| COOPERATION, COERCION, COMPETITION. |
By Professor LINDLEY M. KEASBEY,
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE.
UNDER the title, 'Cooperation, Coercion, Competition,' I propose to consider the three characteristic systems of industrial organization. Having set forth in a few words what appear to me to be the determining factors of industrial organization, in the first part of my paper I shall endeavor to show that the three systems of association have succeeded each other historically in the order named, that in primitive times, before the appropriation of natural resources, the cooperative system prevailed, that during the proprietary period which followed, when natural resources were appropriated but before the institution of exchange, the cooperative system became subservient to the coercive system, and that with the rise of the commercial era resulting from the development of exchange, the coercive system was superseded by the competitive system. In the second part of my paper I intend to draw attention to certain tendencies which appear to me to point toward a reversal of the original order of evolution. Having shown why the competitive system was necessarily a transitional form, I shall indicate how it is now being superseded by the coercive system, and in conclusion I shall endeavor to demonstrate that the ultimate outcome must be the reestablishment of the original cooperative system.
My main proposition is that industrial organization is determined by two factors: first, by the character of the social surplus, and second, by the monopolization of the sources thereof. Instead of stopping to prove this proposition I shall proceed at once with the historical survey, hoping that in the course of such survey the requisite proof will be forthcoming.
During the earliest days of human development, when people lived in what political philosophers have called the natural state, the surplus was derived from fishing, hunting, nut-gathering, berry-picking and root-culture. In this savage, or so-called natural state, the character of the surplus was such as sometimes to call simply for sexual association of labor and sometimes to require personal association of labor. To cite a few examples: for shore-fishing, river-fishing and forest hunting, nut-gathering, berry-picking and primitive root-culture, sexual association of labor was sufficient, and we find the peoples pursuing these occupations organized accordingly along domestic lines. On the
