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FOUNDATIONS:
A Study in the
Ethics and Economics of the
Co-operative Movement.
PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF THE
CO-OPERATIVE CONGRESS
HELD AT GLOUCESTER
IN APRIL, 1879.
Edited by
THOMAS HUGHES, Q.C., \
AND 'β ^ t^
E. V. NEALE, y
and Revised 1915 by j^
A. STODDART and W. CLAYTON. ,
Manchester :
THE CO-OPERATIVE UNION LIMITED,
HoLYOAKE House, Hanover Street.
1916.
Preface to Revised Edition.
THE power for good ot any mov^ement must
necessarily be determined by its basic prin-
ciples, but its progress depends upon the power
of appeal in these principles to attract to its service
men of the highest moral and intellectual type. The
co-operative movement has attracted many such men,
and to them owes its real progress. Amongst those
who have ser\'ed it in the past there stands out, how-
ever, two pre-eminent figures. The original Manual
for Co-operators was the joint production of two men
who incontestably head the list of co-operative immortals.
Many of us have yet to realise the debt we owe to Neale
and Hughes. They were more than teachers; they
were prophets, and in this movement the seer is
indispensable.
In the Preface the figures have been brought up to
date, as has also the Constitution of the Central Board.
Those portions, too, of the Manual deahng with the
practice of co-operation were written for the purpose of
meeting the needs of co-operation as expressed at the
moment. With the passing of time and the developments
which have taken place the needs then expressed have
been outgrown, and therefore in the section deahng with
the " Practice of Co-operation " some chapters have been
omitted and others modified. At the same time the
Publications Committee of the Co-operative Union realised
that there was much in it that was permanent and ought
:o be preserved; that there are parts of it which, how-
ever great the progress of the movement in the coming
6 Preface to Revised Edition.
years may be, will never be outgrown, and which forms
a body of teaching we cannot afford to lose. Nowhere
else in the literature of the movement are its problems
approached from the same standpoint; nowhere has
a deeper note been struck, or a higher appeal been made.
It is fitting, too, that this volume β one only of a series
to be published β should come first, for in it the serious
student will find revealed the rock on which the structure
of the movement should be reared, and a response to
its teaching will supply the most effective antidote to
the gross materialism which in later years has eaten
like a canker into the movement, obscuring its vision
and retarding its progress.
A. STODDART.
W. CLAYTON.
August, 1915.
Thomas Hughes, Q.C.
Edward Vansittart Neale.
Preface to First Edition.
IT has seemed desirable to explain to those who are
responsible for this Manual, by way of preface, whence
it comes, whom it represents, and why it is put forth.
Whence it came. β The present proposal came from
the Southern Section of the Central Co-operative Union,
who, in December, 1878, resolved that it was desirable that
a Manual should be prepared, and that an outline should,
in the first instance, be submitted for their approval.
This was done on February 19th, 1879, when the following
outline was approved, and referred to the United Board : β
Introductory β -Historical Sketch of Co-operation.
Part L β The Moral Basis of Co-operation, and its
Relations to β
(a) Religious Faith.
(b) Other Philanthropic Movements.
(c) Socialism, Communism, and other Politico-Social
Movements.
Part II. β The Economical Basis of Co-operation, and
its Relations to β
(a) Competition.
(b) Current Economic Theories.
(c) The State.
Part III. β The Practice of Co-operation β -
(a) In Distribution.
(&) In Production,
(c) In Social Life.
12 Preface to First Edition.
Adoption by Central Board. β At the annual meeting
of the Central Board, held at Gloucester on April 12th,
1879, the above outline was laid before the members
from all the sections, and adopted by them; and it was
resolved to recommend it to the Congress then about to be
held, in order that, if approved, the necessary authority
should be given for its preparation and publication.
Sanction by Congress. β Accordingly, at the Congress
held at Gloucester in the month of April, 1879, the proposal
was brought before the general meeting of the represen-
tatives of the societies in union, and was unanimously
approved, and the duty of preparing and editing the
Manual in conformity with the approved outlines was, in
the first instance, entrusted to myself, with the General
Secretary, Mr. E. V. Neale. On Mr. Neale's suggestion,
the United Board resolved, on December 5th, 1879 : "That
each Section of the Board be requested to appoint one, to
act as a committee with the Editors to revise the work."
It is under this authority and supervision, therefore, that
this Manual is now published.
It will thus be clear to all readers acquainted with the
constitution of the Co-operative Union that every
precaution has been taken to ascertain and carry out the
wishes of the societies who are members of it. To them
the words Southern Section, United Board, and Congress
will be familiar ; but, as it is hoped that this Manual may
reach many persons not in any way connected with the
Union, and having no knowledge of its history or con-
stitution, it may be well here to give some short details
on these points.
Origin and Constitution of the Co-operative
Union. β The Union, then, is composed of societies
registered under the Industrial Societies Acts, the first of
which (the 15 and 16 Vict., c. 31) was passed on June 30th,
Preface to First Edition. 13
1852. (At that time there were already upwards of forty
societies in existence, some of which were represented by
a Central Board sitting in London β -of which, perhaps, the
present Union and Board may claim to be the legitimate
successors; but, for present purposes, the Act by which
such industrial combinations were first legalised may be
taken as a starting point.)
It is needless to give in any detail the history of the
movement in the first years after the passing of the Act
which legalised industrial societies. They grew and
thrived apace under its protection, but soon began to
understand from their own individual experience that
some union between them was necessary, if the full benefit
of the Act was to be realised. What each society had
done for its individual members, a central organisation
to which all might belong might do for the societies as a
body. The chance of injurious rivalry between them
might thus be avoided, commercial advantages might be
obtained, and the sound principles and high tone which
characterised the early associations might be preserved
and extended to the whole body.
For some years, however, this desire for union took no
definite shape, beyond conferences of delegates from the
Lancashire and Yorkshire societies, which were held from
time to time β generally on Good Friday in each year. At
length the time for a practical effort seemed to have come ;
and at the conference of 1863 β after the 25 and 26 Vict.,
1861-2, had given to the societies a corporate existence,
and allowed one society to hold shares in another in its
registered name β it was resolved to establish a centre of
supply, of which every society in its corporate capacity
might become a member. Accordingly, in the autumn of
that year* the Wholesale Society of Manchester was
founded and commenced business. The necessary capital
* The first half year's accounts are dated April, 1864.
14 Preface to First Edition.
was subscribed by fifty societies, numbering in the whole
17,545 individual members.
The experiment was at once successful. The first
balance sheet showed average w'eekly sales of ^^800. Its
progress up to the close of 1880 may be gathered from the
fact that in the September quarter for that year the
average weekly sales were Β£70,844. In the March of that
year 591 societies, with 333,324 members, held shares in
the Wholesale Society, which had supplied goods during
the quarter to 757 societies and done a business amounting
in 1879 to Β£2,929,456. Branches have been established
in London and Newcastle, and purchasing agencies in
Ireland, France, the United States, and several of the
British Colonies.
But we must return to an earlier period β to 1868, when
the members of societies which formed the Wholesale
numbered in the last quarter 74,494, and its sales for the
year amounted to Β£381,462 only, in place of the large
numbers quoted above. Still, even then, those who had
watched the growth of the movement from the first felt
that the time had arrived to stimulate the desire of union
for other purposes than the utilisation of joint capital for
the purchase of goods in the best market on the most
favourable terms. The initial steps for this object, which
are described in the preface to the Report of the Congress
for 1869, were taken in London, principally through the
exertions of an indefatigable veteran of co-operation, now
unhappily lost to us, the late Mr. William Pare. Com-
munications were opened with the Conference Committee
of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operative Societies,
and, with their approval and support, a Congress was held
in the Theatre of the Society of Arts, on May 31st and the
three following days of 1869, which was attended by sixty-
two delegates from fifty-seven societies or companies,
twenty-three in London or its immediate neighbourhood,
Preface to First Edition. 15
aiid a considerable number of visitors. It led to the
appointment of a committee, which afterwards combined
with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Committee; and out
of this combination arose, in 1873, b\' resolutions of a
Congress held in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the organisation of
the present Co-operative Union.
The Union at the end of 1914 included societies which
subscribed to the funds of the Union for that year for
carrying on its work the sum of Β£15,242.
It is governed by a Congress, held annually, composed
of delegates elected by subscribing societies, and a
Central Board of seventy persons. The area covered by
the operations of the Union in Great Britain and Ireland
is divided into eight sections, as under: β
No. of No of
Societies. Members.
Ireland (excluding Dairj-, Agricultural, Special,
&c.) 79 β’β β’ 22,518
Midland 215 ... 409,650
Northern 141 ... 352,149
North-Western 465 ...1,217,325
Scottish 279 ... 467,270
Southern 201 ... 498,962
South- Western 79 ... 114,672
Western 93 ... 105,594
This Central Board meets twice a year β immediatel}^
before Congress, when it accepts responsibility for the
report to be submitted, and afterwards* to arrange for
carrying out the instructions of Congress.
Selected from this Central Board, and approximately
in proportion to its total representation, is a United
Board which meets at least four times a year and is really
the executive authority of the movement.
Each section is divided into districts, and in each of
which there is an Executive which organises local con-
ferences, carries on propaganda work, and brings before
the Sectional Board matters that affect them as a
i6 Preface to First Edition,
district. The Sectional Boards meet monthly, and the
Conference Associations quarterly. The secretary to
the United Board is also general secretary of the Union,
and is in regular correspondence with the secretaries of
the various sections who in their turn are in close touch
with the various associations. The Union is thus, as it
were, in permanent session, always ready to give advice
and take action wherever and whenever it may be
necessary or desirable. The Union is also in close touch
with the co-operative societies in other countries through
the International Co-operative Alliance, an organisation
supported by societies from other twent}^ countries.
International Congresses are held every three years, so
that the co-operative movement in all lands is closely
related and working together for the establishment of
co-operative principles and practices in every land.
Now from this Union the following Manual comes.
Dealing as it does with principles affecting the deepest
sentiments of human nature, and applying them, as it
endeavours to do, with unflinching logic to the matters
where men's interests are directly concerned, it cannot be
expected either that the foundation for co-operati\'e
action laid in it should be universally accepted b\' all
members of the Union, or that all should agree in the
practical conclusions built on this foundation. But to
lay a solid foundation for co-operative action and raise
upon it, in idea, the structural development of a social
system, whose quiet but all-transforming growth may
recall the beautiful lines applied by Bishop Heber to the
Temple of Jerusalem β
No axe was heard, no pond'rous hammers rung β
Like some tall palm the graceful fabric sprung,
this was the difficult duty imposed upon my colleague
and myself by the Congress which asked us to undertake
the preparation of a Manual for Co-uperators on the lines
Preface to First Edition. 17
stated above. We should have been false to this duty if
we had laid any " other foundation " than the one on
which alone we believe human progress can firmly rest;
or if, on that foundation, we had presented a commercial
instead of a social edifice, as the outcome of co-operative
work.
If the Congress had desired to see co-operation referred
to some utilitarian basis, or the hopes of human progress
identified with the grinding down of labour beneath the
Juggernaut of cheapness, it should have laid down a
different programme, and must have entrusted the pre-
paration of the Manual to other hands than ours.
It does not follow, nor does either of us ask, that the
Congress, in publishing this Manual as edited by us,
should attempt to clothe it with an authority to which
it does not lay claim. The Manual is written throughout
in the style the least assuming possible, namely, in the
singular number, as if there had been one editor only
instead of two ; and it never appeals to any authority but
that of the facts adduced and the reasonings stated. It
makes no attempt to pledge any member of the Union to
any propositions beyond those laid down in the Rules
and Orders as the basis of the Union. That it will help
to spread our convictions of the true foundation and
proper development of co-operation, we, being ourselves
convinced that the foundation is solid and the develop-
ment legitimate, both hope and expect. But we do not
ask the Congress to pass any other resolution about it
than that it shall be published as we have edited it. We
de-sire no acquiescence either in our premises or our con-
clusions, but one resting on the conviction that the
premises are true and the conclusions logical.
What has just been said will, I trust, suffice to remove
the misapprehensions which I find to have been enter-
tained in some quarters that, in putting forth this Manual,
B
i8 Preface to First Edition.
Mr. Neale and I seek to narrow the basis of the Co-
operative Union to a creed of our own. There is another
and more important matter on which it seems advisable
to say a few words, in order to remove, if possible, once
for all, misapprehensions concerning the objects and
principles of the Union itself.
These misapprehensions are at present twofold. On
the one hand, this Union is supposed to be the representa-
tive in England of the movement known by different
names^by the generic title of Socialism. On the other,
it is looked upon as a mere effort of the working class to
take the trade of the country into their own hands and
carry it on for their own benefit on the old lines. Each
of these views has truth in it, but 3-et is not true, as it is
the object of these introductory remarks to show as
shortly as possible.
First, then, what is the moving power which inspires
and gives its ominous significance to the Socialism of the
Continent and this country ? It is undoubtedly the
hopelessness of the surroundings of life for the vast
majority of the people under the present organisation of
society in all European States. That organisation seems
to these majorities to have been expressly framed in the
interests of the few who possess wealth and power,
against the many who have neither. And so far from
there being any prospect of better things while that
organisation is left standing, it would seem as though the
great material changes wrought by the conquest of steam,
electricity, and other natural forces, while enormously
increasing the wealth at the command of mankind, have
only placed that wealth and the power and enjoyment
that go with it more absolutely under the control of the
few. So long as the strong are allowed to grow stronger,
the rich richer, at the cost of the weak and the poor, this
state of things will continue; or rather the conditions of
Preface to First Edition. 19
life will constantly become more and more intolerable.
Therefore, they say, it must be swept away. Society
must be reorganised in the interest and with a view to the
well-being and well-doing of the many. To this end the
State, which has hitherto been their oppressor, must be
made their servant, and, as a first and necessary step,
must become the owner and distributor of the national
wealth, both real and personal.
This, in a few words, is the contention of the people,
waking up as they are all over Europe to a consciousness
at once of their own misery and of their own power. It
is formulated most scientifically, as might be expected,
in the State Communism of Germany, as advocated by
Ferdinand Lassalle, and pushed to more extreme issues
by Karl Marx and his followers. It involves confiscation
of the possessions of the rich by the State, and the
forcible repression of one great class of the community β
probably the strongest, as would be proved in the throes
of the revolution by which alone such a change could be
brought about.
How far, then, is our English Co-operative Union in
sympathy with this vast and threatening continental
movement, which no doubt would gladly claim us as
fellow-workers, and with which many amongst ourselves
who do not look below the surface have been ready to
identify us ?
It must be frankly admitted that the same motive
power has been at work here in England as in Russia and
Germany. It is the hopelessness of their condition under
the present social and commercial system of England
which has led to the banding together of our members
in this Co-operative Union. They see, as clearly as the
followers of Lassalle or of Karl Marx, that under that
system they have no more chance in the future than in
the past or present of raising the condition of themselves
20 Preface to First Edition.
or their children ; that the mainsprings of commerce and
manufactures, of producing, buying, and selling^ β in
fact, that all the most potent material factors of modern
life are here also getting into fewer and fewer governing
hands; that under this system the strong are year by
year becoming stronger, the rich richer, at the cost of
the weak and poor; and they desire as ardently as any
German Socialist or Russian Nihilist that this state of
things should cease.
Again, they hold as firmly as any continental Socialist
the belief that this can only be brought about by associa-
tion amongst the poor and weak, that the wider and
deeper such association can be made, the more firmly it
can take hold, not of this or that isolated portion, but of
their whole lives, the sooner will the desired change be
possible. Therefore they look forward to, and desire to
promote in all ways, the organisation of labour as ardently
as Fourier or Louis Blanc. Their successes hitherto, as
well as their failures, have only confirmed them in this
faith, the former being clearly due to adherence to, the
latter to departures from, the true principles of associa-
tion, as they understand them.
And they have done their best to leave no doubt upon
the question what these principles, as they understand
them, are. They are set forth as the definition of objects
on p. 25 of the Report of the Congress held in London, in
an address to it by myself. The acceptance of them by
the Congress ir recorded on p. 41 ; and they are stated as
the objects of the Union in the first of its Rules and
Orders, to which every member assents by joining it.
They are as follows: β
" This Union is formed to promote the practice of truthfulness,
justice, and economy in production and exchange.
"i. By the abohtion of all false dealing, either [a] direct, by
representing any article produced or sold to be other than what
it is known to the producer or vendor to be, or {b) indirect, by
Preface to First Edition. 21
concealing from the purchaser any fact known to the vendor,
material to be knowTi by the purchaser, to enable him to judge
of the value of the article purchased:
" 2. By conciliating the conflicting interests of the capitalist, the
worker, and the purchaser, through an equitable division amongst
them of the fund commonly known as profit:
"3. By preventing the waste of labour now caused by
unregulated competition."
They have been summarised by the General Secretary
in the paper read by him, with general approval, at the
Congress held at Newcastle in this year as twofold.
1. Moral β to promote truth, just dealing, and equity.
2. Economical β to prevent waste in production and ex-
change. And they are in truth only an application of the
more comprehensive summary of principles laid down by
the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations,
of which the late Rev. F. D. Maurice was president,
namely: β
1. That human society is a brotherhood, not a
collection of warring atoms:
2. That true workers should be fellow-workers, not
rivals :
3. That a principle of justice and not of selfishness
should regulate exchanges.
It would be difficult, probably, to find anyone who
would have more deeply sympathised with the Socialists
of the Continent in the ideal of a higher social state after
which they aspire, or more decidedly rejected the means
by which they seek to attain it, than the late Mr. Maurice.
I claim for English co-operators generally that they share
both these sentiments.
The aim of our English Co-operative Union is, like
that of continental Socialism, to change fundamentally
the present social and commercial system. Its instrument
for this purpose, as well as theirs, is association. Here,
11 Preface to First Edition.
however, the hkeness ends. Our co-operators, thanks to
their Enghsh training, do not ask the State to do any-
thing for them, beyond giving them a. fair field, and
standing aside while they do their own work in it in their
own way. They want no State aid β they would be
jealous of it if proffered. They do not ask that the State
shall assert its right, and reclaim all land and other
national wealth for the benefit of all ; they want no other
man's property, but only that they shall not be hindered
in creatmg new wealth for themselves.
In this lies the broad distinction, and here the ways
branch off. One type of Sociahst would use association
for converting the State into the sole national landowner,
capitalist, and employer of labour. The English Co-
operative Union would use it to control and bring into
obedience to the highest moral law the processes of
production and distribution of material things. The
difference β and it is fundamental and irreconcilable- β
lies in the uses to which the same instrument β
association β is to be put. It would be as fair to identify
those who blow up a house full of people with those who
blow up a rock which impedes traffic because both use
gunpowder, as to identify the English co-operator with
the State Socialist because they all use association.
The fact is that co-operation, as understood and practised
by the Union, is the surest protection for England from
those dangers to society and property which the demo-
cratic wave is threatening to bring on many other nations.
The second misunderstanding above referred to is,
however, wider of the mark than that which would
identify the Co-operative Union with State Socialism, and
under present circumstances more plausible and more
dangerous. It need not be concealed or denied that
perilous times for co-operation are at hand. The com-
mercial success which has resulted from the methods of
Preface to First Edition. 23
trading always in use amongst our united societies has
gained them a host of imitators, who seem to think that
some charm lies in the word " co-operative," and that
the whole of their success was due to combining to
purchase and enforcing ready-money payments for all
goods delivered.
In all other respects these bastard associations, founded
for the most part by gambling traders, follow in the old
ruts. Their first objects are profit and cheapness, and
they compete with each other as recklessly as any rival
tradesmen. The scandalous failures which have already
begun, and which will inevitably multiply, involving, it
is to be feared, much loss and misery to a number of
innocent persons, will soon bring the name of co-operation
into discredit, and meantime may have a malignant
influence on the development of a movement which,
widely as it has spread, and valuable as has been its
influence, is still only in its infancy.
It is, then, the main object of the present publication
to make clear to all whom it may concern that co-
operation, as understood and practised by this Union,
though it takes hold, in the first instance, of buying and
seUing, as that department in human affairs which lies
nearest to hand and most needs a new and reforming
spirit, has aims outside and above trade. Even in this
trading department it comes into direct conflict with
prevailing practice and theory, substituting " fair ex-
change " for " profit " and " fair payment " for
" cheapness." These, it asserts, are attainable by well-
ordered fellowship in work, but have never been attained,
and are proving themselves every day more unattainable,
by the method of unrestricted competition.
But while it seeks in the first instance to make the
material business of men's lives β production, buying, and
selling^ β wholesome and honest, it does not stop here.
24 Preface to First Edition.
Its object is to work out in practice the true relations
between man and man, which can only be done by frank
acknowledgment of the ground upon which human
society is based β that we must be fellow-workers and not
rivals, brethren of one family, to whom indeed the great
inheritance of this earth has been given, but only on the
condition that it shall be used and enjoyed in the spirit
and according to the will of Him who created it.
