THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 593 



per annum. " These manufacturing enterprises have not, however, been 

 conducted on co-operative lines. . . . The work-people in their factories 

 are not co-operators. They do not share in the profits of the business. 

 They receive simply the market rate of wages." They are on just as 

 bad terms with their co-operative employers as they would be with 

 individual capitalists, and they have endeavored to better their con- 

 dition by entering upon strikes ; or, in other words, the great Co- 

 operative Distribution Society managers, in Great Britain, finding that 

 it was essential to their success as manufacturing producers, have 

 adopted, without scruple, all the methods and rules that prevail in 

 similar establishments which have been incorporated and are managed 

 solely with a view to the profit of their individual capitalists or stock- 

 holders." 



But this is not the whole story. Besides these great wholesale co- 

 operative distribution societies which have engaged in manufacturing, 

 there are a large number of smaller and weaker similar societies in 

 Great Britain which are also attempting to manufacture the same 

 description of goods for the profit of their more limited circle of mem- 

 bers ; and these last now complain that they are absolutely unable 

 to withstand the competition of the larger wholesale societies, which, 

 purchasing labor at the lowest rate in the open market, denying any 

 participation of profit to their workmen, and working upon the largest 

 scale, are enabled to produce and sell cheaper. " So that all the disas- 

 trous effects of unlimited and unscrupulous competition, for which co- 

 operation was expected to be a cure, are showing themselves among 

 the co-operators, and another example is to be added to the record of 

 modern economic experience, of the strong industrial and commercial 

 organizations devouring the weak." 



An element of international character and importance, growing out 

 of the improvements in production through machinery, should also 

 not be overlooked. Whatever of advantage one country may have 

 formerly enjoyed over another by reason of absolute or comparative 

 low wages, is now, so far as the cost of machine-made goods is con- 

 cerned, through the destruction of handicrafts, and the extended use 

 and improvements in machinery, being rapidly reduced to a minimum. 

 For, apart from any enhancement of cost by taxes upon imports, there 

 is at present but very little difference in all countries of advanced 

 civilization in the cost of machinery, of the power that moves it, or of 

 the crude materials which it converts into manufactures. The ma- 

 chine, therefore, which enables the labor of one man to dispense with 

 the cheap labor of ten men, practically reduces any advantage which 

 the manufacturer in France, Germany, or other countries, paying nomi- 

 nally low wages, has heretofore had over the manufacturer of Eng- 

 land, or of the United States, to the simple difference in the cost of 

 the labor of the operative who manages the machine in different 

 places ; and all experience shows that the invariable concomitant of 



TOL. XXXI. 38 



