59 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



money before the cotton is grown, besides all his labor and time. And 

 the man who can not make eight or ten bales at least has almost no 

 object in life, and nothing to live on."* 



The (Milwaukee) " Directory of American Millers," for 1886, shows 

 a decrease in the number of flour-mills in the United States for that 

 year, as compared with 1884, of 6,812, out of a total in the latter year 

 of 25,079, but an increase at the same time in capacity for flour pro- 

 duction. The legitimate inference from these statistics, therefore, is, 

 that the small flour-mills of the United States are being crushed, or 

 forced into consolidation with the larger companies. That consolida- 

 tion, in this instance, has not interfered with the cheapening of product, 

 is indicated by the circumstance that whereas the mills of Minneapolis 

 sent out in 1881 1,200,000 barrels of flour, at an average price of $6.14 

 per barrel, the quantity sent out in 1885 was 1,834,000 barrels, at an 

 average of $4.89 per barrel ; and for the year 1886 the average was 

 reported at even less. 



The experience of the co-operative societies of Great Britain the 

 inception and practical working of which have been hopefully looked 

 upon as likely to furnish a solution of the labor problem as recently 

 detailed by Mr. Thomas Hughes ("Tom Brown"), does not, more- 

 over, seem likely to constitute any exception to the general tend- 

 ency of great aggregated capital, employed in production or distribu- 

 tion, to remorselessly disregard any sentiment on the part of the indi- 

 vidual workman, in respect to his vocation, and to crush out or super- 

 sede all industrial enterprises of like character that may be compelled 

 to work at relative disadvantage by reason of operating upon a smaller 

 scale, or inability to employ a larger aggregate of capital. This 

 experience, as related by Mr. Hughes at a recent Congress of the Co- 

 operative Societies of Great Britain, has been as follows : Co-operation 

 in Great Britain, so long as it has confined itself to distribution that 

 is, to the purchase of commodities at the lowest rates at wholesale and 

 without the intervention of middle-men, and their subsequent sale to 

 members of the societies at the minimum of cost and profit has been 

 a very great success ; but co-operation in production, so far as it has 

 been attempted by these same societies, appears to have succeeded 

 only by abandoning co-operation in the original and best sense of the 

 term. For example, some of the great and most successful co-operative 

 distribution societies of England, in order to increase their dividends, 

 have recently undertaken to manufacture a portion of the goods which 

 they require, and thus secure for themselves the profits they have here- 

 tofore paid to the manufacturers ; and with this view, the manufacture 

 of boots and shoes has been commenced on a large scale by two of 

 the largest of such societies in Glasgow and Manchester respectively 

 the English society employing a thousand operatives, and disposing 

 of goods to a present aggregate value of more than a million dollars 



* " Bradstreet's Journal." 