In the effort to carry out these principles the Union has
found itself face to face with the deepest problems of
human life, those which are generally known, in fact, as
religious. Our societies have come to acknowledge that
the mere fact of membership in a retail store inv^olves
more than paying ready money, attending once a quarter,
and drawing dividends. As the years pass they find
themselves constantly brought into new and more
intimate relations with their fellow-members, in their
own association and in the Union. In the primary sense
of the word, id quod religat, " that which binds together,"
they have already found that co-operation has been a
religion to them. It is well for the nation that it has
been so, for the industrial history of England during the
past few years has made it clear enough that unless trade
can be mastered and informed with a new spirit it will
destroy the national life ; and no spirit is strong enough
to master and reform it except the religious spirit in the
highest sense, which is the spirit of Christianity.
But religion is not only that which binds men together,
but that which binds man to what is above him, to that
which he looks up to and worships. It must not therefore
be supposed from anything which has been said, either
here or in this Manual, that the compilers, in claiming for
co-operation a distinctly religious side, suppose that any
co-operative union can be a substitute for the Church of
Christ, or co-operative action for that conscious inward
Preface to First Edition. 25
union between men and their Maker, which is rehgion
at its highest power.
There is truth, no doubt, in the saying, " lahorare est
orare," but only potential truth. It should be written,
not " est," but " potest esse."* What we do claim, then,
is, that so far as outward things go β for us men, in
contact with the visible things of this world, which we
are meant to mastei, to use, to enjoy β this method of
fellow-work is the right, and just, and true, and there-
fore the religious method, and the only one which will
bind us to our fellow-men, and to the Father of men,
and not divide us from one another and from Him.
What we do say, further, is, that this method of dealing
with visible things is only possible, in the long run, for men
who keep before their minds the ideal of righteousness,
truthfulness, and brotherly love in the daily round of their
working lives β who, in other words, keep before them-
selves the setting up of the kingdom of God on earth as
the practical goal of all their efforts.
It has been, no doubt, ably maintained of late, that the
worship of humanity is enough of itself to keep ahve this
ideal of righteousness, truthfulness, and brotherly love,
and to satisfy men's spirits in their devotion to the
service of mankind. The service of humanity, or, we
prefer to say, of our brethren, is involved in co-operation;
and we gladly admit that " he who serves men most "
is the best co-operator and member of our Union. We
prefer, however, to read something more into the formula,
in order to make it hold at all times, and under all
circumstances. We would read it, " he serves God
best who serves man most." For the witness of all
times β and of none more than our own time β the
experience of all men's hearts and consciences, and of
none more than our own hearts and consciences β
* Not " is," but " may be."
26 Preface to First Edition.
proves that he who would not get weary of serving his
brethren, whom he has seen, must become aware within
himself of a spirit which he cannot see but may feel β
a spirit higher than his own spirit β higher than the
spirits of all other men β yet working in those spirits,
and with which he and they must become one before
they can find and do their true work, or enter into theii
true rest.
THOS. HUGHES.
Part I.
THE MORAL BASIS OF
GO-OPERATION.
FOR A FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS,
By means of which the course of the argument may be
followed in its main outlines, see the end.
FOUNDATIONS :
A Study in the Ethics and Economics
of the Co-operative Movement.
PART I.
Chapter I.
The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
TO trace the connection between co-operation and
religion may seem to many persons at the present
day injurious rather than beneficial to it, since
they look on co-operation as a principle of union, while
religion, notwithstanding the " binding " character
implied in its name, they have, unhappily, been used to
think of mainly as a cause of division. Nevertheless to
point out this connection is a duty imposed on the editors
of this Manual by the programme adopted at the Congress
of Gloucester; and the consideration of what is required
in such a work as that committed to them will, I think,
show that the Congress was right in making this require-
ment.
Every important scheme of social reform hitherto pro-
posed has been founded on some theory about the nature of
man, his place in the universe, and destiny, which are pre-
cisely the subject-matters of religion. To confine ourselves
to the two most noted modern instances: β Robert Owen
30 The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
founded his system on a conception of the influence
of circumstances in forming character, which was after-
wards formally adopted as a creed by the body formed by
him, called the Society of Rational Religionists. Again,
Charles Fourier laid down as the basis of his system a
theory of congenital impulses, named by him " passions,"
implanted in man by his Maker, which would find their
satisfaction in his proposed scheme of association, and
ensure its success and the general well-being, by making
labour universally attractive. Both these great reformers
founded their systems on what was practically a new
religion, whence the new order of society contemplated
by them should arise. Co-operation, if it would be
regarded as a reasonable scheme of social reform, must
follow the like course, only in the manner peculiar to itself,
that is, by showing that what is new in its proposals
grows naturally out of what is old.
It has been the special characteristic of co-operation to
start from the present, and look to the future which it
anticipates as a state to be slowly evolved out of the
actual, by transforming without rudely destroying it.
This process co-operators have presented as the only safe
road to permanent progress. If the conception is con-
formable to the true nature of things, it ought to hold
good in regard to religion, of which, as has been said, it is
the special function to deal with the fundamental relations
subsisting between man and the universal power whereby
he is sustained. That is, we ought to find in the religious
faiths subsisting among men some one at least, and that
not an insignificant, uninfluential faith, which will supply,
in conceptions proper to itself, a solid basis for the modes
of action through which we think that co-operation may
effect the social reforms sought for b}- its means. Now
what thus ought to be I shall endeavour to show is the
fact β -that the most living, influential religious faith
TJie Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith. 31
existing at the present time β the Christian reUgion β in
the conception which formed its historical foundation,
and is common to every body of any numerical import-
ance professing to belong to it, does supply such a basis β
and that the history of this faith has brought to the fore
that application of this conception which makes it serve
as a basis for social reform, pointing it out as the true
outcome of the religion.
It is notorious that for many ages the great and highest
aim of Christianity was considered to be the withdrawing
of men, so far as was consistent with their human existence,
from all active part in the business or pleasures of earthly
life, in order to fix their attention on an inner life of
prayer, praise, and meditation, with acts of charity, as the
fitting preparation for an unending future existence to
follow this life. But the sixteenth century after the
birth of Christ brought with it a great modification
of these ideas, which, beginning among the nations pro-
fessing a reformed Christianity, has gradually extended
its influence over those who continued to adhere to
the old faith. The opinion grew up that a life of active
industry, accompanied by the natural pleasures of family
union, if it be pervaded by the spirit of love to man, is more
conformable to the will of God than a life withdrawn from
such employments and pleasures, though spent in a round
of prayer, praise, and meditation, diversified by acts of
benevolence.
Modern society, both in Europe and America, may be
said to have been built on this idea, which has continual^
gained ground, through the enormous development of
industry in recent times, strengthened by the vast increase
of scientific knowledge, till it threatens to expel as a foolish
superstition the mediaeval idea that the true object of
individual life is to sink its individuality in union with
the Divine Being.
32 The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
Yet modern society itself bears witness to the imper-
fection of its own ideal. Against this outburst of indi-
vidualism the great and rapid growth in the present
century of socialistic systems, carried, at least in theory,
to the extent of sinking individual possession in common
property, is a protest, full of significance to those who
would trace in the involved course of human affairs the
footsteps of a Divine guidance. The subject will be more
fully considered in a subsequent chapter. But I would
remark here, that this rebuke to the excess of individualism
by the common feeling which leads to these social ten-
dencies, has its deep root in the conviction that man
finds his true well-being in devotion to a being higher
than his own, which pervaded the religious thought of
the Middle Ages, and grew up under the shelter of a vast
organised system, the precursor, I trust, of another
organisation destined to bear, in these later days, for the
benefit of mankind, fruits such as those unquiet days
could not have produced.
The ideas which I shall endeavour to trace to their
logical issue in social institutions are, then, not an arti-
ficial growth forced on Christianity, but a natural outcome,
whose connection with it is shown by a long historical
development. The Church of the Middle Ages manifested
herself as a powerful spiritual influence for delivering
man from the burden of his own selfishness in a way
which, if it did not exhaust the Divine action, but fell
short of what we hope to achieve, is yet to us an example
of the principle on which institutions for the common
good should be founded, and an encouragement in the
difficult attempt to introduce them. She has been a
pioneer, clearing away obstacles, cutting out paths,
throwing bridges over rivers, and thus preparing the way
for the advance of the main body, which may occupy the
lands and utilise them for the general good.
The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith. 33
This preliminary work the CathoHc organisation of the
Middle Ages has done for us. It has taught us the
enormous power possessed by voluntary associative effort,
when concentrated in institutions adapted to give effect
to it. It has shown us, in its great monastic orders, that
large bodies of men can be held together, without any
external compulsion, to live in common a life from which
the ordinary motive of individual interest is excluded,
and its place is supplied by motives entirely independent
of this individual interest, resting upon hopes which look
for their fulfilment to a future discerned only by the eye
of faith. It has shown us that these remarkable results
have been attained, not only in some particular ages,
under some peculiar conditions of race, or climate, or
locality, but in all parts of the earth, among every
variety of race or national character, and for a long
succession of generations, each ready to take up and carry
forward the work that its precursors had commenced or
continued ; with no apparent exhaustion in the efficiency
of this voluntary' power, so long as the arbitrary inter-
ference of the State did not oppose it. It has been left
for Christianit}' in our age to apply to ordinary human
life β which Protestants have declared to be, in their
opinion, more truly divine than the monastic life β that
principle of organised combination for realising a life
consistent with the objects accepted by us as its true
end, which our Catholic ancestors systematically and
successfully applied to establish the monastic or ascetic
form of life, believed by them to be the most truly
conformable to the Divine will.
We need not bid for cloistered cell
Our neighbour and the world farewell ;
The common round, the daily task
Will furnish all we ought to ask :
Room to deny ourselves β a road
To bring us daily nearer God ;
G
34 The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
says, in well-known words, a poet of the Church of
England. He expresses the feeling common among the
Protestant religious communities β a sentiment which I
regard as profoundly true, but requiring to be qualified
by the proposition that, in order to keep alive among men
generally the practice of this divine principle of self-denial,
it is indispensable that the current of their lives should
not continually carry them in the opposite direction. In
other words, there are wanted institutions adapted to do
for religious principle in its application to daily life what
churches have done for this principle in its application to
the act of worship, and monastic institutions did for it in
its application to that ascetic life, which formed the ideal
of perfection for the Middle Ages, and still continues to
do, in some measure, for the large body who adhere either
to the Greek or the Roman communion.
The experience of the centuries which have passed
since the Reformation furnishes what, to me at least,
appears to be conclusive evidence that β however com-
pletely the liberty of individual action may be secured in
any community, however generally the duty of everyone
to " love his neighbour as himself " and " do unto others
as he would be done by " may be admitted by the mem-
bers of that community as indisputable, and however
vast the increase of material advantages in that com-
munity may be, this liberty will not produce among the
mass of the population a state corresponding to the ideal
set before us by the Lord's Prayer, which ought certainly
to be the Christian's ideal, that " God's will shall be done
on earth as it is in heaven." Or, if the contrary be affirmed,
I can say only that the God whose will is supposed to be
realised by such a social state as this individual struggle
for existence produces, can be no better than the
"Unconscious Being" of Hartman; and the sooner
mankind can arrive at the solution of the problem of
The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith. 35
existence proposed by that high priest of pessimism, and
by a concentrated effort of their united wills, put an end
ahke to the fruit of individual life and its unconscious
root, the better.
But not so, I hope, have we learned the lesson of
Calvary. Not this philosophy of despair are we, I trust,
disposed to accept as the outcome of the unnumbered
ages since the patient earth began her unwearied revolu-
tions round the sun, setting us, according to Goethe's
instructive epigram, an example of the spirit in which
we should possess our souls, while she inaugurated that
long development of ascending forms of being recorded
in the leaves of the "Stone Book."* Individual liberty
is a precious possession β a late gift of Time to mankind;
who, indeed, as yet, are far from having generally attained
it, and when they have attained it, are for the most part
very far from knowing how to make a good use of it β if
by a good use we mean such a use as is consistent with
that example which all Christians profess to set before
themselves as showing the spirit by which human life
should be guided. How, then, are we to make a better
use of this great gift, of the power which, in Britain and
many other countries that we call civilised, men now
possess, to wield in entire security of person and property
a command over natural forces unexampled in any former
age, and yet increasing with every decade so rapidly that,
but for old age and death, we might imagine ourselves
about to be transformed into beings of some higher species
than mankind ? I reply β by inspiring the body of science
with the spirit of rehgion ; by using this material liberty
as a means of lifting ourselves into the spiritual liberty
* If e'er I'm impatient, I call to mind
How patient the old Earth I find ;
Who turns on her axis every day,
And twirls round the sun her yearly way.
Why am I here, but the like to do ?
Dear Lady Mamma, 1 follow you. β Free translation.
36 The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
of the "sons of God"; by substituting the genuine
freedom of working together for the spurious freedom of
working against each other; and showing that man is
as competent to construct instruments of general well-
being as he has unhappily proved himself competent to
construct those fearful instruments of destruction β the
ironclad fleets, the gigantic armies, the hundred-ton
guns, and weapons of precision, of modern warfare.
The claim that I make for co-operative industry and
associated life, to be the true outcome of the Christian
religion, is not a claim antagonistic to, or condemnatory
of, or a substitution for, any previous phase of that
religion. It is simply a further development for which I
think the time is now ripe; a new manifestation of the
counsels of God for the redemption of man out of the
slavery of the flesh to the freedom of the spirit ; no more
opposed to what has gone before it than the fruit is to the
flower, or the flower to the leaf, or than primitive
Christianity was in itself opposed to the Judaism out of
which it sprung. It is not a new form of worship, or a new
phase of theological teaching, but a new application of
the spirit which has uttered itself in worship and produced
systems of theology. It is the application of this spirit
to solve the great problems of practical life; how to
fill up the gap between rich and poor; how to destroy
the antagonism between capitahst and worker ; how
to make the application of science to industry ease the
toil of the worker, instead of ousting him from his
work; how to prevent the fact that the labourer has
made the existence of other men more full of enjoyment,
from rendering his own livelihood more precarious. It is
to ask Christianity to do for free labour, which it may be
said to have created in the nations where it has taken
root, what it did for slave labour by suppressing slavery.
To appeal to it to correct the evils attendant on
The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith. 37
the good of its own creation is surely no unreasonable
demand.
The light of Christianity arose on a world of slave-
owners and slaves, a world where the free labour of men
dependent for their subsistence on wages formed a very
insignificant part of the toil which filled the cities of the
Roman empire with their accumulated wealth. The New
Testament contains no condemnation of slavery. But
when the master had learned to look upon his slave as a
" brother beloved in the Lord " the days of slavery were
numbered. The maintenance of such 3 state of absolute
dependence and arbitrary power was logically so incon-
sistent with the feeling of spiritual brotherhood involved
in the idea of a new birth, by water and the spirit, into a
" new moral world " of the sons of that God whose name
is " Love," that, as this idea took hold on men's minds,
it naturally put an end to what was thus irreconcilable
with itself.
Now, what Christianity has thus done in the past, those
who regard it as the mighty agent provided by God to
redeem men from that slavery of the spirit out of which
the slavery of the body springs β the slavery to selfish-
ness β may fittingly ask it to do for the present and the
future. We who appeal to Christianity to evolve co-
operative industry and associated life are, in truth, asking
it to tame into obedience to the law of brotherhood, which
is the law of reason, those energies that, left to the law of
nature, can produce only " the struggle for existence "
known to modern political economy under the name of
free competition. Is this request unreasonable ? History,
I think, may assure us that it is not.
Man is at once a natural and a supernatural being.
He belongs to nature by his passions and his strength,
and, as a natural being, is involved in that struggle
for existence dependent on the assertion of self, which
38 The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
is the law of all natural being β that is to say, of every
creature which is unable to determine the ends of its
existence for itself, but finds them determined for it
by its constitution and its surroundings. The will of
such a creature, when" it has attained to consciousness,
is guided in its actions by the pleasures or pains which
stimulate it to do what is useful, or deter it from doing
what is injurious to itself individually; or where, as
with bees and other social animals, the welfare of the
great body of individuals depends on their association
β stimulate it to do what is useful, or deter it from
doing what is injurious, to the society, though the
individual may be in some cases sacrificed in the pro-
cess. But in man there appears a higher power, linked,
it is true, by insensible gradations with natural being,
and dependent upon it for its own capacity to act,
but standing above it : a supernatural power of will
which determines its ends for itself, and uses natural
powers, in the freedom of choice and with the per-
sistency of deliberation, to do that which it has so
determined. Man possesses not only Strength and
Passions, but Reason. He is not only stimulated or
deterred by Pleasure and Pain, but is capable of
rejecting pleasures and accepting pain for the sake of
objects so distant or so vast that, individually, he can
scarcely hope to realise their accomplishment, yet
deliberately works for them, because they are the
choice of his reason, and to him the satisfaction of his
reason can become superior to the baits of any natural
pleasures, or deterring impulses of any natural pains.
Now this governing Reason is in itself essentially a
principle of unity. It has built up sciences, by per-
fecting conceptions which can give unity in idea to the
endless diversity of appearances presented to us by
natural beings, through the different ways in which
The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith. 39
they affect our bodies by wliat we call our senses;
and thus has given us a knowledge continually growing
more complete of the modes of action of these beings.
It has created States, in order, by the unity of political
institutions, to set bounds to individual selfishness,
and give protection to individual weakness. The
great philosophers of Greece, while Greece was yet
free to act as well as to theorise, saw in the perfecting
of these political institutions the instrumentality through
which they hoped for the attainment by mankind, or at
least by the privileged body of Hellens, of that complete
social unity which was the avowed though unattained
object of the political institutions of Hellas in their own age.
But they had selected a wrong road, though to a right
end. Time unfolded, as the outcome of this political
road to unity, the despotism of Rome. But at the
epoch when the vast machinery of Roman power,
consolidating its own action under the rule of Augustus,
showed at once how mighty this sort of unity could
become, and 3'et how little it satisfied what Greek
philosophy demanded from the principle of unity applied
to human affairs, there began to be heard a voice which,
originating in a despised race, promulgated by men
who made no pretensions either to the philosophical
insight of Greece or the practical wisdom of Rome,
and finding a response chiefly among those whom the
great contemned, declared that the principle of unity
was to be sought for from within, and not from without,
and depended, not on political institutions, however
wisely instituted, but on the union of the will of man
with One who had submitted to be crucified as a male-
factor, that he might resolve the discords of human
selfishness into the harmony of the eternal divine love.
From the faith in this manifestation of the infinite
tenderness of God to man sprung up that rich crop
40 The Relation of Co-operation to Religions Faith.
of tender sympathy between man and man which
marked the Church of the first centuries, and conquered
the world, as the Emperor JuHan declared, " by the
ministry of tables " ; by a social institution, resting on the
free will of those who strove to realise in their own lives
the truth that " it is more blessed to give than to receive."
It is to an extension of similar institutions, resting,
hke the " ministry of tables," on the free will of those
who maintain them, that the social reformer who would
deduce his reforms from the Christian spirit appeals,
as the instrument to give effect to his desires. He
looks to such institutions to put an end to the present
antagonism between the owner of the accumulated
labour called capital and the owner of the present
labour, to which this capital is indispensable, while,
in turn, it is indispensable to make that capital fruitful
of benefit to its owners; or, between the man who
distributes what others want and those among whom
the distribution is made β an antagonism than which
nothing can be more entirely opposed to the spirit
animating the New Testament, or more completely
incapable of removal by legislative regulations, without
the voluntarj^ help of the persons for whom the legis-
lation is made. Surely we are justified by history in
believing that, in looking for the help required to this
source, we shall not look in vain.
No one, probably, will dispute that the Christian
spirit, if it is brought to direct itself seriously to these
objects, could accomplish them; that is to say, no
one who calmly takes count of what this spirit has done
in the past, and is doing in the present β for the forma-
tion and support of cathedrals, churches, monasteries,
schools, colleges, hospitals, almshouses, for the promotion
of temperance, the suppression of slavery, the mitigation
of the horrors of war, and its ultimate removal, and
The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith. 41
other benevolent purposes, including the spread of
Christianity among non-Christian nations. That without
this spirit the task cannot be performed will probably
be admitted, even by those who hold that the spirit
may be separated from the name, and will do its work
better from the separation. No doubt there are, at
the present time, many β and among them very zealous
advocates of social reforms β who repudiate the name
of Christianity, which to them symbohses only intoler-
ance, rreduhty, and superstition. But in so far as
these men are really animated by the spirit that makes
social reform possible, they are Christians without
intending it ; men who have the spirit of Christ in them,
by whatever name they choose to call themselves;
and whom those who hold the Catholic faith in the
Divine nature of their Lord must recognise as true
children of Him from whom all life proceeds, by that
mark ascribed in the Gospels to His own teaching, " By
their fruits ye shall know them."
As the ultimate result of Christianity, if it is to become
universal, must be to merge the present distinctions of
Christian theology in the unity of a Christian life, so the
opposition of the Christian and non-Christian name must
merge in the harmony of a spirit which is not satisfied
with any institutions but such as exhibit in action that
profound solidarite of the whole with every part, and
every part with the whole, which St. Paul held out
to his Corinthian converts eighteen hundred years since
as the relation that should subsist between the members
of the body of Christ. But this anticipated universality
of the time when Christianity and Humanity shall be
seen to be interchangeable names for the same idea,
does not make it the less important to point out the
support which this idea has in the Catholic faith. The
behef that the Eternal Father manifested tjQ us in. th^
42 The Relation of Co-operation to Religious Faith.
person of Christ what the power underlying all natural
phenomena is in its essential character, and what we
must be to become like Him, crowning, as this belief
does for those who hold it, the long development of
natural and intellectual forces, with the anticipation
of an age when the will of man shall find its repose in
voluntarily accepting the law of love, must be admitted
to afford a solid basis for that idea of the universal
brotherhood of mankind which historically arose out
of this Catholic faith.
