SOME EXPERIMENTS IN CO-OPERATION.
FIRST PAPER.
People are divided into two classes,—those who have labor to sell, and those who have money to sell. All men and women either sell the labor of their hands or brains for wages, or their money for a price, called interest. They dig or write, keep house, sew, navigate, sell goods, teach, guide men or machinery for money or other consideration, commonly called wages. These are the workers. The others sell or lend their money for dividends—or interest, and they are the capitalists, so called. It makes no difference that the larger part of those who work for wages have more or less capital. The distinction of lenders and workers holds equally good, and naturally divides the world. The workers without capital represent a large part of the people. The lenders who do not work represent a very small fraction. The workers, who are also lenders, outnumber both of these.
These two great parties, laborers and capitalists, are essential to each other. Capital without labor comes to a dead stop, and considers itself ruined because its interest money is extinguished. Labor without capital starves. The capitalist may consume his capital, but it perishes in the using, and he ultimately comes to want. The laborer can do nothing, and starves at once. They must, therefore, work together, and when they do so harmoniously, the best results are reached. They do not always work together in entire harmony, hence strikes, lockouts, bad times, quarrels and general confusion and disaster on both sides. Here is a case in hand. A certain manufacturer employs a large number of work-people, and pays them $400 a day in wages. Suddenly he finds he is losing $50 a day by the operation. If he is selfish, he turns upon his best friends, discharges them all, and saves his $50 a day which represented his interest or profits. The work-people lose everything—starve perhaps. It may happen that, being wiser, he retains the workers and pays them $350, and thus protects himself. This is better for the work-people, but commonly they are unwise, and, feeling aggrieved, they strike, and refuse to work at all. The manufacturer is perhaps inconvenienced, but the workers starve just the same. Altogether, the position is unhappy.
This is the war between labor and capital. Capital continually withdrawing itself from healthful work because it is afraid of losing its price, continually at difference with its one friend, without whom it must perish. Labor striking, demanding shorter time, more wages, dictating imperious rules about piece-work and apprentices, quarreling with its one friend, without whom it must die or seek the poor-house. To adjust these differences is the problem of the day.
One way out of the difficulty is to make the laborer a capitalist. The savings bank is the chief aid in this direction. Let the worker put a part of his earnings in a bank, and he becomes a capitalist in a small way. He learns to view the subject of interest and dividends with the eyes of a lender, and he is straightway jealous of his capital and its rights. He joins the other party, and, belonging to both, he the more readily sees that it is for the interest of both to work together. Education is offered as another solution. Give the workingman a business education, and he learns to see and understand the laws that govern the movements of wages and interest. Finally, comes the idea of co-operation—the giving the laborer a share in the guidance and profits of the work, the union of capital and labor in any particular undertaking. Co-operation is, in theory, the most sensible and the most just solution to this question that has been offered. In practice, it has been attended with every imaginable degree of success and failure. It has been repeatedly tried in every branch of business, both here and in Europe. In a certain way, it is already in active operation through the agency of savings banks, loan, friendly, and building associations, and insurance companies. But, as these are usually managed, they are not wholly co-operative in a commercial sense. In the case of savings banks, the laborers contribute to the capital and have no control over it, while capitalists manage the funds for a salary, or an extra dividend, or other consideration, over and above the interest paid to the real owners of the money.
Co-operation means the actual union of workers and lenders in one manufacture, trade, business, or other venture. It means giving the laborers in a shop, mill, foundry, ship or farm a share in the direction, profits, and losses of the business, either in whole
