region as smaller wholesales evolved in Prince Edward Island and eastern Nova Scotia in a quest for local autonomy and control.The thesis argues that in moving beyond local co-operatives and livestock shipping clubs to the second stage of co-operative development--wholesaling--Maritime co-operators, despite an often shared vision of a co-operative commonwealth as an alternative to exploitative capitalism, responded in different days to the challenges posed by modernity and consolidation within the capitalist economy. Co-operators with Maritime Co-op Services, the successor of the CLC(M), adapted to the social and economic changes through a gradualist, business-oriented approach which stressed fiscal stability and centralized control of the locals by the wholesale, an approach which led to steady, if slow, growth. Co-operators affiliated with the smaller wholesales in eastern Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island emphasized local autonomy and the aggressive pursuit of new and expanded services to member co-operatives. Island Co-op Services on PEI embraced modernity by focussing can the rapid expansion of services and modern merchandising techniques while attempting to finance these, at least in part, through speculation in southern potato markets. Eastern Co-op Services in Antigonish and Cape Breton Co-op Services in Sydney maintained their close association with the Antigonish Movement, and, especially after their merger in 1957, combined an emphasis on expanding services with the Movements Christian, agrarianist antimodernism and its celebration of rural, pastoral life. These smaller wholesales, however, succumbed to financial pressures, and their operations were consolidated into Maritime Co-op Services by 1965.Co-operative wholesaling in the Maritime Provinces during the middle decades of the twentieth century was part of the wider struggle of small producers and consumers in North America and Europe to cope with the changes wrought by the rise of modern industrial society. The different responses to modernity and the consolidation of capitalism by various groups of Maritime co-operators--and the modicum of success in reaching their larger goal--point to the challenges faced by all co-operators who, in their pursuit of an alternative vision of society, had still to compete within the very system they sought to overcome.