Now we must not forget that this Catholic faith sums
up the religious conceptions of all the cultivated races of
mankind. Religion has appeared on the earth under two
great phases: (i) The belief in the immanence of the
Divine in the world and its incarnation in man : (2) The
belief which sets God o\'er against the world and man.
These conceptions appear to have slumbered together in
Egypt ; they diverged afterwards ; the first giving rise to
the Aryan, the second to the Semitic religions. But they
crossed and spontaneously united in the Catholic faith as
to Christ ; where the sublime trust of the Jew wedded
the philosophical insight of Greece, and, allying itself
with the practical sagacity of Rome, constituted what
must be called the scientific conception of religion.
On those who would separate the development of
Humanity from the development of Christianity, we
venture, then, to urge, as fellow-strugglers with them in
the hard battle against egotistic impulses, not hastily to
reject the help which the history of Christianity offers;
lest in the endeavour to grasp the fruit whilst they spurn
the tree that bore it, they should sink back from the law
of love to the law of force; and instead of founding
universally liberty, equality, fraternit}', and solidarity
as they desire, should perpetuate that " struggle for
existence " out of which the Christian Church emerged.
Chapter II.
The Relation of Co-operation to Other
Philanthropic Movements.
BENEVOLENCEβ goodwill to other menβ is the
I common starting-point of all plans of social reform,
the rendezvous where all social reformers must
meet. From whatever side they approach these ideas β
whether they appeal to the conception of Christianity^
presented in our first chapter, or to any other conception
of it entertained, say, by members of the Greek or Roman
communions, or of any other professedly Christian body ;
or rest upon some general conception of religion; or,
rejecting any religious ground, appeal to " a stream of
tendency " shown in the history of mankind, or to an}^
other notion of man's true nature and the conduct
suitable to it, resting on philosophy, on science, or on
our common sense β from whatever side they come, at
this gate of Benevolence they must arrive, as the door
through which the way lies to social reform. Without
goodwill to men generally no one would ever trouble
himself about the improvement of society.
But Benevolence is no stranger among mankind. She
is quite at home in our race, and has expressed, and does
express herself, in a thousand plans of goodwill, with more
or less successful issues. In what special relation, then,
does the idea of co-operation stand to this widely active
principle ? I think the reply must be taken from the
motto of Lord Stafford β because it is "Thorough";
because it strikes at the root of all those evils of which
Benevolence, in her unceasing efforts at the present day,
44 The Relation of Co-operation to
is only endeavouring to keep under this or that ever-
fresh-growing offshoot. To anticipate shortly what will
be more fully dealt with in subsequent chapters, I would
sa.y that while Benevolence has hitherto dealt only or
principally with the use of income by individuals, the
co-operator sets before her the duty of dealing β first,
with that which creates income, in order to secure to all
that share of income to which by their work they are
equitably entitled; second, with the collective use of this
income, with a view to form such general conditions of
existence that the income of each individual may be able
to produce to its possessor as great benefits as it is capable
of affording, without interfering with the like enjoyment
by others. In society as it is, the determination of what
income each individual shall have, and what shall be the
general conditions under which it has to be used, has been
left, with exceptions, important, but yet only exceptions
in the case of certain works of common utility undertaken
at the common cost, to be determined by what, in modem
political economy, is called free competition. The
co-operator maintains that it is the duty of Benevolence
to obtain this determination by reasonable agreement.
It may be objected that competition is a law of nature
to which all must be subject, and that, therefore, to call
on Benevolence to fight against it is to impose upon her
an impossible task. I admit the premiss, but deny the
inference.
That the tendencies which lead to competition must
always exist I do not deny. They belong to that " struggle
for existence " producing the " survival of the fittest,"
from which man can no more withdraw himself as a
natural being than he can withdraw his body, or the
materials he deals with, from the influence of gravity.
But why should he abandon himself and his doings to
the one form of natural action more than he does to the
Other Philanthropic Movements. 45
other? He has taught iron to float on water, though
gravity orders it to sink; and made the stones which
would, at the bidding of gravity, fall through the air into
a river below them, afford him a safe passage through the
air above the water. This he has done not by getting
rid of the force of gravity, but by studying its action, and
the nature of the bodies subject to it, till he has discovered
how to make gravity secure his purposes in place of
thwarting them. The fact that this principle of com-
petition must be admitted to be a law of nature is, then,
no ground for treating its operation as withdrawn from
the control of reason. For it is characteristic of the
action of reason to use natural powers for its own higher
purposes, by subduing their natures into obedience to its
own higher nature, without attempting to destroy them.
Why should it not be able to do as much with the natural
force of competition ?
No doubt we pass in this case from the nature which
acts on man to nature in man. We have to deal with the
resistance of the impulses which naturally urge men to
act to that power whose proper function is to govern these
impulses by harmonising them. The need of that appeal
to the influence of Christianity dwelt on in the first chapter
arises, as I conceive, from the fact that reason, although
able to point out how men ought to act, in order to
harmonise the discords of conflicting impulses, and
convert the scorching heat of competition into a life-
giving, cheering warmth, the fosterer of invention and
incentive to progress, requires the assistance of some
power capable of moving the will by the influence of
emotion, to choose to do what the reason points out as
fitting to be done.
But assuming that by this influence, or any other
motive which those who have no faith in Christ may
substitute for this faith, the wills of men are thus swayed
46 The Relation of Co-operalion to
β why, I ask again, should the natural law of competition
prove less amenable to the control of reason than those
other natural laws which Reason now uses, and is learning
every day more completely how to use, so as to convert
Nature from her master into the obedient minister to her
desires ?
What Benevolence has to do in order to satisfy the
requirements of the co-operator, as I conceive them, I
have already stated β I hope with sufficient clearness for
the purpose of this chapter. But it may be desirable to
make a few observations, which, perhaps, may be useful,
on some points bearing on the subject of the relation of
co-operation to other philanthropic efforts.
That which has been already done by Messrs. Leclaire
and Godin in France, by the Rochdale Pioneers and other
distributive societies in England, and what the various
friendly societies and savings banks and other institutions
of a self-supporting character among the poorer classes
have done and are doing in Great Britain and elsewhere,
proves that if the profits of production and distribution,
beyond the necessary charge for capital, became applica-
able for the benefit of the workers by whom they are
produced, and of the population among whom they are
distributed, a small percentage of the total amount would
be sufficient, as an assurance fund, to provide against all
the contingencies (including old age) for which Benevo-
lence at present, by a heavy burden on a comparatively
few benevolent persons, inadequately provides in her
manifold philanthropic institutions. And yet those who
now devote both time and money to the support and>
supervision of these institutions might find a more useful
field for their benevolent activity in the administration of
these common funds. For they would thus confer all the
benefits attending almsgiving without its manifold evils,
and turn what " blesses the giver more than the receiver "
Other Philanthropic Movements. 47
into that truly Divine quality which is twice blest β which
" blesses him that gives and him that takes."
In truth, although it may, perhaps, seem at first to
some philanthropic persons, that in a reformed society
such as co-operators look for they would feel that
Othello's occupation's gone,
true Benevolence would gain greatly by being relieved
from all that part of her work which is open to doubt, and
suspicion of imposture, and allowed to expand in acts of
kindness of a nature to admit of no doubt β in imparting
instruction or affording pleasure, in the solace of
suffering or sympathy with delight, in helping affliction to
bear its burdens, or adding to the joyfulness of light-
hearted innocence.
That there is in all plans of social reform an element
repulsive to benevolent feeling, as it is trained by our
modern habits, I do not deny β -namely, that they deal,
and from the nature of the case cannot but deal, not
merely with the use, but with the acquisition, of wealth ;
with matters of business ; with buying and selling. They
must face that " higgling of the market," those keen
attempts to take advantage of the necessities or ignorance
of others, against which Benevolence bears energetic
protest. But, in truth, these immoral practices furnish
precisely one of the strongest reasons why Benevolence
should interfere, in order to arrest this outgrowth of the
spirit of competitive struggle, by stopping the source
from whence it springs. That it can be stopped I see no
reason to doubt. Even in the present day these practices
do not affect all commercial transactions. The conduct of
many businesses is free from them, either through their
magnitude, which enables their managers to fix the
conditions on which they will act, or through the general
practice in the particular case, as with assurance com-
panies, which work upon tables at fixed rates. In retail
48 The Relation of Co-oj)eration to
sales, the habit of bargaining is most unequally diffused,
existing generally in some countries, and scarcely at all in
others. The most successful businesses have been carried
on without it, such, for instance, as that of the late
Mr. Stewart, of New York, who had one price only for each
class of goods, and would dismiss, instead of rewarding,
any employe who obtained more. What has thus been
done partially might, it would appear, be easily done
universally, among any bod}' of men who should make it a
rule to take no advantage of each other, but in every
transaction to state exactly all that the other side could
wish to know. In such a society all bargains would be
made with full knowledge of the circumstances; and the
abatement of price, inevitable if the rates fixed by the
seller in any case cannot be obtained, might be effected
by methods not involving individual bargaining, such as
an auction.
When we consider the great effect on the character of
any people inevitably produced by these daily transactions
of buying and selling, it is difficult to name any matter
better deserving the earnest attention of true Benevolence
than the purification of the atmosphere of trade, by the
general introduction of institutions where ordinary
business shall be conducted in such a way as strict
morality can approve.
If these considerations are borne in mind, I cannot but
hope that the indifference which many β I fear I must say
most β modern philanthropists show to plans of social
reform would give place to a prudent, but hearty and
persevering, determination to aid them by every means in
their power. The effect of such a determination would, I
am satisfied, be most beneficial on the present advocates
of social reform. The sort of ostracism suffered by their
wide-reaching proposals, affecting the well-being of
countless millions, if the future history of mankind is to be
Other Philanthropic Movements. 49
a sequel worthy of the enormous period during which the
earth has ripened into fitness for being " ordered and
dressed " by man, has thrown some of those who profess
to call themselves co-operators off the rails, so to speak.
Losing sight of the high aims and noble principles of
social reform, which is nothing if it be not regarded as the
introduction of β
Nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws β
such as shall
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be,
they have represented co-operation simply as a safe and
efficient machinery for enabling consumers to obtain, by
union among themselves, such articles as they desire to
possess, reliable in quality, at the lowest possible cost. It
is not wonderful that Benevolence should turn away from
such a parody of true co-operation, with an impatience
perhaps somewhat unjust to the intentions of those who
have proposed it, and with great loss to herself. Since in
advocating the self-help on which co-operation rests, and
preventing it from degenerating into selfish help. Bene-
volence would conquer for herself a field of action entirely
free from the suspicion of selfish motives which often
attends upon the Benevolence of almsgiving.
The examination in detail of the theorj^ above noticed
belongs to a subsequent part of the present Manual. I am
concerned with it here only in reference to the motives of
co-operative action, and to that estrangement of the body
of philanthropists from this all-iinportant work, which the
considerations adduced in the present and the first
chapter will, I hope, tend to remove. Then may we hope
to see organised into a united phalanx those who ought to
be working heart and hand in this cause as the great
problem of humanity, the true task, in my judgment, tg
D
50 The Relation of Co-operation to Other Movements.
which Benevolence is called in the present age β a task to
be carried on in reliance upon that Divine aid, which has
never failed those who, comprehending the depth of
meaning lying in the apostolic conception of the good
man, as a " worker together with God," lay their hand to
the plough, and do not look back.
Chapter III.
The Relation of Co-operation to Socialism,
Communism, and other Politico-Social Movements.
THE preceding chapters have spoken of co-opera-
tion in language applying generally to plans of
social refonn. This they have done, because it
is only when regarded as a mode of action having the
far-reaching scope which these words imply that the
idea of co-operation acquires the importance claimed for
it bv the writers of this Manual, and therefore can excite
the interest which, in their judgment, it ought to awaken.
It may be asked, if your conceptions of the aim of co-
operation are so extensive, how can it be distinguished
from sociahsm ? What is socialism but social reform ?
^ I would reply, the difference is this. Systems of
sociahsm are essentially theories, embracing the whole
range of relations subsisting among men, which, in one
way or other, they propose to bring into conformity
with these theories. But social reform, as it is presented
in these pages, and is embodied in the name of co-opera-
tion, is rather a practice than a theory. It is an attempt
to introduce into the world, as we now find it, modes of
action embodying principles, generally admitted among
the nations called Christian, even by those who more or
less completely separate themselves either from the
Catholic faith in Christ, or from the Christian name, to
be such as they ought to act upon ; though, from various
causes, thej either do not act upon them at all, but only
hope that they may do so in another world, or act upon
them so imperfectly and inconsistently that their action
52 The Relation of Co-operation to Socialism,
has scarcely any effect in producing such results as ought
to flow from their principles. Our English co-operation,
so far, at least, as it has proceeded hitherto, is an attempt
founded on the behef that these principles, when generally
applied in practice, will work out true relations among
men by their own operation, and would be hampered
rather than aided by the endeavour to build up a
complete theory of them beforehand.
Co-operation rests not on a new theory of human
conduct, but on the development of the tendencies which
it traces in past history, and seeks to give more entire
expression to in the present and the future. The special
connection claimed for it with Christianity is, in truth,
only a claim for its historical filiation with the progress
of humanity, which has been historically associated in
the nations of Europe and America with this religion.
While, as the previous chapters have argued, Christianity
does present to us conceptions of the Divine action, and
the mutual relations of man springing out of that action,
eminently adapted to sustain our hopes and guide our
steps in the arduous task which the idea of social reform
opens before us.
But, to the distinction drawn now between co-opera-
tion and socialism, this special historical connection,
important though it is in itself, is not essential. The
\ essential distinction is that co-operators are those social
reformers who approach the great problems of social
reform with their eyes open and their hands free.
Admitting the greatness of the end which the prophets
of socialism have set before their disciples, they claim
for the end to be greater than the insight of the prophets ;
and, refusing to be bound by the words of any master,
investigate their social systems in the free spirit of
scientific inquiry, not blindly adopting, nor having any
^ prejudice against them. The freedom belonging to
Communism, and Other Politico-Social Movements. 53
\ co-operation enables the co-operator to use these systems,
or any parts of them which appear to him useful, as means
for the better giving effect to his ends ; only he does not
set them up as systems to which he is to pin his faith,
or by which he is bound to regulate his conduct.
Fourier, for instance, unfolded, with all the anticipating
minuteness of genius, the principles by which manual
labour may be made attractive, instead of being so
wearisome as it now usually is. Robert Owen has dwelt
upon the vast influence of the surroundings of men {or
circumstances as he said) on the'r characters. It is
open to the co-operator to study the teachings of both
these eminent thinkers; to adopt the suggested means
of rendering labour attractive; to study carefully the
influence of men's surroundings on their characters;
without basing his action upon the assumption that
" man's character is formed for him and not by him; "
or substituting for the maxim, " Bear ye one another's
burdens, so shall ye fulfil the law of love," the apophthegm
" Destinies are proportionate to attractions," in which
Fourier summed up his theory. The free spirit of social
progress, proper to Christianity, whether it adopt the
Christian name or not, will be at liberty " to prove all
things, and hold fast that which is good," when it
comprehends, as I trust it is beginning to comprehend,
what work lies before it if it really would do God's will
on earth.
So it may " prove," but I cannot think that, as a
general rule, it will " hold fast " that system of com-
munism, which has continually appeared within the
Christian Church, constituting the outward life of the
monastic and conventual orders, and forming the external
bond of union of a number of Protestant bodies existing
in the United States.
Indeed, with the exception of Oneida, all these
54 The Relation of Co-operation to Socialism,
communities are either, like the monastic and conventual
institutions of Cathohcism, founded upon, or tend to, a
practice which maker their adoption by mankind generally
impossible, because, to borrow Sterne's pithy antithesis,
" if it peoples heaven it impeoples earth " β the practice
of celibacy. Otherwise, economically considered, the
results of the mode of life are, according to Mr. Hind's
description, generally satisfactory. Plenty appears to
be their common character β a plenty obtained without
burdening the inmates with any excess of work, and that
not because all the members are able-bodied; for,
besides containing a large number of old people, these
communities, at least in many cases, receive families of
the children of persons joining them, who become a
charge on the common fund. The notion that the
stimulus of individual gain is necessary in order to pro-
duce industry is also negatived by these accounts, which
uniformly describe the members as industrious. While
at Oneida, where the advantages derivable from a united
home are appreciated to an extent not shown in most of
these communities, the inventive faculties of the members
are actively exercised to discover labour-saving con-
trivances, which, in an institution where all participate
alike in the common produce, are obviously an unqualified
advantage to all.
The advantage is very great, but there is no sufficient
reason why it should not equally exist under a system of
associated labour, in any community which places at the
command of its members a variety of occupations open to
all, so that the labour saved in one employment may be
taken up by another, without sacrificing the natural con-
stitution of the family to the demands for union in work,
made upon us by the progress of invention and the
growth of capital. In truth, if we except Icaria, all these
communistic societies, including Oneida, have the primary
Communism, and Oilier Politico-Social Movements. 55
object of realising some special religious theory; Oneida
being distinguished by the peculiarity that the theory of
what they call the system of Perfection does not involve
the extinction of the human race as a necessary con-
sequence of its general adoption. On the other hand, it
does involve the same sort of sacrifice of the family to the
community, though not carried out with a consistency
so complete as Plato provides in his ideal republic.
But Plato wrote as a Hellen for Hellens, having before
his mental vision the conditions of life existing in the
small republics of Greece, where a free State meant a
free town. All his proposals have in view the so training
a body of citizens, who would constitute the armed force
necessary to protect the liberties of all against aggressive
neighbours, as to prevent them from abusing, to their
own private advantage, the absolute power over the lives
and liberties of the other citizens, which their position
gave them. With keen insight into human motives, Plato
desired to free these " guards," as he calls them, from
the subtle temptation to selfishness latent in that
plausible excuse, " Don't think I am working for myself;
but it is my duty to raise my family." Therefore, he
said, the " guards " must have no individual families.
All of them must be one family, supported by the body
of citizens whom they protect, with whose welfare they
will then be identified, and among whom, being them-
selves free from unjust motives, they can preserve just
action.
Given the conditions of Greek life, this theory of
Plato has much to say for itself. Under the altered con-
ditions of our days the case changes. In the great States
which modern times have made familiar to us, where
order has wedded freedom, and the overpowering strength
of the whole united community is exerted, when necessary,
to restrain the governing body in any association from
56 The Relation of Co-operation to Socialism,
abusing to their own advantage the powers committed
to them for the good of all, there is no sufficient reason
for merging the national dualism of human life in an
artificial universalism. The striking example of the
Familistere, formed at Guise* by M. Godin, has shown
that it is possible to attain all the social advantages of
communistic institutions β the care and training of
children from their earliest years; their subsequent
education; the provision within the unitary dwelling,
to the degree permitted by the means of its inhabitants,
of whatever can assist want, promote convenience, or
facilitate enjoyment; the creation among its inmates
of an active concern for each other's welfare, by the
part which each is able and invited to take in this or that
branch of the general administration; β -while yet the
inmates possess a domestic privacy more complete than
can be enjoyed by the occupants of ordinary town
dwellings; earn various incomes, according to their
capacities; have entire liberty of disposing of their own
property; and, in short, retain all the individuality of
natural life, superadding to it an associated life which
makes this individual life more full of enjoyment as it
becomes less selfish.
It may be urged, perhaps, that if the last proposition
is true, a system of complete communism would increase
enjoyment to the highest degree possible, by extinguishing
selfishness altogether. This was apparently the idea of
Robert Owen, who, in consequence, believed that the
attractions of a communistic life to all who ever ex-
perienced them would be so great, that the system, once
introduced, would rapidly spread over the earth. But he
overlooked the fact that the happiness which an unselfish
spirit does produce to its possessor, according to the
uniform experience of all who ever strove to attain it,
* Department de I'A isne in France.
Communism, and Other Politico-Social Movements. 57
comes from within, and cannot be imported from without,
^ whence can come only, the occasions where this spirit
may display itself and thus increase its energy by the
opportunity for its exercise. Now, these occasions would
be afforded by an associated dwelling, which left the
homes of its inmates in their individual distinctness, but
placed alongside of them, as objects of the common care,
institutions conducive to the general welfare, not less
completely than it can be by a system where this
domestic life itself is made a matter of common regulation.
Moreover, the danger would be avoided of that constant
jarring which must be liable to arise between the general
regulations and the variety of individual tastes, wherever
the distinction between public and private affairs has
disappeared, by the public life having swallowed up the
private life.
N. Thus, then, the relation between co-operation, as a
system of association, and communism, resembles that
subsisting between certain mathematical lines, which may
indefinitely approach, but can never touch. The spirit
of true co-operation will lead those on whom it has taken
hold to feel dissatisfied with any appropriation to
themselves of advantages capable, by their nature, of
communication to others who are excluded from them.
