labor, and buyer, and the general policy of the business. Many coöperative workshops have through these disputes failed miserably, and either fallen into individual hands or been converted into joint-stock companies. These failures of coöperative production have done somewhat to allay the bitterness of class-feeling among workmen toward their employers. They find how rare really good business ability is, and how necessary to success it is. They find that it is requisite at times to guard intentions secretly, and to practice a boldness quite impossible when hundreds of interests exist to be consulted, timid about deputing full powers either to managers or committees.
Workmen who have toiled to save a few pounds, and have lost them in a coöperative workshop, have awakened to the fact that the gains of the capitalist are not merely interest on his money, but also payment for the exercise of his judgment, foresight, and executive ability, without which his wealth, however great, would fast melt away in the strifes of business. It is true that coöperation seeks to abolish many of the hazards which make modern business require unusual talent for its management; judgment will be relieved from many questions when credit is curtailed, and consumers are federated to a factory conducted by their own capital and directors; yet in the actual present, while coöperation still remains in its infancy, the existing conditions of competition beset capitalists with difficulties of which only experience has made workmen aware.
| MODERN ASPECTS OF THE LIFE-QUESTION.[1] |
By Professor GEORGE F. BARKER.
The number of roots in our equation of life increases the difficulty of solving it, but by no means permits the acceptance of the lazy assumption that it is altogether insoluble or reduces a sagacious guess to the level of the prophecy of a quack.—Haughton.
THE discovery of new truth is the grand object of scientific work. The exultation of feeling which comes from the possession of a fact, which now, for the first time, he makes known to men, must ever be the reward of the scientific worker. As investigators and as students of science we are met here to-day at this our annual session. Each of us during the past year has been endeavoring to push outward further into the unknown, the boundary of present knowledge. When, therefore, we thus meet together, it is fitting that, from time to time, our attention should be called to the progress which has been
- ↑ Address of the retiring President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered at the Boston meeting, August 25, 1880.
