526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



COOPERATION, COERCION, COMPETITION. 



By Professor LINDLEY M. KEASBEY, 

 bryn mawk college. 



T TNDER the title, 'Cooperation, Coercion, Competition,' I propose 

 ^-^ to consider the three characteristic systems of industrial organ- 

 ization. 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 co- 

 operative system prevailed, that during the proprietary period which 

 followed, when natural resources were appropriated but before the insti- 

 tution 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 from the development of exchange, the coercive system was superseded 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 indicate how it is now being superseded by the coercive system, and 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 out- 

 come 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 associa- 

 tion 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 