Obviously, in proportion to the degree in which this spirit
IS the living principle of conduct among any associated
body, its internal constitution will spontaneously
approach communism. All will feel themselves to be
trustees of their natural or acquhed powers for the
general good, and ask only to share in this good equally
with those to whom they impart it. But between
communism, as a rule, and this communistic feeling
there must remain always the difference that there is
between law and gospel, between thou shalt and thou
wilt, between the freedom of the self-governing will
and the yoke of submission to a majority.
58 The Relation of Co-operation to Socialism,
The regard for individual freedom which thus dis-
tinguishes co-operation from communism, distinguishes
it also, though still more emphatically, from all attempts
to attain the end of free association by the compulsory
intervention of the State. Now, this is the aim of the
theories of socialistic legislation which have, of late
years, fascinated the sober judgment of large masses
of the population in Germany, in whom long habit of
subjection to State regulation may be pleaded in excuse
for their notion that the State could do everything they
desire if only it would. But the same idea appears to
have taken hold also on the free life of the United States,
perhaps, from the opposite habit of the people, to look
on its own will uttered through the ballot box, as
irresistible. The objection to this system, in the
peaceful form proposed by Ferdinand Lassalle, who
urged only that the State should use the commom purse
to obtain for the mass of its members the means of self-
employment, has been very clearly stated by Dr. Schulze-
Delitzsch in his speeches and lectures. For, whence is
the State purse, if it is not swelled by forced contributions
from the rich, to be replenished except by the very
persons to whom it is to give employment ? If, how-
ever, to avoid this difficulty, the theory is carried to
the length advocated by Karl Marx, who would confiscate
the property of the richer classes for the benefit of the
general body, into which they are to be compelled to
sink by the might of the strongest, then, in opposition
to such a tendency, however it may originate, it must
be emphatically asserted, from the point of view taken
in these pages, that only by free self-help can co-operation
procure for man the good claimed in them as capable
of being produced by it. Because its whole power comes
from the acceptance by the will of man of that Divine
Communism, and Other Politico-Social Movements. 59
law of love, affirmed by us to be the true law of
humanity, on which the well-being of mankind depends.
If even in political life those " who take the sword shall
perish by the sword," as the Gospel declares, and
historical experience has confirmed, with a uniformity of
result disguised only by the fact that in many nations
the assertion of strength has been accompanied by the
assertion of principles of eternal life which have qualified
the action of this principle of death β assuredly, to think
that the victory of reason is to be earned by the exercise
of force, and the reign of love to be the natural fruit of a
reign of terror, must be the maddest of mad delusions.
Not by cutting the Gordian knot can the genius of
social progress found its beneficent empire. At the
present day, in England most certainly, and, I believe, in
every Christian European country, except, perhaps,
Russia, and assuredly in the United States, the road to a
peaceful social revolution, fraught with unmeasurable
benefits to the mass of the population, and attended by
injury to none β except it can be called an injury to shut
men out from the hope of future gains to be made out of
other men's pockets β is open to the whole population,
by free association, for objects which recent experience
has proved that association can successfully effect, if only
the masses, who may thus benefit themselves collectively
and individually, are willing to associate. If the blind-
(^ ness of selfish interest prevents them from so associating,
'all the laws which could be passed, to give them the
benefits of association while they are strangers to its
^spirit, would be as powerless to quicken true social life β β
As are the blasts of autumn wind,
Which through the withered foHage sing,
To call forth from the sapless boughs
The bloom and verdure of the spring.
Part II.
THE ECONOMICAL BASIS OF
CO-OPERATION.
PART II.
Chapter IV.
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
COMPETITION has been more than once admitted
in these pages to be a law of nature, a part of the
" struggle for existence," by which all nature is
pervaded, applied especially to those conscious agents
who can compete with each other for the occupation of
any locality, or the enjoyment of any object which more
than one of them may desire to occupy or enjoy. The
more varied the faculties, the more diversified the
surroundings of any such creatures, the stronger must be
the tendencies to competition called forth in the beings
thus circumstanced; whose desires must in such a case
in truth compete with each other, the stronger expelling,
or, at least, overpowering the weaker. Man possesses
the most varied faculties of any inhabitant of the earth,
and from his facilities of locomotion, and the ability
gradually acquired by him through the progress of
invention, to transport the produce of one part of the
earth to other distant parts, can, in a certain sense,
make the whole earth part of his surroundings. In man,
therefore, this competition of desires naturally rises to
greater intensity than in any other creature known to us.
But, in itself, so long as any body of men remains in the
natural state of every animal capable of existing, namely,
the state of having access to the means of subsistence,
the natural law works for good, by tending to diversify
64 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
the pleasures, and through this diversity to stimulate the
industrial activity of the human beings subject to it.
In speaking of the good attending the natural com-
petition of various desires among men who have at their
command ready access to the means of subsistence, I
assume the absence of violence. Of course, I am aware
that the assumption is very far from borne out by the
history of mankind. Only very slowly, and still im-
perfectly, has the natural disposition of the stronger
animal to seize on what it desires by pure strength been
brought under such control as exists within the civilised
States of the present day; where, however, the good is
qualified by evil in another way soon to be stated.
But, assuming the co-existence of these two conditions β
the absence of violence and command of the means of
subsistence β I say the competition of desires among men
would be essentially beneficial; because, admitting of
satisfaction only by exchange, it stimulates the inventive
faculties of one man to produce something desired by
other men, that he may be able, by satisfying their
desires, to satisfy his own. For thus is overcome that
apathetic indolence into which savage races are prone to
fall, shutting themselves out by it from intellectual
progress, and consequently, too, from moral progress,
which is impossible when the intellect slumbers. Thus,
too, with the growth of more numerous wants may arise
also that greater refinement, which is the condition of
aesthetic taste.
Long periods may elapse in the history of a nation
during which this natural competition of desires continues
to operate to the general advantage of the citizens. It
continues thus to operate so long as, at least in the great
majority of cases, there is no question of the means of
subsistence depending on the power of individuals to
exchange the produce of their own labour for that of
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 65
other men; so long as the competition is between desires,
affecting only the enjoyments of life, but not the means
of living; which, therefore, cannot be said to exercise a
pressure greater than that healthy stimulus to inventive
action above noticed. But, as population multiplies,
as the cultivation of the ground, followed as it always has
been in some shape or other by its appropriation, shuts
out an ever-increasing number of the population from the
direct natural means of obtaining their subsistence, and
drives them to depend for their living upon their success
in exchanging what they make only in order to exchange
it, the natural law of competition begins to show its
inadequacy to satisfy the requirements of reason.
Instead of stimulating the industry of the worker to
make it more fruitful of benefit to him, by the competi-
tion of his own desires against each other, it begins to
lessen the benefits of that industry by the competition of
one worker against another, to obtain the means of living
by underselling each other's labour. The process once
begun has a continual tendency to extend, and draw in
perpetually an increasing proportion of the population
under the wheels of a competition which has ceased to be
beneficial 'to them, unless from any cause the demand
for work should grow faster than the number of workers,
when the competition for their work would begin to tell
in their favour.
Now, the chance here stated must mainly depend upon
two circumstances β (i) the rate at which capital tends to
accumulate in any country; (2) the degree of enterprise
in its employment existing in that country; while this
very accumulation and enterprise, so long as they are
employed β not on account of the whole body of workers,
but b}' individuals who endeavour to make out of them a
special advantage for themselves β have a constant
tendency to destroy, by the competition among the
E
66 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
employers, the benefits which, in another way, they tend
to produce.
When the channels to which the emploj'ment of capital
shall be directed are determined, not with a view to the
general interest by a careful study β of the existing
demand for any class of articles, of the means of supph ing
it, of the probability of an increase of consumption in that
class of objects, and of the prevention of waste in making
articles not wanted β but simpty by the expectation
entertained by this or that person, or group of persons, of
reaping individuall}' some special benefit from the
enterprises, the determination what enterprise shall be
selected is very likely to be based on the knowledge or
belief that someone else has made large profits out of that
particular work; and, therefore, that there is what is
called an "opening for business" β in other words, a
chance of snatching some of these profits away b}' offering
to the purchaser somewhat lower terms. Now, in order to
unite these cheaper rates with the desired profit, there is
one easy way β to diminish the cost of production. Hence
there arises out of the struggle of the owners of capital
amongst each other for possession of the branches of
business believed to be the most profitable, a tendency to
reduce the wages of labour, to which the workers,
notwithstanding all attempts to arrest it by union for this
purpose, may find themselves driven to submit, after
vainly using up all their own resources in a fruitless
resistance, on the principle that half a loaf is better than
no bread. The histor}' of the coal, iron, and cotton
industries, during the last four or five years, furnishes a
strikirg illustration of the proposition advanced here;
which must not be confused with a denial of the great
benefits that have been conferred on mankind through
individual enterprise, where it has been directed to
perfecting and developing new processes or discoveries.
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 67
and thus has multiplied the means of human well-being,
by employing the labour saved to produce some desirable
object hitherto unknown.
But this great triumph of human genius, the progress
of invention, with its marvellous results, multiplied as they
have been of late years with a rapidity unknown, I may
say undreamt of, in former ages, furnishes an additional
and very striking illustration how impracticable it is to
found a human society satisfactory to the demands of
reason, upon the action of the natural law of competitive
struggle left to itself. It is almost impossible to estimate,
with any approach to accuracy, the increase in the
productive powers of the inhabitants of Great Britain
during the last one hundred years, arising from the
introduction of steam as a motive power, and the growth
of machinery connected with its use. Still more difficult
would it be to estimate what might have been done by the
use of this " ministry of fire," to which, pace Mr. Ruskin,
I look as the great magician who shall charm away in the
world of harmony the ills which he produces in a world of
struggle β if his mighty agency had been systematically
used for the common welfare as reason would prescribe.
But a powerful picture has lately been drawn, not by one
person, but by a Committee of the American Social Science
Association, in a paper read at its meeting at Cincinnati,
in 1878, of the progress of machinery in the United States,
where the changes brought about have been more rapid,
and, therefore, more startling than with us ; while the fact
that in the United States enormous tracts of fertile land
are still uncultivated; that, in the cultivated parts the
laws of primogeniture and practice of entail do not prevail ;
that no vast bodies of men are withdrawn from produc-
tion while maintained at the cost of the producer, either
for military or naval purposes ; and that there is no fetter
on individual enterprise, which is generally remarkably
68 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
active, makes the picture of the results which have come
from the progress of invention under its influence the more
striking.
At the commencement of the present* century very little labour-
saving machinery was in use. Then the farmer's best plough was of
wood, iron-shod, drawn by from one to four or more yoke of oxen;
one man to drive the team, another to hold the plough, and often
another to keep it clear. Result: say about li acres ploughed
per day, by, say, two men. Now are used ploughs in gangs of two
or three, or more, of polished steel, drawn by horses, controlled
by one man who rides at ease. Result : five or more acres per day,
ploughed by a single man, and much better than by our fathers.
Or steam is used, with still greater results, ploughing an acre or
more an hour.
Our fathers sowed their seed by hand, taken from a bag slung
from their shoulders. Now a machine, controlled by any boy who
can drive a single horse, will do more than three times the work in
a given time, and far better. Similar changes have been made in
all the preliminary processes of agriculture.
When the grain was ripe for the harvest our fathers would go
into the field with their sickles in their hands, and a long day of
hard work would result in one-fourth of an acre of grain per man.
Now, a man will take a reaping machine drawn by one or two
pairs of horses, and reap his twenty or more acres per day, one
man now doing the work of eighty but about fifty years ago.
In the case of the sickle the day of our fathers would- exceed,
rather than fall short of, fifteen hours. But I estimate upon ten
hours for a work day.
The reapers here referred to are those in common use in New
England and other places where the land is quite uneven, rough,
or hilly, having cutters about five feet long; but for the great
grain regions of the West, for the smooth, flat, or prairie lands of
Illinois, or other sections of the valley of the Mississippi, and in
California, cutters are made and in common use of loft. and 12ft.
in length; some 15ft. and i8ft., and even 24ft. long are used,
cutting swathes of these widths, and proportionately is the
reaping hastened and muscular labour displaced.
Our fathers bound the wheat in sheaves after it was cut, and
stored it in their barns for the winter's work for themselves, their
boys, and their men-servants, in thrashing it with flails. Now,
machines are sent into the field, which gather it up and pile it in
* 19th century.
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 69
great heaps, where it is taken by other machines, and in a few
hours, or a few daj^s at most, it is thrashed, winnowed, sacked, and
ready for market.
But in California machines are made and used which at one and
the same time, in moving over the field, cut the grain, thrash,
winnow, and sack it, and the filled sacks are left in rows, where,
but a few moments before, stood the golden grain, untouched,
inviting to its harvest.
For our great (Indian) corn crop the corn planter is used, as is
the seed sower for similar grain. Then, instead of using the hoe,
as did our fathers in working their corn, where a man found a hard
and long dav's work in hoeing half an acre, a man or boy will now
seat himself upon a cultivator, with a pair of horses before him,
and work an acre an hour; one man now doing with this machine
as much as could be done by twenty with hoes. Please bear in
mind also, that the ploughing with our modern ploughs, and
cultivating and working with our modern cultivators and harrows,
so improve the condition of the ground as to make a marked
increase in the crop. After the corn was harvested our fathers
would turn a shovel upside down over a box, sit on it, and, drawing
the ears of corn with vigour across its edge, shell 20 bushels in a
long day; and hard work it was. Now, two men will take the
ordinary improved corn-sheller, and shell 24 bushels in an hour,
or 240 bushels in a short day ; leaving out of account the difference
in the length of the day's work, this shows that six times as much
is now done with tliis machine as our fathers could do by the old
methods. With the three classes of horse power machines, two
men will shell 1,500, 2,000, and 3,000 bushels respectively per
day of ten hours ; one man and machine now doing the work of 37^,
50, and 75 men respectively, without machinery.
So also in our important hay crop, the machine power is first put
in, one man with team cutting as much grass as twelve men with
scythes ; then follows the tedder, with a man and horse to scatter
and turn it, to facilitate its drying, doing the work of 20 men with
the hand fork, and so much better as to reduce the time between
cutting and harvesting at least twenty-four hours. Then follows
the horse-rake, raking 20 acres a day, while a man with the ordinary
hand-rake can rake but two. Here the machine and man can do
the work of 12, 20, and 10 men respectively with the old appliances.
In all these operations in agriculture there is a displacement of
labour ; by improvements in machinery, of from one doing the work
of three in sowing the grain to 12^ in ploughing, and 384 in cutting
yo The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
grain at harvest, according to the work done, and the class of
machinery used for the particular operation.
And machinery digs potatoes, milks the cows, makes the butter
and cheese. There is now nothing in food production without the
labour-saving process.
Our fathers, with all their boys and men-servants, had a full
winter's work in thrashing their wheat, shelling their corn, &c.,
and getting the small products to the mill or the market. Now,
after machinery has done its work in the field and barn, the iron
horse drags the product over its roads of steel for hundreds and
thousands of miles, at less cost and in less time than it took our
fathers to transport the same to distances not greater than fifty
miles. Upon those roads where our fathers had hundreds and
thousands of men and teams constantly employed in hauling
products to market and goods to the country, nowhere now is a
man or team so employed β men and animals are released from all
that labour β -new forces take up the work, guided and controlled
by comparatively few minds and hands. Even our cattle and
hogs are no longer required to walk to the shambles; the iron
horse takes them to the butcher, labour-saving processes slaughter
them, dress them, prepare their flesh for the market, for the
table, and stop only at mastication, deglutition, and digestion.
To-day, one man with the aid of machinery will produce as
much food as could be produced by the naked muscle and tools of
a score of our fathers. There is now no known limit to the power
of its production. In consumption there is no corresponding
increase. Our fathers required, obtained, and used as many
ounces of food per day as we do. It might have been different in
kind and quality β nothing more.
Not long ago the farm found constant employment for all the
sons of the farm and many of the cliildren of the city. Now, the
farm furnishes employment for but a very small number of its sons,
and that for a very few weeks or months at most in the year, and for
the rest work must be had in the cities and towns, or not at all.
Here we find the true reason for the stagnation in the popula-
tion of the older agricultural sections, and abnormal growth and
crowding of the cities.
In the time of our mothers they, with all their daughters, had an
abundance of employment in their homes. Throughout our
country every farmhouse possessed its looms and spinning-wheels.
From the sheep reared upon the farm was the wool taken and
carded by our mothers ready for spinning. The fiax grown upon
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 71
the place was b\' our fathers broken and hatcheled by hand, and
made ready by the women-folk, who, day after day, week after
week, month in and month out, for fully or more than one-half of
the year, were all constantly employed in carding, in spinning, and
in weaving the woollen and linen cloths that clothed the family, or
were traded at the store for tea and coffee, and sugar, or other
necessaries or luxuries of life. The household music of that time
was the hum of the large spinning-wheel, that rose and fell as the
spinner receded or advanced, in concert with the more steady
flow of the tones of the flax wheel, as, with foot on treadle, other
members of the family, or women-servants, spun the flax which
was changed to linen yarn or thread. At the same time the
constantly-repeated rattle of the shuttle could be heard as the
dexterous hand sent it flying through the warp to add another
thread to the web, followed by the stroke of the swinging beam.
These operations were in constant progress in all the farmhouses,
and in a very large portion of the town houses.
The never-ending labour of our grandmothers must not be
forgotten, who, with nimble needle, knit our stockings and mittens.
The knitting-needle was in as constant play as their tongues, whose
music ceased only under the power of sleep. All, from the youngest
to the oldest, were abundantly employed, and all decently clothed.
Now all is changed. Throughout the length and breadth of our
land the hand-card, the spinning-wheel, and the handloom are to be
found only as articles without use, kept as curiosities of a past age.
Now the carding machine, machine spindles, and power looms
have taken their places, and the labour of one pair of hands,
guiding and controlling machinery, turns out a hundred yards of
cloth where but one yard was produced by our mothers.
The occupation of our grandmothers also is gone ; no more does
the knitting-needle keep time to the music of their tongues. The
knitting machine, in the hands of one little girl, will do more work
than fifty grandmothers with their needles.
The consequence is, there is no more work at home for our
farmers' daughters; they also must seek the towns and cities,
where they find their sisters equally idle, and in thousands are
found upon the streets spinning yarn and weaving webs, the warp
of which is not of wool, neither is the woof of linen.
So the sewing machine has been generally introduced, and where
formerly all the sisterhood were expert seamstresses, now many
hardly know the use of the needle; the machine relieves them of
this labour also.
72 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
Our fathers in building would begin at the stump, and with
their hands work out all the processes of construction. With their
whip-saws they would turn the logs into boards ; they would hew
the timber, rive and shave the shingles; dress the tongues and
groove the flooring; dress and prepare all the lumber for doors,
windows, and wainscoting; make the doors and windows with
their frames; work out mouldings, ornaments, and finishing of
all kinds. With their hands and feet they worked the clay for
their bricks, and moulded them by hand. A house carpenter
would then, with his hands, from the forest, build and finish a
house from sill to ridge-pole, and was furnished with all the tools
to do it with, many of which he also made.
Now all these various processes are wrought out by machinery.
Machinery makes the bricks and saws the logs; the planing
machine does the tonguing and grooving; the moulding machine
makes the moulding; the doors, the windows, the blinds, the
shingles β all, everything is done by machinery, and muscle is
required only to put the parts together and in their places.
Machinery does nine-tenths of the labour, and muscle the little
remainder.
We will note the work of some half-dozen of the machines now
in general use in building and carpentry. The circular saw,
controlled by one man, will saAv more in one hour than can be done
in ten hours with a hand saw ; with the moulding machine one man
can work out more mouldings than ten men by hand ; in planing,
the planing macliine, controlled by one man, will do the work of
fifteen or twenty men with hand planes; in cutting mortises and
making tenons, one man with a machine will do the work of ten
men bj' the old methods ; with a jig saw he will do the work of eight
men with the old tools ; and with the hand saw will do the work of
twelve men by the old methods. These facts show a general
displacement of muscle by machinery of at least 90 per cent in our
great building interests.
The Crispins of our fathers' time were thorough boot and shoe
makers, and a numerous class. But now, after labour-saving
processes have killed the ox and skinned him, and tanned his hide
and dressed it, it does seem as if the leather was put in at one end
of a machine, and at the other end is delivered a shower of boots
and shoes, caught by girls and boys.
Until within the last twenty years all the watches worn in our
country were of European hand make, mostly English and Swiss β -
a business in those countries that employed thousands. But within
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 73
the time mentioned, in Waltham, Mass., and in Elgin, 111., two
establishments commenced making machine watches, followed
quite recently by some half-dozen other establishments in other
places; and now in this country there is no more sale for hand-
made watches. Swass and English are alike knocked out of time;
large communities in those countries are in great want β absolutely
destitute because of our machine movement. The hand watch-
maker also must find other employment, if he can.
