huge amounts of capital and therefore make it impossible for the ordinary worker to own his little shop and sell direct to the customer.
c. Large scale business and exploitation of national and world markets is made possible by concentration of capital and credit in the hands of banks and great financial institutions. The key to modern capitalism, therefore, is credit control. Those who control credit, dominate industry and commerce and thereby dominate all society.
d. This explains the labor bank movement that is spreading throughout the country, producers' and consumers' cooperation and nationalization of industry.
REFERENCES:
Commons and Associates; History of Labor in the United States. Vol. I, Part 1.
Saposs, What Lies Back of the Labor Bank Movement, American Labor Monthly, March, 1924.
3. ECONOMIC ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE PRESENT SYSTEM
i.
a. It is erroneously supposed that the strike is the only form of direct or economic action.
b. Hence those radicals who are opposed to political action advocate the general strike as the means of changing the capitalistic system.
II.
a. The history of the labor movement reveals that organized labor has resorted to other forms of direct or economic action to abolish the wage system.
b. These forms are as old as the labor movement and have reappeared from time to time.
III.
a. At one time in the labor movement there was an influential element which believed that the most ideal system would be a return to domestic economy, in which industry is subordinated to agriculture.
c. In the thirties Robert Owen and many of his followers founded New Harmony in Indiana, a colony based on agriculture and operated on non-capitalistic lines.
d. During the forties and fifties, Albert Brisbane, father of Arthur Brisbane, and known as the first American Socialist, introduced Fourierism into this country, and many agricultural colonies known as Phalanxes, were founded.
e. During the nineties, this movement received new en-
11
