A leading figure in the cooperative movement, after leaving HBS, W. C. Matney became director of the Bluefield Institute (today the today the historically black college Bluefield State) Department of Business Administration. He was a founder of the Negro Cooperative Guild, an organization initiated by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1918 to provide economic studies and assist the formation of cooperatives. Matney regularly corresponded with Du Bois and in 1930 wrote the significant article "Exploitation or Co-operation" for The Crisis (the official magazine of the NAACP).