Even the graders of our towns, cities, and roads are displaced by
machinerv. The pick and shovel, wielded by brawny arms, until
within a few years were the only forces used. Now the steam
paddy displaces brawn ; the pick and shovel are too costly and too
slow. In San Francisco its hills, covering miles of territory, have
been removed by labour-saving processes. The steam paddy,
controlled by two men, digs down and removes the hills at the
rate of two or three scoops to the cartload, and then in trains
of a dozen or more cars are run to and dumped into the bays and
hollows to be filled, compelling thousands of muscular workmen,
with their picks and shovels, horses and carts, to find other
employment.
Twenty-five years ago the miner in California and Australia
washed his gold in a pan, or in a cradle into which he had placed
a couple of shovelsful of earth, rocking the cradle with one hand
and pouring in water with the other. Now, the gold miner
conducts the water from some high point to a favourable position
over his placer, giv ng a large fall, and from that position in hose
to the washings, where, rushing with irresistible power through a
small nozzle, it is turned against the solid hills of dirt, gravel,
stone, and cement, which it cuts down, dissolves, and through
sluices carries miles away to a favourable place for dumping,
leaving the gold deposited in the sluice. In this manner hills 300
and 400 feet high, of the hardness of stone, melt and disappear like
a bank of snow before the summer's sun ; half-a-dozen men, by this
labour-saving process, doing the work that would require an army
with picks, shovels, and cradles only.
Now, let us see what have been the general effects which have
resulted from the use of labour-saving machinery'. I will briefly
sum them up in a few distinct conclusions.
I. It has broken up and destroyed our whole system of agri-
culture as practised bj' our fathers, which required the whole time
and attention of all the sons of the farm and many from the towns,
in the nevej-ending duties of food production^ and has driven them
74 ^^'^ Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
to the towns and cities to hunt for employment, or remain in great
part idle.
2. It has broken up and destroyed our whole system of house-
hold and family manufactures, as done by our mothers, when all
took part in the labour and shared in the product, to the comfort of
all; and has compelled the daughters of our country and towns to
factory operations for ten or twelve hours a day in the manufacture
of cloth they may not wear, though next to nakedness in the
shivering blast ; or to the city to ply their needles for eighteen or
twenty hours a day, in hunger and cold ; or to the street in thou-
sands, spinning yarns and weaving webs that become their shrouds.
3. It has broken up and destroyed our whole system of working
in wood and iron and leather in small shops of one, two, or it may be
half-a-dozen workmen, in every town, village, or hamlet in the
country, with blacksmith shops in near neighbourhood upon every
road, where every man was a workman who could take the rough
iron or unshaped wood and uncut leather and carry it through all
its operations, until a thoroughly finished article was produced,
and has compelled all to production in large shops, where
machinery has minutely divided all work, requiring only knowledge
and strength enough to attend a machine that will heel shoes, or cut
nails, or card wool, or spin yarn, or do some other small fraction of
a complete whole.
4. It has broken up and destroyed our whole system of
individual and independent action in production and manufacture,
where any man who possessed a trade by his own hands could at
once make that trade his support and means of advancement,
free of control by any other man, and has compelled all working
men and women to a system of communal work, where, in hundreds
and thousands, they are forced to labour with no other interest in
the work than is granted to them in the wages paid for so much
toil; with no voice, no right, no interest in the product of their
hands and brains, but subject to the uncontrolled interest and
caprice of those who, too often, know no other motive than that of
avarice.
5. It has so enormously developed the power of production as to
far outstrip man's utmost power of consumption, enabling less than
one-half of the producing and working classes, working ten hours
a day, to produce vastly more than a market can be found for;
filling our granaries, warehouses, and depots, and stores, with
enormous amounts of products of every description, for which there
is no sale, though never before offered at such low prices, with
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 75
multitudes of men and women in the greatest want β being without
food, clothing, sh.;lter β without work, and consequently without
means to obtain the simplest necessaries of life.
6. It has thrown out of employment substantially one-half of
the working classes. In fact, it has utterly destroyed all regular
or constant employment for any considerable class in any industry,
and is constantly and steadily displacing able and willing men, and
filling their places with women and children; leaving no place to
be filled by, and no demand for, the constantly-increasing numbers
developed in our increase of population, in this way adding to the
number of the unemployed. It takes married women in thousands
from their maternal cares and duties, and children but little more
than infants from the schools, putting them to the care of
machinery and its work, until quite one-third of the machine
tenders in our country are women and children : thus breaking
down the mothers, slaughtering the infants, and giving
employment to any who obtain it only upon such conditions of
uncertainty, insecurity, competition with the workless, and
steady reduction in wages, as create a constant struggle to obtain
the little work they do have, and get such compensation for it as
will barely support life even when in health.
These points show clearly the changes which have taken place
in all our industries within a period of little more than half a
century β changes greater then the world has before known during
its whole existence.
Surely such a picture as this, relating to a country where
circumstances are at present so favourable for securing the
welfare of the masses, as is the case in the United States β
a country not long since regarded as the paradise of the
working man β should lead to the most serious considera-
tion whether the universal freedom to struggle can
produce the universal good often ascribed to it ; whether
this " law of nature " can be the true law of life for
reasonable beings, and is not rather a law to be studied
and made subservient to human progress, but not one
which can form the solid basis of a human society.
It is my position that this is the case β that human work
ought to be carried on upon a system not of struggle but of
fellowship, where the results of the common labour are
76 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
distributed with equity, and the conditions of life generally
are wisely adapted to facilitate the use of these results in
the way which will enable the mass of the population to
derive from them the largest attainable measure of
advantage.
It is my position that arrangements may be made by
which such effects as those above indicated can be pro-
duced, without in any way interfering with the liberty of
anyone to deal with their own propert}^ as they please, so
that they observe the general conditions necessary for the
common welfare; without any attempt to effect an
"equal division of unequal earnings"; simply by
studying the natural law of competition to determine how
to obtain from it the good which it may yield, without the
evil now accompanying it. Let us examine this matter
calmly.
To what cause have we found that the injurious effects
traced out above are attributable ? Mainly to this : that
the progress of industry, when we allow it to adjust itself
by the natural law of competition left unrestrained,
separates a perpetually increasing proportion of the
population from the natural condition of life β the direct
access to that minister of the Divine bounty, our common
mother Earth, to obtain that gift of food which she is not
niggardly in bestowing when applied to in a fitting
manner.
That the appropriation of the land by individual
ownership will certainly lead to this result where that
appropriation is left at liberty to settle itself, we see from
our own experience. That this effect cannot be prevented,
even by an interference with the lights of ownership
so considerable as prevails in France, where the law
apportions the lands owned by anyone at his death among
his children, we see by its effects there. For, though this
law has been general in France for nearly a century, and
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. yy
the practice of sub-division in many districts was in full
force in the sixteenth century, and has been carried to an
extent very injurious to the effective cultivation of the
soil, which, with a climate better suited than that of
England to the production of wheat, does not vield on an
average two-thirds of the amount of English produce;
still, the total number of landowners did not exceed one-
tenth of the whole population (3,800,000), according to
the return of 1866 when Alsace and Lorraine were still
included in France, of whom 3,236,000 were actual land
occupiers; while the tendency of the rural districts to
become less populous from migration to the towns, so
marked in England, and which the statement above
quoted shows to be rapidly increasing in the United
States, is beginning to show itself in France also.
Now, if the case be as is here stated; if the tendency
of competitive industry is to separate men from the
natural source of life, and the injurious effect upon the
worker is directly traceable to this separation, can we
show that in co-operative trade and industry there is any
natural tendency in the opposite direction ? any mode of
action which, counteracting this injurious effect of com-
petition, may, as it becomes general, leave us in possession
of the good arising from this natural force without its
evil ? I think that such a natural tendency may be pointed
out, and I will endeavour to bear out this position by
shortly tracing the way in which co-operation can deal
with the competition of existing society, in which, clearly,
it has to grow up if it ever takes its place as an important
influence in human affairs. This method essentially con-
sists in using the resources put into our hands by the
present system, in order gradually to replace it by another
where the struggle of interests shall give place to their
reasonable adjustment. To begin with the theory of
co-operative distribution, what is it but a union of
78 The Relation of Co-operation to Corn-petition.
consumers, who say : why should we run about to this or
that man, who, for his own advantage, undertakes to
supply what we want, and is under continual temptation
to defraud us, because his interests and ours are opposed ?
Whv not unite to obtain what we want on the best terms,
namely, by paying ready cash for it, through persons
appointed by ourselves, in whom we begin by having
confidence, and all of whose acts are open to us ; with
whom we make definite agreements for payment for theii
services; and whom, if there is ever occasion for calling
their conduct in question, we can remove ?
Plainly, here is a step, and a very important step, made
towards the substitution of reasonable accord instead of
competitive struggle in a class of transactions of daily
occurrence, yet a step such that its success is entirely
within the power of any moderately numerous number
of persons, who have the good sense to take it, and the
patience to persevere in what they have undertaken.
This is the first step to get -free from the meshes of com-
petition. It is a step in no degree involving any loss of
the advantages which competition may have brought
within our reach in obtaining the articles to be distributed,
or the neglect of any means of economising labour, or
increasing convenience or efficiency in the process,
introduced by it. It is simply saying: this act of our
daily lives shall be performed so as to bring with it the
least of cost and the most of confidence attainable ; and,
as a most valuable means to this end, under the condition
of cash payments, with no capital needlessly lying out
unproductively ; no bad debts swelling the cost to those
who pay by the loss from those who do not.
Now, on this sohd foundation, when it has attained a
breadth proportioned to its solidity by the multiplication
of separate centres of supply, it becomes possible to build
with equal solidity, and without any departure from the
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 79
accustomed methods of business the further step of a
central association, which may be to -the separate stores
what they have been to these individual members β the
means of concentrating their purchases, and thus enabling
them to be made on the best terms, from their magnitude,
and by the best judges, from the greater power of securing
the services of the persons best qualified to judge, which
one wholesale establishment must possess over a number
of retail establishments. While associations of this kind
may, by a further application of the same principle of
union, be federated among themselves for any purposes
going beyond the separate resources of any one of them,
such as the importing any of the articles they require in
ships of their own; and thus, without departing from the
usual habits of competitive business, may apply for the
advantage of the co-operative union whatever arrange-
ments competitive trade has brought men to use in these
businesses for their private advantage.
With this union for the means of transit, which may
apply to land as well as water, we come pretty well to the
end of what co-operation has to do in the province of
distribution. But men cannot generally live on dis-
tributing. Distribution rests on the previous process of
producing what can be distributed. I proceed to show
how co-operative union can help us to escape from the
competitive struggle, in this primary sphere of production,
with the like prospects of general advantage which
accompany its operations in the secondary' sphere of
distribution. It acts by a course of operations of which
the wholesale centre of supply forms the natural pivot,
and the rule to be adopted in fixing or settling the price
of the articles distributed, an institution not yet noticed,
furnishes the natural lever.
To commence production successfully at the present
day, the producer needs an assured market. To carry on
8o The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
production at all he needs capital. And for the workers
to carry it on so as to derive from it all the advantages
that their work can give them, they require to get this
capital on easy terms, i.e., at moderate rates of interest.
Now, to get capital at moderate rates of interest, it is
indispensable to give its owners security that the payments
shall continue. Produce this conviction, and experience
proves conclusively that in a country such as Great Britain
the rate at which capital can be obtained is so moderate
that it ceases to form any burden upon industry. Now,
a body of distributive societies, united by such a central
association as above described, have in this centre the
natural means of ascertaining what is their total demand
for any manufactured articles which they can produce
and consume; and when that consumption rises to a
height to support a manufactory of these articles, they
have in them the means of providing the first condition
of success, a market for their produce, where they may
anticipate at least a fair trial.
But further, this machinery of distribution may supply
them with the means of obtaining the capital required
at the lowest cost allowed by the circumstances, by
means of the savings on their own consumption. If
they provide that the articles obtained by them through
their unions for distribution shall be sold at ordinary
prices, and return to their members the surplus, after
providing for the total cost including the interest on the
capital employed in this operation, as dividends on their
purchases instead of by an immediate reduction of prices,
they will gain two great advantages β
I. They can ensure the division of these savings down
to the last farthing, without leaving, in the charge made
to provide for expense, a margin which shall be a tempta-
tion to any body of shareholders to appropriate it to
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 8i
themselves, and thus practically obtain a benefit at the
cost of their neighbours.
2. They will create, in the permanent incomes resting
on their own consumption, a fund which, used by a union
of these societies as a guarantee for the interest of the
capital they may desire to appropriate to any productive
works, would provide a security sufficient to enable them
to obtain this capital on the best terms that the state of
the money market in the country where the}' were formed
would allow. While the produce of these works would
supply them with the resources for paying the charge,
and relieve the guaranteeing income from any real
burden.
Here, then, without departing at all from the social
conditions created by the present world of competition,
adhering to the prices fixed, and the modes of conducting
exchanges established by it, we see the way opening to
the quiet, gradual introduction of that world of co-
operative union, where the mass of the population shall
no longer be shut out from the natural source of sub-
sistence, and all the advantages of wealth and the civilising
influences of high cultivation may be brought within the
reach of all men. For the co-operators, having by union
attained a market in their own requirements for what
they desire to produce, and the facility for getting
capital on the easiest terms on the security of their own
consumption, would obviously have in their own hands
the power of regulating the mode in which work should
be conducted, and its profits dealt with. While securing
that this work was honestly done; that they got full
value for what they paid, and escaped entirely from the
dominion of adulteration and shams, and providing for the
greatest economy in production by arresting the forma-
tion of unnecessary centres of supply, they might do for
the worker what M. Godin has done at Guise β destroy
82 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
the antagonism between labour and capital, and gradually
fill up the gulf between rich and poor by the insensible
effect of institutions where the wealth created by work
may do for the worker all that, by the wise use of it, can
be done.
This might be effected even if the laws of England were
far less favourable to associated enterprise than they
actually are under the present law, which clothes societies
of working men with all the rights of bodies corporate,
together with the right of holding land in any quantity.
It is clear that societies formed for productive purposes
under the conditions above supposed might, as they
multiplied and became wealthy, and spread over the
country, combine with their manufacture those pursuits
of horticulture and agriculture, on whose advantages
the late Mr. Gladstone once dwelt with his usual
eloquence ; and open the way, by the pleasant conditions
of residence under which their work was carried on, for
that social union with the classes now separated from
them, which the progress of competitive industry, with
its tendency to crowd the masses of the population into
cities, makes perpetually more remote, by destroying all
the natural friendly ties of residence in the same locality.
This might be done, too, under our existing laws relating
to land without any change; requiring nothing more
than preparedness to buy the land perpetually offered
for sale. And it might be done with far greater facility
in a country where land is habitually held and disposed
of in large quantities than would be the case in a country
like France, where, to acquire an estate of a few hundred
acres, might need a long process of purchases and
exchanges of land bought in fragments. We approach
in this picture a state of things so far removed from what
now prevails in a societ}^ of rural districts which the
progress of invention is perpetually depriving of their
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 83
population, and cities overflowing with a population
which the same progress is continually depriving of the
means of subsistence, that those to whom it is presented
as an accomplished fact, rather than as a process gradually
accomphshing itself by natural tendencies, may be apt
to greet it with that cry of " Utopia " with which selfish
indifference is always ready to throw cold water on large
proposals of social improvement ; if not by that favourite
stalking-horse of pessimism, the more rapid increase of
men than of food β of which I will say only that a race
among whom cultivation and the means of well-being
were generally diffused would be able to deal with it in a
satisfactory manner far better than our present popula-
tion.
But on what, after all, does the operation I have here
endeavoured to depict rest, but on the assumption that
bodies of men, collectively acting for their mutual advan-
tage, would do for their joint benefit what we find that
individually men are disposed to do for their private
benefit, when competitive industry places the means of
so doing in their hands. Have we not seen generation
after generation of manufacturers, when by their success-
ful industry they have rolled up from the profits of their
business accumulated stores of capital, investing them
in the purchase of land, and erecting thereon for them-
selves and their families stately dwellings, where wealth
was made to minister in a thousand ways to the means of
enjoyment ? If, then, the mass of the working popu-
lation β those through whose toil this accumulation of
wealth has been made possible β find the way by asso-
ciation among themselves to make the source of riches
flow over for their joint benefit, why should it seem
strange to suppose that they too may seek collectively
to invest their accumulated savings in the land, which
to them might be not mere acres cultivated by others
84 The Relation of Co-operation to Competition.
who had to sell the crops to pay their rent, but the site
of homes where these workers themselves dwelt β homes
where the pleasures of the social intercourse now afforded
only in towns could be combined with the pleasures of
that rural life from which the towns of our industrial
England ever more and more shut out their inhabitants ?
Even at the present day Lancashire and Yorkshire are
full of mills and factories, which by their situation would
offer all the facilities for such a combination of rural and
urban existence, if the profits derived from their work
were concentrated and applied in the way now indicated,
to promote the well-being of the workers. The spread
of rail and tram ways makes the raising of such centres
of industry more easy every day. Surely, then, it is a
reasonable hope that, as the workers obtain through
association increased means of producing such results,
there would be a corresponding increase in the results
produced ; so that the progress of invention and accumu-
lation of wealth would tend to redistribute over the
country the population which this same progress now
banishes from it; not as the semi-pauperised tillers of
cottier lots, which they were too scattered and too poor
to cultivate properly, but as the wealthy and intelligent
inhabitants of unitary dwellings, where all the resources
of agricultural and horticultural science would be applied
to make the produce of the earth keep pace with the
produce of the industries by which its owners were
enriched.
That cities would disappear I do not suppose. Em-
poriums of commerce, centres of education, centres
of art would, no doubt, exist where circumstances
favoured their existence ; but they would be transformed ;
resembling Dr. Richardson's City of Health rather
than our present deserts of brick and mortar. A
thickly peopled country would be something like what
The Relation of Co-operation to Competition. 85
may be seen now along the shores of the lake of Zurich,
only in greater perfection : a succession of palaces, each
with its farms, gardens, and orchards, interspersed with
centres of work, all smokeless ; and with now and then
more thickly aggregated masses of a population who,
unlike the residents of our present towns, would never be
so closely crowded together as to lose the pleasure of life
in their search after the means of living. This would
be the outcome of a co-operative world sucli as I conceive
it.
I stop here, not because the subject-matter does not
invite me to go on, but because any attempt to trace
out the relations subsisting between the different pro-
ductive bodies which might be formed by such means
as I have attempted to trace, carries us into a state
of things so far removed from the present state that
the description may be charged with being as impossible
as it must be imaginary. But that it must be imaginary
does not prove it to be impossible.
I have desired to point out what, in the present
competitive world, could be effected without any depar-
ture from the usual conditions of business, simply by
using the results of this business for the general good,
instead of letting them be appropriated to individual
advantage. I have endeavoured to show that co-
operation, in the two principles traced out, both con-
sistent with the ordinary course of competitive industry'
β the union of consumers to secure the greatest attainable
economy in distribution, and the union of producers
to make the work by which they live as rich in benefits
to them as it is capable of being β possesses the means
of solving that social question which now " perplexes
nations with the fear of change," and is growing with
every returning year to more alarming proportions;
the upshot of the whole process being that it would
86 The Relation of Co-operation io-Competition.
gradually bring men, in the fulness of knowledge and
the indefinite increase of wealth, back to that natural
constitution of things where competition, being directed
not to secure subsistence but to multiply the means of
enjoyment, would be seen to have a fitting place in the
" best possible world " of Divine order.
Note on Natural Law. β The position taken up in this chapter in regard to the
" Law of Competition," in truth, assumes only that the same principles which apply
to all other so-called Laws of Nature apply to it. All such laws have a natural
sphere of action, in which they are beneficial to man; and if he passes beyond this
sphere, will produce results working to him injury, to be avoided only by carefully
studying their action, in order to preserve what is beneficial, and avert what is injurious.
For instance, our powers of motion and exertion depend upon the fact that the earth
pulls us to itself, in virtue of the so-called Law of Gravitation. But if we try to leave
the natural sphere of activity allotted to us β the dry land β and would swim like fish
or fly like birds; or if, upon the land, we seek to move large masses instead of contenting
ourselves with moving our own bodies, the force of gravity will drown or crush us, unless
by constructing boats, or balloons, or cranes, we make it serve our purposes. But what
everyone admits to be reasonable in the case of other " Natural Laws," is disregarded
in respect of the " Law of Competition," which is often presented as if it were a Divine
teacher, with a special mission to construct human society upon a solid basis; a teacher
imder whose guidance we ought to place ourselves, in humble confidence that he cannot
lead us astray. It is my position that this is a total error, and that competition is
simply a natural force which can no more be trusted to construct a true human society
than gravity can be trusted to construct a bridge.
Chapter V.
The Relation of Co-operation to Current
Economic Theories.
TO investigate the different economic theories
current at the present clay in detail, in order
to see how far they agree or disagree with the
principles of co-operative action, would require a volume.
I do not propose to engage in any such task. But as
what is called the science of Political Economy is often,
appealed to β usually with a great deal of ignorance
of what its teachers do say, but not, therefore, with
the less confidence β as if it put an extinguisher on all
schemes of co-operative action, labelling them one and
all as " impracticable," it may be well to consider
generall}- what is the relation of co-operation to these
doctrines. We shall see that, properly speaking, there
can be no antagonism between co-operation and the
doctrines of political economy, because they deal with
distinct subject-matters.
Let us bear in mind what has been more than once
stated, that co-operation is not a theory but a practice.
Co-operation, as it is presented in these pages, is an
attempt made by men profoundly convinced of the
eternal reality of moral truth, to embody the high ideal
of duty in institutions applying to the daily events of
our ordinary lives, in order that thus, goodness may
become more prevalent than it is among men because
its practice will be more easy, and selfishness diminish
because there will be less temptation to it. But the
doctrines of Political Economv, at least of the school
88 The Relation of Co-operation to
best known in England, relate not to the mode in
which men ought to act towards each other, but to the
way in which the}- do commonly act in acquiring wealth,
and to the results which are found to follow -from their
thus acting.
Now, in so far as what man may thus do agrees with
what ought to be done, it is obvious that the co-operator
cannot, as such, have an}- quarrel with the political
economist, whose teachings, like those of any other
scientific teacher who deals with ascertained facts and
logical deductions from them, continually offer to him
much useful information.
On the other hand, in so far as men's present conduct
is not what it ought to be, doctrines concerning their
conduct must of necessit}- cease to apply to persons
whose conduct has changed, and therefore can affect
co-operation only as demonstrations of the evil con-
sequences of drunkenness ma}' affect a man of sober
habits β namely, as a caution into what an abyss of
degradation and wretchedness he would fall if he were
ever betrayed into such habits.
It may be alleged : what you now say in truth admits
the great charge of the political economists against
co-operation β that it is impracticable; a mode of acting
in which men will not act in mnubers sufficient to make
it worth anyone's while to spend his labour in trying
to get them so to act. But from the point of view
taken in these pages of man and his history β from the
conception of it as a moral progress, in which the idea
of human brotherhood gradually becomes evolved as an
active power, by the more complete transformation
of the individual man into the likeness of that Divine
ideal in whose manifestation the change began, or
from any other conception of human history which
sees in it a story of moral progress, the answer is clear.
Current Economic Theories. 89
It is β we do believe, that men's conduct will generally
come to be such as it* ought to be far more generally
than it is now; and we believe that men will be brought
thus to act by means of such institutions as we are
endeavouring to set up. They will require to be formed
by men profoundly impressed by the principle of human
brotherhood, full of faith in its reality and enthusiasm
over the splendid outlook for the future of mankind
offered by it. But in and by them will be gradually
produced among other men, not necessarily a spirit
such as animated these founders, but at least a dis-
position to act in the way recommended, though, perhaps,
with a view to personal advantage.
For this must not be forgotten β any institution
deliberately planned with the object of promoting the
welfare of all whom it may sensibly affect, must, unless
it is very badly adapted for the purpose intended by it,
be advantageous to the great majority of men. Only
that small but strong minority whose talent enables them
to " get on," as it is called, meaning, to get up on other
men's backs and so be raised above the crush, to come to
the front and roll up wealth and the power given by
wealth, may feel themselves placed relatively at a
disadvantage, by having to work for the common good,
and to be contented with the common advantages placed
within the reach of all with such special share of the total
produce as in the general opinion their work deserves,
instead of keeping all that they could get " off their own
bat." Now, no doubt, this powerful minority is the
greatest difficulty in the way of co-operation. Dealing
as it does with matters of business, and requiring, there-
fore, when it advances beyond the comparatively simple
phase of distribution, that union of qualities which go to
make successful traders or manufacturers, it has to induce
such men to devote themselves to its service, with nothing
go The Relation of Co-operaiion to
to offer them but the consciousness that if they give up
much of what they might have acquired, they liave gained
what is more wortli gaining β the conviction of having
faithfully used their powers to promote the well-being of
mankind.
The hope of the success of co-operation depends upon
the assumption that men may be found possessing the
required capacity, to whom such considerations as those
above alluded to are supreme ; who, without demanding,
what it would be suicidal in co-operators to offer, a
personal remuneration rivalling that offered by the
competitive world to those who succeed in serving them-
selves, will give to the service of Humanity by co-operation
work as persevering, and far more faithful than the
competitive world is able to purchase, from men whose
services are determined only by the calculation of
comparative individual advantages. Is this hope
unreasonable ? I conceive that it is not.
The real antagonism between co-operation and the
political economists of the school referred to lies not in
the science of Political Economy, that is, the principles
by which labour has to be carried on in order to acquire
wealth, but in the assumption continually made by this
class of writers that men are beings whose conduct in
commercial matters will always be regulated solely or
mainly with a view to their individual selfish interest;
while the co-operator, though he admits that this tendency
is lamentably prevalent at the present time, looks upon
it as a " false skin," developed to an unnatural vigour by
the effort to cast off a mediaeval worn-out skin, that had
become too tight for the growing energy of the body
social, but destined itself ultimately to slough off, and
give place to the permanent human skin, at once firm
and elastic, which will give free play to the activity of
each individual member, while it holds all firmly
Current Economic Theories. 91
co-ordinated in the unity of the social body. Let us
examine whether this assumption of the co-operator is
justified by ascertainable facts.
It needs, I think, only that we rub the dust from our
eyes and look around us in the world as it is, to see that
assiduous, unwearied, concentrated, enduring labour may
be obtained from men in pursuits which interest their
higher nature, by considerations in which the idea of
working for immediate self-interest becomes entirely
subordinated to other motives. The pursuit of knowledge
of almost any kind, the pursuit of art, the desire to
promote the welfare of other men, whether in an assumed
future existence as among the majority of religious
teachers, or simply from the wish to alleviate human
suffering as among very many members of the medical
profession, are instances of this sort.
The service of the State in all its branches β military,
naval, and civil β -furnishes a similar and, in some respects,
more instructive lesson ; because if we do not usually find
here the enthusiastic devotion often displayed by the
scientific inquirer, the artist, the priest, and the doctor,
we keep within the broad recognised lines of ordinary
human action, so that what it is possible thus to call
forth cannot be considered a flight beyond the common
reach of mankind. Now, if we look at this service of the
State, either in our own or other law-abiding countries,
such as France or Germany, we may satisfy ourselves
that, in order to obtain the best work of men of high
ability, very moderate payments suffice, if they are
combined with two conditions β (i) the certainty of their
continuance except through forfeiture from misconduct;
(2) the prospect of an advance to higher positions,
regulated by merit and not by capricious favour.
But these two conditions a co-operative union would
be peculiarly able to assure, from the very fact of its
92 The Relation of Co-operation to
being essential!}^ a system in which united action would
gradually supersede individual struggles. In such a
S3'stem the uncertain chances of competitive rivalry would
naturally disappear before the establishment of centres
of production and supply, carefully arranged with
reference to the wants of the population, and embracing
districts federated together, so that each centre, while
free to act within its recognised limit, would have the
sphere thus defined undisturbed. Such a system would
naturally lead to the permanence of employments and to
a hierarchy of offices. In truth it would transform the
whole machinery of production and distribution into
public functions, and thus bring into general operation
those motives which are found, in the world as it is, to
be reliable means of combining efficiency in the work
done with economy in the payments made for it.
How large a fund co-operative organisation would have
at its command for reasonably rewarding its most efficient
workers, while yet it gave a largely increased individual
advantage to the mass of the population, the actual
results obtained by co-operative societies in their savings
upon the enormous cost of the present system of com-
petitive distribution show. We find by a wide experience
that, even among the poorer classes, from lo to 12 and
12 1 per cent on the ordinary price of articles in the most
constant demand may be saved, after paying all the
necessary costs, including Β£5 per cent a year on the
capital used, simply by union among the consumers to
do the work of getting what they want to their own
dwellings in the most economical manner for themselves,
instead of allowing anyone who chooses to set up a shop
to compete for their custom.
It can scarcely be doubted that much larger savings
may be made on the dealings in those articles where, the
sale being less quick, the percentage of profit charged on
Current Economic Theories. 93
each article is greater. But, independently of this saving
in the cost of distribution in each particular case, there
is a mode of possible saving, often little thought of, in the
suppression of the needless centres of suppl}- which now
add to the expense without any corresponding increase
of convenience, on which I would say a few words,
availing mvself of the careful computation contained in
reference to London in one of the Central Board tracts
on the " Economy of Co-operation " : β
That there is an enormous waste of labour in the system of
distribution in use at present, anyone may satisfy himself who will
consider what arrangements it would be natural to adopt, if we had
to supply any of our great centres of population with their daily
demands of food, or any other articles of ordinary consumption,
as a commissariat department would supply a camp of equal size.
A person charged with such a duty would, I suppose, begin by
asking what is the furthest distance beyond which no dwelUng
shall be removed from a centre of supph^; and when this had
been settled, would map out the place to be supplied into as many
areas as would be required to secure this end if a centre were
placed in the middle of each, and would set up his establishments
accordingly. Considering the distance at which people are now
content to live from the shops whence the}- get their ordinary
suppHes, I think it may be said that if there was no dwelling more
than one-third of a mile from such a centre, the great majority
being of course much nearer, the object would be sufficiently
attained, in those cases where the demand is most frequent; cases
where the demands were more special or less frequent being met
bv a diminished number of centres, alwa^-s, however, systematically
arranged. That is to say, a city might be suppUed with whatever
its inhabitants ordinarily required in a thoroughly convenient and
efficient manner, if one good centre of supply were placed in the
middle of every square third of a mile β nine in every square
mile β for, in this case, it is clear that the furthest distance which
anyone would have to go from his dwelling to this centre, if the
streets were laid out on a regular plan, would be two sides of a
square, each one-sixth of a mile long. How many of such centres
would be wanted to supply London, and how many actually exist ?
The Post Office Directon,' of London contains the names of all
the traders who carry on business in th*t vast centre of population.
94
The Relation of Co-operation to
classified under their occupations. The map prefixed to the issue
for 1877 represents 108 square miles. But of this space certainly
scarcely more than half is included in the area containing the
dwellings of those traders whose addresses the list furnishes. For
the map takes in a tract of at least an average breadth of a mile,
36 square miles in all, forming suburbs whose residents are not
included in this list. And large deductions must be made from
the remaining 72 miles to allow for the irregularity of outline of
London, and the spaces occupied by the parks and the Thames,
within those portions where the population is dense. Fifty-four
square miles might, I believe, be fairh^ taken as the area to be
dealt with. But, to err on the right side, I will assume this area
to be two-thirds of the whole 72 square miles. The computation
of nine centres of supply to each of these miles would give 648
central bazaars as the number of retail establishments required for
the convenient supply of London with the articles of most common
consumption. What is the actual number of establishments which
London contains in this area ? I have taken 22 trades connected
with the supply of (i) alcoholic drinks and tobacco, (2) food and
household wants, (3) clothes and personal wants, (4) books,
medicines, and stationery, and obtain the following results, which,
I should add, do not profess to be more than tolerably near
computations (1879): β
Trades connected A\ith the supply of β
I. β Intoxicating Drinks and Tobacco.
Excess over 648.
Trades. Numbers.
Beersellers 1610
Publicans 5814
Tobacconists 1824
Wine Merchants 2052
Totals II 300
2. β Food and Household
Bakers 2394
Butchers I59<>
Chandlers 2479
Cheesemongers 826
Coffee-room Keepers 1721
Confectioners loiS
Dairymen 1824
Greengrocers 1881
Grocers and Tea Dealers β 2747
Oil and Colourmen I379
Actual.
Per cent
962
.. 148
... 5166
β’β’ 797
... II 76
.. 166
... 1404
.. 216
... 8708
335
) Wants.
... 1746
.. 269
... 948
146
... 1831
.. 281
... 178
26
... 1073
.. 165
... 370
β’β 57
1 1 76
.. i8i
β’β’β’ 1233
190
2099
β’β’ 324
β’β’β’ 731
112
Totals 17865 ... 11385
175
Current Economic Theories. 95
3. β Clothes and Personal Wants.
Boot and Shoe Makers 3477 β’β β’ 2829 ... 436
Hairdressers 1083 ... 435 ... 67
Linen Drapers 1368 ... 720 ... iii
Tailors 2679 ... 2031 ... 313
Watchmakers 1309 ... 655 ... loi
Totals 9916 ... 6670 ... 205
4. β Books, Medicines, and Stationery.
Booksellers 912 ... 264 ... 40
Chemists and Druggists 893 ... 245 ... 37
Stationers 855 ... 207 ... 32
Totals 2660 ... 716 ... 36
Adding up the four lists, we get a grand total of 41,735 centres
of supply, against 14,256 wanted β 27,479 too many according to
our previous computation, or 26,903, even if, in the case of public-
houses, we suppose one placed at each corner of each area of
one-third of a mile square, in addition to one in the middle β
251 existing shops, on the average of all these trades, for every
100 wanted.
It is out of my power to form any accurate estimate of the
unnecessary cost caused to the public of London by the present
wasteful system of distribution beyond what they would have to
pay if this indispensable ofhce of bringing the things wanted and
the persons who want them together were discharged with the
economy which a well-ordered organisation might secure. For,
on the one hand, when we take those trades which deal in articles
not so constantly required as the articles enumerated above, each
case would have to be considered by itself, in order to form an
estimate of the number of centres of supply reasonably wanted,
so as to compare them with the number that competition gives us ;
while, on the other hand, the list of London traders contains a
large number of producers, who must be struck off upon an inquiry
into the waste of distribution; and, after all, unless the actual
cost of the existing distributive centres and the amount of business
done could be ascertained and compared with what we know by
experience to be the ordinary cost of doing this amount of business
in a system of well-organised co-operative distribution, we should
get only guesses, which we might make pretty nearly as well
without the labour of such a computation. Even if we confine
ourselves to the trades above enumerated, where in every instance
there is a large excess, the great irregularity in the degrees of this
96 Tlic Relation of Co-operation to
excess, ranging, even if publicans are excluded, from 26 per cent
in the case of cheesemongers to 436 per cent in that of shoemakers,
and the very great differences which there doubtless are in the
average turnover of a shop in one trade as compared with that in
another trade, makes it impossible to form more than a very rough
estimate of the increased cost of distribution with which London
allows itself to be charged, because its citizens do not combine in a
reasonable method of supplying themselves with the things which
they want every day. However, to give our ideas some little
definiteness in the matter, consider this. In the 22 trades
enumerated above, we have found that there are 26,903 shops
more than are necessary. No doubt many of these shops are small.
Suppose that, one with another, the cost of each shop is, for rent,
rates, taxes, light, fuel, &c., ;^ioo a year, and ;^i50 for the wages
or cost of living of the persons employed, we get a sum of
;^6,725,750 as the total cost of these shops, of which it is, I think,
a moderate supposition that at least one-third of the rent, &c.,
and two-thirds of the service, would be saved if the work was done
by the 14,836 centres needed, instead of the 41,735 existing.
There would be a direct saving to the citizens of London of over
;^4,ooo,ooo a year in these trades only, by suppressing the useless
cost of unnecessary establishments; independently of the great
economy produced by turning the profits of the seller into savings
to the buyer, which, we know, would give to the customers of the
reduced number of establishments, after paying all costs and the
interest on capital, from is. 6d. to 2s. 6d. in the Β£, on whatever
may be the turnover of the 41 ,735 shops with which we are dealing ;
an amount probably much under-estimated at an average of
;^2,5oo, or ;^ioo,ooo,ooo a year.
Nor must it be forgotten, when we are considering what might
be saved by co-operation in distribution, that the names of the
traders mentioned above occupy 367 columns only of the 1,565
included in the Trades Directory of that vast magazine of addresses
furnished by the Post Office, of whom by far the greater part are
engaged in distribution. It represents but a fraction of the waste
which lies at the door of competition in London only; though,
for the reasons already given, I refrain from any attempt to reduce
this waste to an amount appreciable by figures.
Now this great saving which association for distribution can
effect would not be purchased by a diminution of the convenience
offered by the present system. On the contrary, there would b<;
an increase of this convenience,
Current Economic Theories.
97
The actual needless multiplication of shops does not prevent a
large part of the residences in London from being much further
than the one-third of a mile assumed by me as the extreme
distance of any house from some centre of supply; for these
centres are distributed with reference, not to the greatest con-
venience of the inhabitants, but to the opinions entertained by
their proprietors of the situations where they will have the best
chances of attracting notice and obtaining custom. Therefore
they fill the principal thoroughfares in continuous lines, while
they leave large areas of population with a very scanty number of
shops. And these shops are not as they would be upon a system
of organised distribution, all first class, where in every instance
entire reliance might be placed on the quality of the goods supplied
and the fairness of the prices charged, because all would be
supplied from the same wholesale centres with which they would .
be connected in federal union; all would be conducted by
managers, appointed by committees of purchasers who would
overhaul all their proceedings, and liable to summary dismissal
at least, if not to other penalties, for any detected roguery. The
actual shops may be said to be of all degrees of goodness or badness,
agreeing with each other only in one respect, that the ordinary
buyer can never get any knowledge of the amount of additional
charge beyond the cost price to which the supposed economy of
competitive trade subjects him.
Now, London is only a specimen of the system universal
over the whole country. How large a fund would be
placed at the disposal of the co-operators by this mere
saving of useless cost in distribution, out of which to
reward useful activity, is, I think, made very clear by such
facts as these. They may relieve us altogether from the
apprehension that co-operation must give up the hope of
raising the masses because its resources would be used up
in paying its chiefs. There are ample funds in the saving
on competitive waste to effect both objects.
The considerations adduced in the last sentence apply
to life as it is in our competitive world, and the isolated
homes natural to a life so circumstanced. But in con-
trasting the motives which may lead men to energetic
work in a co-operative society, we must not leave out the
G
qS Relation of Co-operation to Economic Theories.
advantages which the co-operator would derive from the
principle of association when it is applied to the formation
of unitary homes, as it is applied already by M. Godin, at
Guise, and, with the growth of co-opciativ2 union, must
certainly be applied more and more extensively.
Unitary homes will, I conceive, be to co-operation what
monasteries were in the Middle Ages to the Church: the
fortresses by which it will take possession of society, and
gradually convert mankind to obedience to the new faith.
Life in them will be greatly more full of physical enjoy-
ment for the mass of mankind. Life in them will be
infinitely more full of moral satisfaction to all the noblest
spirits of our race. They will see in these homes the
means of abolishing that ever-deepening dyke, dug by our
competitive society between the " two nation^ " of rich
and poor, and look forward to the ever-increasing means
of general well-being which such institutions will secure
to mankind by the deposit of accumulated wealth left
behind by each successive generation. So that the desire
for that isolated family existence which is the great source
of the perpetual race after wealth will cease. It will yield
to a desire to maintain institutions felt by everyone alike
to be the permanent source both of individual happiness
and general well-being ; until the notion prevalent among
many political economists, that this race after wealth is
the only efficient motive to human activity, will come to
be classed among the comical absurdities into which
clever men have fallen, who, hving in an age just
emerging from barbarism, fancied that the society wherein
they lived had spoken the last word in the "History of
Civilisation."*
* The views advocated in this chapter will be rejected by those who conceive that,
because the struggle for existence is a law of physical being, it must also be a law of
spiritual being. To all objectors of this class I reply : You are confusing the root with
the fruit, which indeed depends upon, but is very different from it. Self-assertion is the
first condition of individual being; it does not follow that self-assertion is its end. On
the contrary, the theory of development, which I accept as scientifically estabUshed,
teaches that, in the progress of existence on the earth, the opposite principle, of
Chapter VI.
The Relation of Co-operation to the State.
CO-OPERATION has been presented in these pages
as essentially a voluntary system. Its root has been
traced back to that deepest of all principles known
to us: free, that is, self-governing, reasonable will; that
power which, being, as I believe, the ultimate source of
all existence, has come out on this earth where we dwell
as the result of the long succession of advances con-
ditioned by the struggle for existence, during the
unnumbered ages recorded in the fragmentary leaves of
the " Stone Book." When Icthyosauri, Plesiosauri,
Megatheria, and all the other tribes of monsters had
improved themselves away; when the huge fern forests
of the past had stored up in beds of coal the force radiated
in times long gone by from the central orb ; then, amidst a
world of flowering and fruit-bearing plants and shrubs, a
world of bright-hued insects and many-voiced birds, man,
the contemporary of the dog, the elephant, the camel, the
horse, the sheep, and the cow, appeared, to " order and to
dress " the abode, mide lit by the natural development of
combined action, has manifested itself with continually increasing completeness. Gases
have combined into liquids and solids; liquids and solids have imited to form plants.
On the plant has reposed conscious animal life. With the consciousness of surroundings
has appeared the intelligence capable of combining them as means for its own ends.
And beneath this intelUgence there has become manifest a reasonable self-governing
wiU, which claims the right to determine those ends. To go back to the struggle for
existence as the law of reasonable life, is to ignore this vast progress, and treat men as fi
they were only bags of gas. No doubt the struggle continues. If it ceased, individual
existence must disappear. But to appeal to it as a principle capable of producing a true
human society is, as has been noticed on page 86, much like appealing to the force of
gravitation to build a bridge.
[Though of a controversial character, the last two paragraphs of this chapter have been
left in, so that the student unacquainted with the earlier edition of this Manual may
have an opportunity of seeing what was the mental attitude of the writers to this
question. Any further reference to unitary homes has been ehminated. β W.C]
100 The Relation of Co-operation to the State.
struggle for the dwelling of a creature who could resolve
the discords of nature into the harmonies of reason.
Our first chapter has traced the character of that process
by which the Divine Author of the universe, working
always through appropriate means, struck the chords from
whence this harmony can be evolved; by the manifesta-
tion of His own infinite love in the person of Christ,
awaking in the heart of man the echoes of a responsive love,
which should gradually substitute its divine melody for
the discordant tones of natural selfishness. But harmony
consists in many different sounds combined so that each,
while preserving its individual distinctness, contributes to
the all-embracing ideal unity. Naturally, therefore, the
idea thus introduced into the world created for itself an
organisation β a state which, under the name of the
Church, soon began to assert over against the empire of
the Caesars, the claim to a sway larger even than that
colossal centre of political might β a kingdom of God,
including alike " Greek and Jew, Barbarian, Scythian,
slave and free," combined in common willing obedience
to its Divine head; whose power rested, not on the visible
force swayed by the master of forty legions, but in the
invisible power that constrains the hearts of men.
Between these rival states, each claiming unlimited
obedience, soon arose a deadly contest, where the victory
declared, not for the external, but for the internal power ;
not for the flesh, but for the spirit ; not for the strongest
battalions, but for the deepest influences; not for the
Eagles, but for the Cross.
The time came when the genius which was throned on
Mount Palatine had to yield to the genius that presided
over the " Lord's Table " β when the new Christian State
swallowed up the ancient State of Rome, and began to
mould, according to its own tendencies, that powerful
agency of legal might v^kjjpRte^ it had been for more
The Relation of Co-operation to the State. loi
than three centuries engaged in a " struggle for
existence " ; an issue which may reassure those who fear,
as many seem at the present day to fear, that in this
" struggle for existence " the outward will prove too
strong for the inward, the bark too strong for the sap, and
that to preserve moral truth from perishing it is necessary
to feed it upon a dietary of undemonstrable assumptions.
That this legal state was a tough mcrsel for the Church to
digest 1 do not deny. It had to swallow an enormous
mass of material very little prepared for assimilation, and
still suffers from the indigestion thus occasioned. Yet it
has done an immense work, of which at the present day we
are liable not to appreciate the importance, because the
work has been done so completely that scarcely any trace
of the old state of things remains in our world; and
because few of us are sufficiently well acquainted with the
past to reproduce it as it was. The Church in digesting
the old body politic has expelled from it slavery. Thus it
has made possible that more perfect organisation wanted
to complete the development of the good seed sown i,8oo
y^ars since m the land of Palestine; to realise that " more
excellent way " set by the great Apostle of the Gentiles
before his Corinthian converts in words that cannot be
bet4:ered ; and to make of the body politic such a body as
shall fulfil the ideas of a true state, which the same
Apostle presents as the natural outcome of this " way."
By the elimination from human society of this
indigestible element of slavery, and the cotemporaneous
growth of orderly political freedom, the natural attendant
on its elimination, and nowhere at the present age more
completely attained than in our own United Kingdom,
the way is prepared for the second great step in the
evolution of humanity β the formation of a Church which
shall not only teach men everywhere to pray that God's
kingdom may come, His will be " done on earth as it is in
102 The Relation of Co-operation to the State.
heaven," but shall nourish in them the earnest determina-
tion that His will shall be done, for they wiU do it; that
this kingdom shall come, for they will not rest from their
labours till they see it established.
Now, this determination the co-operator who takes the
view presented in these pages of what co-operation has to
do, must set before himself as his determination. This
state is the state that he has to bring about, carrying
on the work of the Church of the first centuries to its
logical issue. As the Christians of the first three cen-
turies raised over against the political state an ecclesias-
tical state or Church which absorbed it, so has the co-
operator to raise over against the present politico-
ecclesiastical state a new social state ; a voluntary body
growing up by its inherent energies like the Church of
old, but fulfilling what the Church of old could only
indicate in hope; till it may say with far deeper truth
what was said of the Bible Society by one of its early
presidents β " If it cannot reconcile all opinions it unites
all hearts." Because taking as its starting point that
sentiment of general benevolence, that sympathy with
human necessities, which is the common outcome of all
Christian teaching, however widely the teachers may
differ in the theories connected by them with it, this
social Church will be able to reconcile the manifoldness
of belief in the oneness of practical action.
Co-operation, then, is called on to create a new social
state, which, growing over against the present state as
the Church did of old, only now under its shelter instead
of in conflict with it, may, like its precursor, ultimately
absorb the law-making power within its own circle, and
can then complete what may be requisite for its perfect
consolidation, by the same sort of authority, as that
whereby, in all ages and countries, the minority have
been required to give up for a reasonable compensation,
The Relation of Co-operation to the State. 103
rights of which the majority feel that the cession is
necessary for the general welfare.
But as of old, so now, this new state must spring up
freely, in that soil which the action of the older Church,
or the intelligent and moral culture fostered directly or
indirectly by it, has delivered from the incubus of
slavery and the despotism of the body politic. Its claim on
the existing state is simply for leave to grow and develop
\ its own power in peaceable obedience to- the laws which,
in the United Kingdom at least, afford it all that it can
require, by clothing the members of co-operative
societies with corporate privileges for trading purposes,
and giving them the unrestricted right of holding land.
A great confusion of ideas has prevailed on this matter,
not in England so much as elsewhere, on the Continent of
Europe, and latterly in the United States of North
America. Because all social reformers look, and must
of necessity look forward, to the formation, as the out-
come of their reforms, of a state of things where the
customs and rules of the reformed society will be
identical with the laws of the countries where it flourished ;
therefore it has been supposed that a short cut to this
reformed condition of things lay through the law-making
power, to be exercised by means of universal suffrage
by the mass of the population, who should substitute
for the spirit of God actuating the will of man the words
of man ordering men's lives.
The delusion has been already denounced in these
pages, and cannot be denounced too strongly. One
more fatal to the hopes of an abiding social reform it is
impossible to imagine. It is analogous to the folly of a
child who plants flowers to get a garden quickly. It is
to suppose that a tree can grow without roots, or that
we may gather " grapes of thorns " and " figs of thistles."
Whether that development of the principle of love, of
104 The Relation of Co-operation to the State.
which the Christian religion has been the historical
nurse, has yet attained a growth deep and wide enough
to produce the social reforms sought by co-operation is
a legitimate subject of question. To the writers of this
Manual the signs of the times seem hopeful, otherwise
it would be useless for them to undertake the labour
of writing it. On this matter they can only hope, without
venturing to dogmatise. But of one thing they must
assert their undoubting conviction, that if the co-operative
spirit, with the facilities of action now open to it, cannot
succeed in forming a reformed social state, the existing
state will be absolutely powerless to create a co-operative
spirit. As well might we suppose, that if St. Paul had
succeeded in converting the Emperor Nero to the
Christian faith, that religion might have been established
as a true spiritual influence by the javelins and swords
of the Roman legions.
Part III.
THE PRACTICE OF
CO-OPERATION.
PART III.
Chapter VII.
The Application of Co-operation to Distribution.
A PART from the moral benefit attending all modes of
/-\ co-operation, if they are animated by a genuine
desire to work for the common good, the beneficial
results arising from its apphcation to distribution rest
upon the fact illustrated in the chapter on the
Economical Basis of Co operation β that there is in the
present system of competitive trade an enormous waste.
Not that those who undertake this office do not
endeavour to do their work as economically as they can,
but that, from circumstances which it would take more
space than can be convenientlj' spared to trace in detail
there is actually absorbed in the operation of bringing
the desirable things produced in the world to the hands
of those who require them, a part of these things much
larger than is needed in order to get the work done
thoroughly well.
On this fact the economical strength of co-operative
distribution rests in practice. The surplus over cost
thus put into the pockets of the consumers, as the result
of union to supply themselves, forms the backbone of
co-operation. It gives to that system of trade a solid
commercial basis on which to build the co-operative
edifice, in what is undoubtedly, in my judgment, at
least, the safest, the most useful, and best plan for every
one who does not want co-operation to stop at distribution.
This plan, popularly known as the Rochdale scheme,
from its having been introduced to general acceptance
io8 The Application of Co-operation to Distribution.
by the Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale, is to sell all
goods at the prices charged b}^ respectable private
traders, and returning the surplus over cost and interest
on the capital invested to the members, as dividends
on their purchases.
As the success of a distributive society must depend
upon the amount of trade which it can do, it is desirable
to place as little impediment as possible in the way of
members joining by not requiring as a condition of
membership the holding of more shares than the majority
of those likely to join can easily afford to pay up.
Some societies admit persons to the privileges of mem-
bership free, believing that nothing should be placed in
the way of anyone wishing to join ; others demand the
payment of sums varjang from 6d. to is. 6d., in each
case the member agreeing to take up from one to five
shares of the value of ^^i each, these sums to be made up
either from subscriptions or deductions from dividend
until the whole are paid up.
In regard to the framing and registering of rules, or
alterations of rules, the best plan is to communicate with
the Co-operative Union, who will give all the advice and
assistance necessary. The past and the present generation
of co-opeiators is largely indebted for the advantages they
now possess, and it ought to receive the hearty support
of all who have learned to look upon co-operation as a
connected scheme of action, having as its aim to use the
vast powers of modern industry for the gradual elevation
of the masses now crushed beneath the grindstone of
competitive struggles. There is another class of benefits
more commonly valued perhaps, which co-operative union
has already placed within the reach of the co-operative
body β those arising from the action of the Co-operative
Wholesale Societies, both of England and Scotland.
_ The present generation, perhaps, cannot fully appreciate
The Application of Co-operation to Distribution. 109
the extent of this benefit, but those who fought
through the hard battle which co-operative societies,
formed before any such Wholesales existed, had to fight
against the opposition of the private retail traders, in
order to open the way to get the articles they wanted
to sell of as good quality and on as easy terms as their
opponents. But this is entirely altered since co-operative
union has created great central institutions, which, from
the magnitude of their transactions, can afford to employ
skilled buyers and get access to the best markets, where
these buyers, dealing for ready money and buying on a
very large scale, can obtain the most favourable terms,
which the magic of association places at the command of
the smallest societies equally with the largest. Large
and prosperous societies sometimes imagine, and, I
believe, are in general mistaken in imagining, that they
can obtain for themselves in the open market on better
terms than they can secure from the Wholesale Societies,
not only articles where the cost of carriage may give a
great advantage to a local centre of supply, but even
articles where there is nothing to be gained in this respect.
But many of the largest societies, after trying both plans,
have found that to be supplied through the wholesale
centres is more advantageous to them than the attempt
to get their supplies independently of them. Their
experience confirms what might reasonably be antici-
pated- β the advantage to be derived from a well-organised
system of collective purchases, which shall utilise the
custom of the whole body for the benefit of every member.
Further, societies would do well to remember that every
sovereign spent outside the organisations created by
themselves to meet their needs, and which have no
existence apart from themselves, is making it easy for
the outside trader to compete with them. Just as we
preach loyalty on the part of the individual member to
no The Application of Co-operation to Distribution.
his own society, so as societies we should, for the same
reasons, be loyal to our own wholesale institutions.
An important question about which a great deal has
been said and written is : \Vhat rate of dividend should
societies endeavour to pay ? The reply is : As large a
dividend as the prices prevailing in the locality where the
society is established make possible. Taking account of
the purpose co-operation on the Rochdale plan had in
view, this is a better plan than that in operation in Civil
Service Stores, at which goods are sold at such prices as
will just pay the cost of management. Those who
founded these stores did not profess to have, and no
doubt had not, any other object in view than obtaining
articles genuine in their kind and on the cheapest terms
practicable by buying them in the gross. The system
originated in the action of four clerks in the Post Office
who joined to buy a chest of tea and divided it amongst
themselves. Finding that they saved a considerable sum
by the operation they determined to repeat it, and
afterwards extended it to the purchase of other things
which they required. The constitution of the Civil
Service vStores is precisely what would reasonably arise
from union for such objects, and such only.
Now% if these were our main objects something might
be said for adopting their methods, but as w^e have far
more important objects to work for than merely to
supply articles good in their kind at the least attainable
cost; if we aim at what has already been outlined in
earlier pages, then the constitution of the Civil Service
Stores is noc at all adapted to promote these aims,
and, therefore, should not be imitated by any persons
who set these further objects before them as their goal.
To achieve those ends we have in view we must have, as
an indispensable condition of effective action, collective
income. When every /^i.ooo of business done, after paying
The Application of Co-operation to Distribution. iii
al) cost, and a dividend of, say, Β£5 per cent on invested
capital, will yield a surplus income of from ;fioo to ;^I25
gained by the members out of their household expenditure,
without need of stinting any part of their usual outlay,
it will be seen at once what a collective power they may
thus acquire for any common purpose. Taking last
year's sales (1914) of the 1,390 distributive societies we
find that after providing Β£1,556,160 as interest on share
capital, ;^49,758 as bonus and wages, Β£110,130 for educa-
tional and Β£96,408 for charitable purposes, there was
left as dividend Β£13,501,825. This sum, however,
represents a dividend of 3s. in the Β£, which is from is.
to IS. 6d. in excess of what societies would pay if they
sold their goods at the prices at which such articles
could be obtained from the private traders in the district.
It has been objected to the dividend system that it
prevents the growth of co-operation by checking pur-
chases at the stores in consequence of the high prices
charged. This can only be true where prices are charged
higher than those current in the district, and which is
sometimes done in order to pay a higher dividend Even
then, experience has shown that where members can,
they are even willing to pay prices slightly in excess of
what are charged by private traders, and that a society
paying a dividend of 2S. in the pound will be more likely
to make progress than one paying is. 6d., even if the
latter is giving the difference in the price to goods. It
is obvious, however, that for a society to pay 4s., as some
societies in the North of England do, means charging
such prices as those earning low wages cannot pay, and
they are thus deprived of any of the advantages which
co-operation brings to those who are better off and can
pay these prices. Further, ii is becoming quite a custom
for the private traders to fix their prices just as much
below those of the store as will attract purchasers to
Il2 The Application of Co-operation to Distribution.
their shops. It has been proved that the poor in a
district have had to pay more for their goods because
the store gets high prices and pays a high dividend. This
practice is not general, but it is a strong argument
against high prices and high dividends.
Much has been said, and said justly, on the value of
the system as a means of encouraging individual saving.
Many members own the houses in which they live, and
others have large accumulations in the society that they
never would have had but for the fact that they were
saved for them in insensible sums.
Another matter bearing on the internal management
of societies deserves notice, because very incorrect ideas
often prevail about it. This .is the powers of general
meetings, more particularly of special general meetings.
It seems often to be supposed that the resolutions of
such a meeting override the decision of the committee of
management on matters expressly assigned to them by
the rules without any reservation to the members of a
revising power. But this is a complete mistake. The
rules bind all the members, and the acts of any officers
of the society under the powers given them by the rules
have the force of the rules, and can be set aside only in a
way consistent with them. Where the rules are silent,
a society, as a body corporate, has power to bind its
members by resolutions passed at a meeting properly
convened until some other meeting similarly authorised
rescinds or varies them. ' But these resolutions have no
power at all against the rules, which rest upon the
authority of the Act of Parliament, and confer a like
authority on those who are acting under the powers
derived from them.
The last case is one where a minority, standing on
the rules of a society, can control a majority which would
act in opposition to them. But other cases may arise
The Application of Co-operation to Distribution. 113
of a more difficult kind, where a minority, finding itself
overruled on some point which it feels strongly β it may
be the discharge of a manager in whom they have con-
fidence, or, perhaps even one of so much importance as
a determination to allow sales on credit β may be dis-
posed to avail themselves of the power of withdrawal,
if the society is so constituted as to allow of its exercise
without restriction, to secede from the society and form
a new one of their own. It is sometimes asked : Is such
conduct justifiable ? The answer must depend on the
light in which we regard the functions of co-operation.
If co-operative societies are regarded only as separate
units, each striving to do the best it can for itself, there
is no good reason to be alleged why these units should
not split into lesser units if any of the members com-
posing them think it more to their advantage so to do,
than to remain part of the larger unity. But, if co-
operation is what in these pages it has been represented
to be, union for the purpose, by the joint strength of its
members, systematically to work out for the mass of
mankind a social state higher than any hitherto attained,
then whatever tends to weaken this spirit of union is
treason to the great cause of humanity; and, therefore,
all such secessions, since they unquestionably have this
tendency, must stand condemned at the bar of those
nobler aims which the co-operator is bound to keep in
view. Men have been driven, unwillingly, to secede
from those who have endeavoured to force upon them
professions of belief, contrary to their convictions of what is
true. But no such interference with the liberty of thought
is to be feared by the members of co-operative bodies,
whose differences resolve themselves into differences of
means for producing a common end, and should, therefore,
never be permitted to divert them from the principle of
union with which the attainment of this end is bound up.
H
Chapter VIII.
Co-operation in Its Application to Production.
MANKIND cannot generally live on distributing.
Only a comparatively small proportion of the
population, which it is the object of co-operative
distribution to reduce to the smallest number required
to do this work, can thus live upon the amount of
produce that other men are willing to give up to them in
consideration of the services they render in facilitating the
use of the remainder. But on production the material
well-being of the whole body of mankind depends. The
sum of enjoyable things which can be distributed among
any population necessarilv depends upon the mass
of enjoyable things produced. The degree of enjoyment
placed within reach of the body of the people in any
locality largely depends on the conditions under which
the production constituting the means of their subsist-
ence is carried on there. Even their moral character is
influenced directly or indirectly by these conditions,
which in countless ways continually affect every part of
their lives from infancy to old age. Hence the vast
importance of co-operative production.
It is often said, and said truly, that the evils under
which the poorer producers suffer arise rather from
defects in the distribution of the enjoyable things now
produced than from the mode of their production; but
the imperfections in distributing alluded to in this
saying are scarcely touched, far less remedied, ]>y the
system of co-operative distribution explained in the
last chapter. For all thai ^ hi system does for the
Co-operation in Its Application to Production. 115
poorer class is to make their existing incomes go a little
farther than they would otherwise do. It does nothing
at all towards adding to these incomes, except in so far
as it offers inducements to save by making saving easy.
" The store," it has been said, " is open to every one."
Yes, every one who can pay for what it supplies. " Its
benefits are for all." True, in proportion to their
independent means of appropriating them. " The larger
a man's family," it is argued, " the greater the advan-
tages conferred on him by co-operative distribution."
Certainly, if his income grows as fast as hi? family. But
the family may starve without the store coming in any
way to his assistance. Its gifts are strictly bounded
by what it first receives. Its bounties are always for
" him who has," not for him " who has not " ; to whom
it denies, and, if it is conducted on sound principles,
must deny even that amount of trust which he wiU
often receive from the private trader. For he may hope
to be recouped at some future day for all these advances,
and has in the profits of his business a fund, which he
can apply in making them, while in a distributive society
this fund is strongly pledged to pay the dividends due
to a body of purchasers who need no trust.
That the distribution of profits on purchases has been
of great advantage to large bodies of the working classes,
from the savings which the system has led them to make,
I do not for a moment question. That numbers who,
before they became members of a store never had a
shining but what they forthwith spent, have found
themselves the owners of many accumulated pounds
through the savings made by the store for them out of
the shillings which they spent at it, I am fully aware.
I do not dispute the value to them of this result. Still,
I must say, the store will not give them the original
shillings. They may grow rich, as the old Yorkshireman
ii6 Co-operation in Its Application to Production.
said, only by eating and drinking, but they must get
elsewhere than at the store wherewithal to pay for what
they eat and drink. To obtain this " wherewithal " by
co-operation, they must pass from co-operation for
distribution to co-operation for production. They must
press into their service that more fundamental sort of
distribution attached to production, which determines
what men shall receive directly in exchange for their
labour. They must not rest satisfied with the sort of
distribution affected by the distributive society, which
simply enables them to exchange what they have thus
earned for other things which they happen to desire.
Those who set the present distributive ball rolling, the
justly celebrated founders of the Equitable Pioneers
Society of Rochdale, clearly defined this object of the
system which they introduced, in words often repeated,
but still well deserving repetition, because by the co-
operators of the present day they are far too much
lost sight of. They declared the objects of their Society
to be: β
To form arrangements for the pecuniary benefit and the
improvement of the social and domestic condition of its members,
by raising a sufficient amount of capital by shares of Β£i each, to
bring into operation the following plans and arrangements: β β’
1. The establishment of a store for the sale of provisions, clothes,
&c.
2. The building, purchasing, or erecting a number of houses, in
which those members desiring to assist each other in improving
their domestic and social condition may reside.
3. To commence the manufacture of such articles as the society
may determine upon, for the employment of such members
as may be without employment, or who may be suffering in
consequence of repeated reductions in their wages.
4. As a further benefit and security the members of the society
shall purchase or rent an estate or estates of land, which shall
be cultivated by the members who may be out of employ-
ment, or whose labour may be badly remunerated.
Co-operation in Its Application to Production. uy
5. That as soon as practicable the society shall proceed to arrange
the powers of production, distribution, education, and govern-
ment, or, in other words, to establish a self-supporting home
colony of united interests, and assist other societies in
establishing such colonies.
They were not afraid, these " owd " weavers, of the
ridicule certain to be poured by the unbeheving world,
if they thought them worth any notice, on the smallness
of their means, twenty-eight shares of Β£1 each, con-
trasted with the greatness of their ends. Still less
should co-operators draw back from them now. For
these are the true ends to be set before themselves by all
who desire to realise the ideal of co-operation β the
gradual substitution of a state of society resting upon
reasonable agreement determining the action of natural
forces, in place of the present system which rests on the
play of natural forces, determined by the struggle for
existence. Now, in this scheme distributive co-operation
appears in its proper place, as the road leading to pro-
duction, which again is placed in its true position, of a
means to the improvement of domestic and social con-
ditions. The impotence of distribution, taken alone,
for effecting the ends of co-operation, is clearly indicated
in this memorable programme.
But the idea embodied in the distributive store is not
only thus impotent as an instrument of social progress,
but if it gains a decisive hold on men's minds, it may
even become an obstacle to that progress for the reasons
following. The store deals essentially and primarily
with things. Its function is to enable its members to
obtain that of which they stand in need, better in quality
or cheaper in price, or both, than they could do without
its aid; and there its proper office stops. Distributive
societies have, indeed, often gone beyond this point to
employ their collective funds in various ways for the benefit
ii8 Co-operation in Its Application to Production.
of their members. They have estabUshed convalescent
homes, formed Hbraries and reading-rooms, have pub-
Hshed periodicals, have established science and art
classes, have instituted musical and other entertainments
for the advantage of their members, for whom prosperous
societies commonly provide meeting places of their own
in co-operative haUs. They have gone even farther in the
direction pointed out by the Rochdale Pioneers, by pur-
chasing lands and building houses, to be sold to their
members and paid for by instalments, spread over long
periods so as to make the payment easy, or advancing
money to enable them to purchase lands or houses, or to
build houses which shall be a security to the societies for
the repayment of these advances in a similar way.
But all these beginnings of collective action, useful as
they are more or less in themselves, and valuable especially
as evidence of an instinctive sense that co-operation has
more to do for the good of mankind than that which the
distributive society can supply, are but feeble expressions
of that profound human sympathy, that mutual regard
for each other, that higher spiritual life which, as they
constitute the co-operative disposition, it should be the
especial work of co-operative institutions to develop and
spread, so far as this lies within the power of any
institution.
Now, what distribution cannot do in these respects
it is the function of production to do, and thus co-
operation will be raised from the ignoble office of a
union merely in order to get things cheap and good to
the noble function of an institution by which men may
be gradually made better, and therefore both happier
and better off.
Chapter IX.
The Practice of Co-operation in Social Life.
CO-OPERATION β regarded as a systematic course
of action by which the mass of the population may
gradually raise themselves out of the evils attending
a society, where the great majority are engaged in a
ceaseless struggle to promote their own interests without
regard to those of other men, to the good attainable by
a society where the great majority are united by reason-
able agreement to carry on work and promote institutions
for the common interest β naturally falls into two great
divisions : β
1. The formation of a collective income β of united
resources, by which the weakness of the individuals
who form the mass may derive strength from
association.
2. The employment of this collective strength to create
new conditions of life, adapted to foster the
exercise of mutual help, and divert the spirit of
competitive struggle into directions where it may
become useful instead of injurious.
The first of these functions has been fulfilled in England
by the distributive system of retail and wholesale societies,
which, if carried on upon the Rochdale plan, create
collective income for their members ; while they serve as
excellent savings banks, where the economies produced
by the suppression of unnecessary middlemen may be
accumulated. In Germany this function has been
discharged hitherto mainly by the people's banks. But,
in either case, if co-operative union should stop at this
120 The Practice of Co-operation in Social Life.
stage, it would have very imperfectly accomplished the
task here assigned to it. Distributive societies and
people's banks may apply part of the profits of their
business for the formation of libraries or reading-rooms
for educational purposes, or the construction of halls
where social as well as business gatherings may be held;
but these operations leave the ordinary lives of their
members almost untouched. So they may facilitate for
a few of their members the obtaining houses of their own
by acting as building societies for the outlay of the savings
which they have helped them to accumulate. But those
who occupy these houses, except they are themselves
employed by any society, must look for the means of
living in them elsewhere than to the society. And, as
the societies must regulate their own situation by the
places where their members find the means of supporting
themselves, they can, at the best, do very little towards
bringing within their reach the conditions of life, better
suited than the life of our towns and cities is, to form men
into beings worthy of their vocation as children of God β
as the highest manifestation on earth of spiritual life.
Hence arises the importance of co-operative production.
It is the indispensable intermediary between co-operation
as an agent for giving to the mass of the population the
power arising from their collective income and accumu-
lated savings, and co-operation as an instrument through
which this income and these savings may place within the
reach of their possessors the largest amount of material
advantages attainable by the use of their accumulated
resources, combined with the conditions most favourable
to the development of their moral and intellectual natures.
Modern industry, from the vast scale on which it is
carried on in its manufacturing centres, and the great
facility of conveyance produced by the extension of
railroads, has become, to a great extent, independent of
The Practice of Co-operation in Social Life. 121
places. With the exception of mines and quarries, which
must necessarily be worked in the localities where the
substances to be extracted from the earth are found, it
may be said generally of any manufacture for which there
is a good sale, and the site of the manufactories may, in
the present day, be almost wherever those who carry them
on please, and the ground required can be obtained.
Now, since this good sale is precisely that which
co-operative union would have peculiar facility for
securing to co-operative manufactures, those who carried
them on might, without injury to their economical
production of the articles manufactured, be guided in the
choice of their sites for their buildings by reference to the
general well-being of the inhabitants. They might place
these centres of work in pleasant situations. They might
certainly surround them with gardens, in which the
workers, or as many of them as are so disposed, might
find an agreeable and profitable variety in their labours.
And by taking advantage of favourable opportunities
they might, through the acquisition of larger estates,
combine agriculture with manufactures. So that they
would begin to exercise, on an extended scale, that
collective ownership of land, that close connection of the
population with the source of their food, which, as has
been already pointed out, would be the great security to
the whole body of workers, that, if the progress of
invention enabled one man to do what it required two to
do before, this saving of labour shall work to the benefit
of all without detriment to any.
It is tempting to continue a picture of a world free
from those social evils which now aggravate to an
incalculable extent the difficulty of that contest with
selfish desires, the expression in ourselves of the struggle
for existence pervading all natural being, which all of us
must fight out in our own breasts. But to yield to this
122 The Practice of Co-operation in Social Life.
temptation must carry us so far away from the existing
state of society, that the picture would be in danger of
losing all practical usefulness. It would be a dream
banished to that golden age which must always flee before
the experience of life, till men learn that the heaven from
which the Divine vision shall descend is to be sought
within themselves; and that the Kingdom of God on
earth will come, as soon as they heartily will that it shall
be realised, hy the simple method of uniting to give
generally to those around them the advantages which
they seek to secure personally for themselves.
Chapter X.
The Perils of Co-operation and How to
Escape Them.
TO enter at any length into the matters forming the
title of this part would be to repeat much of what
the other parts have contained. It is not my
intention to weary the reader by carr3nng him again over
the ground we have traversed, but in a matter of such
vital importance to the mass of the population as
co-operative action must be, if it be regarded from the
point of view presented in these pages, a few words to
sum up the teaching of this Manual may not be thrown
away. Like the barbed head of the arrow, they may
help to make the thoughts, which constitute its shaft
and give force to the blow, stick.
Co-operation, as described in this Manual, is a serious
effort to unite in the business of life the ideal with the
real, or, in the language of the New Testament, to reahse
on earth the " Kingdom of God and His righteousness "
in the assured conviction that all else shall be added to
those who thus place themselves in harmony with the
all-sustaining power, that Divine unity on which the
infinite differences of individual existence rest, and of
which they are the expression. Co-operation will be
helped by whatever promotes this disposition. It will
be hindered by whatever checks it. Its danger and its
safety depend on the absence or presence of this spirit;
of unity.
It has been the object of this work to trace how that
spirit can reahse itself in the busy world of industry
124 ^^^^ Perils of Co-operation and Hoiv to Escape Them.
which, in modern time!^, has assumed such gigantic and
ever-growing proportions. Its writers have endeavoured
to point out that the means for effecting this reahsation
he ready to our hands ; that, in our days and our country,
they require no sweeping changes in existing institutions ;
no violent revolutions ; no reigns of terror ; no alteration
of the law, extorted by the many from the fears of the
few. On the contrary, it has been argued that any
attempt of this nature would interfere with and thwart
the progress of co-operation, by destroying that peaceful
atmosphere of law-abiding activity, in which alone the
institutions, whence we look for these results, can grow
up and thrive.
That, by the wise employment of these funds, in
bettering the dwellings of the producers, and providing
against the contingencies of life, that they make the
profits of production secure for one group of workers
after another the comforts and advantages which, as
now used, they can bestow on a few only, but bestow
on them in a superabundance detrimental to the higher
life of the spirit rather than conducive to it. And
that thus, by the gradual accumulation of wealth and
the ownership of land which naturally follows it, they
may attain, by a process of peaceful evolution, that
collective property of the soil and the instruments of
labour which are necessary for economic emancipation.
Looked at in its successive steps, the path to the
emancipation of labour by converting the capital
indispensable to its activity from an exacting master
into an obedient servant seems, and indeed is, easy;
but only on condition that it be followed in a spirit
thoroughly co-operative. For, doubtless, the way is
long, far longer than will allow any of the generation
now alive ever to see more than the beginning of the end.
Only a comparatively few, and these exceptionally
The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them. 125
favoured, may succeed by their unassisted efforts in
reaching the desired goal. It may be lost for the
many, through that selfish impatience for immediate
results, which refuses to sow the seed because it cannot
expect to reap the corn. And precisely here lies the
greatest danger to co-operative effort.
Co-operation has prospered hitherto in Britain under
the form of union for distribution, as it has prospered
in Germany under the form of union for people's banks,
greatly because so many persons have found their
immediate individual advantage in the effects of the
union originated by those who had higher objects in
view.
The distributive store has given to all who joined it
not only articles on which they can rely that they are
what the}^ profess to be, but an increased power of buying
these articles. When they are formed on the Rochdale
plan they have given them, besides, admirable savings
banks β banks which save for them without tiouble,
and can afford to pay at least one-third more interest
than ordinary savings banks, with a security which,
in societies that have outlived the perils of infancy,
may justly claim comparison with that of any other
banks. So the people's banks of Germany have prospered
because the confidence inspired by them has enabled
their members to deal with loan capital much larger
than their own capital, for the use of which they paid
much less than they received from this use; and thus
have added to the savings from their own income
the earnings of a business at once safe and profitable.
Each of these institutions, therefore, found support in
that principle of direct self-interest, to follow which it
costs U3 no effort, because it belongs to our nature as
animals, and is kept in constant training by the struggles
of competitive society.
126 The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them.
To confine ourselves to our own case β that, under
these circumstances this first step in co-operative pro-
gress β union for the accumulation of capitalβ should
have been taken by the large number who have taken
it is not more than might have been reasonably expected
to happen, as soon as the eyes of the consuming public
became opened to what the late John Stuart Mill saw
very clearly, namely, the very large share of the total
produce of labour actually used up by the charge for
distributing the remainder. But the case entirely
changes when we pass from distribution to production.
The bridge which the profits on production would
allow the workers to build over the river of poverty
that now separates them from the advantages of wealth
is barred by the twin giants. Individual Self-seeking
and Collective Indifference, the last-named being the
most formidable.
How, then, can we overcome the indifference ot the
masses to that employment of capital which is indispen-
sable to the improvement of their position without
attempting the impracticable task of supplj'ing them
with the fruit before the tree is grown ?
There appear to be two possible ways to this end β
one inward and the other outward ; the second dependent
on the first.
By unwearied persevering appeals to the principle
of unity it may be possible to diffuse among men more
generally the feeling that a life of perpetual struggle
after objects which perish in the using must be petty,
ignoble, and unsatisfying; but that life may become
great and noble if it is brought into constant harmony
with that Divine spirit which dwells in those who are
animated by love of their fellow-men. By the appeal
to reason and experience it may at the same time be
possible to spread the conviction that only by means
The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them. 127
v;f institutions suitable to the exercise of this spirit
can it become a pervading influence in the ordinary
lives of ordinary men. The problems of social reform
depend for their solution upon the joint operation of
both these principles. Without the last men cannot
see what to do; without the first they cannot obtain
the strength to do what they have learned to see should
be done. That the work of diffusing this double con-
viction will be easy I do not say. But there is in the
ruling tendency of the present age β its scientific spirit β
a characteristic which may make this work easier.
Man has always been urged by the demands of his
spiritual being to seek for certaintyβ for that which may
be surely known and relied on. But throughout vast
regions and during long ages he has sought this reliable
knowledge in affirmations about unseen worlds, where
no testimony of sense exists to qualify the assertions
of his imagination; whence he could assign to these
imaginary creations qualities of grandeur and per-
manence, capacity of conferring infinite happiness or
unending pain, before which earth, with its transitory
joys and sorrows, necessarily fades into insignificance.
European life has been no exception to this disposition.
On the contrary, in what we call the Middle Ages,
it excercised over all European thought the profoundest
influence, as anyone may realise who will read the
Divina Commedia of Dante, and remember that the
universe depicted there is the universe in which Dante
and his contemporaries firmly believed. In Europe
then, no less than in Asia, among the Brahmins,
Buddhists, or Mahometans, the all-important inquiry
with those who rose above slavery to animal passions
was: WTiat shall I do to attain the infinite joys or escape
the infinite pains of this true reality β the lasting existence
which is to succeed my present fugitive being ? The
128 The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them.
peculiarity of the Christian answer, on which my hopes
for the future of mankind rest, has been that it always
included the position: You must strive to become in
spirit like that Divine Being of whom the Gospel tells
us. Hence arose, as is observed in the first chapter
of this Manual, those countless works of benevolence
by which the nations professedly Christian have been
and are distinguished from all other nations of whose
history we have any record. Hence must come,
according to my conviction, that persevering determina-
tion to work out the deliverance of mankind from the
evils produced by competitive selfishness, which con-
stitutes the ideal of co-operation. The moral strength
required to do this work thoroughly must, in my
judgment, be derived from that faith in the manifestation
of the Divine, from which the good works of the Christian
world have either directly proceeded, or to which they
may be traced through the indirect influence of the
mental atmosphere which this faith has created. But
for the direction of this moral force to work out the
collective benefit of mankind we shall be indebted, I
conceive, mainly, to the results of modern scientific
research.
This scientific thought desires to attain certainty as
ardently as the thought of any previous age. But it has
laid down as a maxim not to be questioned that certainty
can be attained only through the verification of the ideal
by the real; only in proportion to our power of testing
what we imagine by what we can observe, training our-
selves up to the difficult task of explaining what is,
instead of launching out into the free construction of
what we only suppose to be. It is clear that to such a
disposition the invisible world of the Middle Ages,
instead of being, as it was to the thinkers of those ages,
the true reality, must beconie unreal arid worthless. It
The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them. 129
is a matter about which the scientific thinker can have
no inchnation to busy himself, since his researches have
destroyed the only motive that could have led him to
pay attention to affirmations wliich he cannot test β
the conviction that those who made them had access to
some source of knowledge denied to himself β for these
researches have proved to him that those who made the
assertions were entirely ignorant of the constitution of
the world in which they actually lived. Astronomy and
geology, to say nothing of other sciences, have swept
away the universe of the Divina Commedia. " It lives
no longer in the faith of reason." How is it possible for
the scientific thinker to place any confidence in affirma-
tions about an invisible world made by men who can be
proved to have been entirely mistaken in what they
affirmed about the visible world ? Necessarily the
scientific thinker must dismiss the whole subject from
his mind, and concentrate his thoughts upon that about
which alone he has the hope of attaining to any cer-
tainty β the earth and the universe in which it has a place.
But does it, therefore, follow that the tendencies of
scientific thought are only " of the earth earthy." By
no means. It is the object of the scientific inquirer to
apprehend the universe in which he finds himself as it
is; to trace back its phenomena to the powers that
actually underlie them, of which they are really the
expression. If, as is maintained in these pages, the human
race, as it is certainly the latest stage of an enormous
series of developments, so is also that form of individual
being in which the universal life returns, so to speak^
into itself, by the voluntary act of the individual will,
merging the animal desire for selfish gratification in an
unselfish desire for the general good, we must expect
that the patient and honest search after the key to the
series will lead the searchers to this true solution oi
13 ) The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them.
their investigations. And, as might be anticipated, so
it has been. From various thinkers who take their
stand on the scientific basis, refusing to Hsten to the
voice of any master but that of their own reason, deahng
with the materials given her by observation β thinkers
who must be classed among the most fearless assailants
of traditional beliefs β comes the concurrent testimony
that in the negation of selfishness, in altruism, in the
placing our own good not only in what we receive from
others, but in what we can do for them, lies the true
welfare of man, individually as well as collectively; his
real work upon earth; the true end of his being. How
is he to attain this end, to do this work, to grasp this
well-being ? Can any other answer be given bearing
even a show of probability than this β by union, in order
to make the enormous and yet constantly increasing
command over natural forces now possessed by men,
productive of the whole body of mankind of the greatest
attainable amount of those advantages which the earth
can offer to them; while through the same principle of
union, the external element may become the nurserj- and
training school of those noble inner qualities, whose
growth the present competitive struggle for individual
possession tends to stifle.
I have noticed the change in mediaeval modes of
conception made by modern science, in the extent to
which it turns men's thoughts away from the world not
manifested to our senses to fix them on that which is
thus manifested. Let me observe also that, in so doing,
scientific thought really brings us back to that mode of
thought by which the Bible, Old and New Testament
alike, is pervaded, though, no doubt, with the modifica-
tions belonging to the difference between our concep-
tion, that the Divine action, or what we call nature, is
essentially unchanging under all circumstances, and the
The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them. 131
Biblical conception, that it changes as human action
does, according to circumstances. The Bible is full
from beginning to end of the deepest trust in the unseen
presence with man of that great Being, to whose will it
traces all phenomena. But this will is, according to the
Bible, a will to be realised on earth. The Jewish prophets
look forward, with ever-brightening hope, to the glories
of the reign of the Messiah. But this reign is to have its
seat at Jerusalem, whence its blessings are to flow over
all nations. The New Testament takes up the same
strain. The Lord's Prayer calls on us to hope, and desire
that the will of God be done on earth as in heaven. The
Apocalj'pse, after a preliminary thousand years' reign
of the saints, preceding the final struggle of evil against
good, brings down the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Temple
of the Living God, to earth, among the nations, for whose
" healing " the " leaves " of the trees which grow along
the banks of the river of life flowing from the Divine
throne are destined. Looking, as I do, upon the whole
development of existence upon earth, crowned by the
history of man, as the continuous manifestation of the
Eternal Invisible Power, who would lead men to that
co-working with Himself in which alone their activity
will find entire satisfaction, I cannot but consider this
earthward track of science as destined to bring piety
back to the sphere of Biblical thoughts and aspirations,
and teach it to find its abiding reward in earnest efforts
to spread the kingdom of God over the earth by creating
such conditions of human life, as good men can feel to be
worthy of this kingdom; the fit expression of the spirit
of Him whose name is Love. How they might realise
these conditions, and that in a very few years, if only they
will, these pages endeavoured to show. May they help
to forward that great consummation by showing to the
will a practicable way.
132 The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them.
This is the internal road to association on which the
external road necessarily depends. For, unquestionably,
the outward must grow out of the inward ; the will to act
must precede the action; and the will to work with
persevering energy for the creation of a truly Messianic
condition on earth, must be determined to undertake
this work by the conviction that such a condition can
be realised. But assuming that this inner power is
brought into persevering activity among a body of men
numerous enough to make their action perceptible, there
would come into play a second force, not to be despised,
which I have called the external road to association,
namely, the help given to the progress of the ideal by
those who never would have originated it, who have,
strictly speaking, no faith in it ; men who aid it only
because it aids them, and whose conduct is, in truth, an
illustration of the saying, "Nothing succeeds like
success."
Men's minds, for the most part, resemble soil: they
respond to skilful cultivation. This is the truth that
Robert Owen laid hold of, and embodied in his doctrine
of men's characters being formed by circumstances, which
at New Lanark, where he really did mould these circum-
stances in a great measure after his own ideas, produced
marvellous results; failing afterwards because, in fact,
while he talked about controlling circumstances, they
controlled him, and made, if not himself, yet at least his
institutions, illustrate his own theory.
To sum up what has been here argued: co-operation,
regarded as a system of social reform, has two great
perils, on either of which it may be wrecked.
I. The impatience of the masses for some form of
society less oppressive to them than the system of
industry based on competitive struggles must be, may
lead them to waste their energies in vain attempts at
The Perils of Co-operation and How to Escape Them. 133
reaching this better state by a short cut through the mere
will of the greater number, expressed in political or social
changes.
2. Indifference may stifle, or scepticism paralyse, the
attempt to build up this better state by higher forms of
social institutions freely de\'eloped.
The \\d.y to escape from both dangers is really the same,
namely: to persuade men into choosing this better way
by clearly pointing out where it lies; showing the
facilities which existing circumstances offer for entering
upon it; and the clear indications on many sides of the
success that must follow the attempt if it is made wisely
and perseveringty.
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