7S o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



labor, and buyer, and the general policy of the business. Many coop- 

 erative workshops have through these disputes failed miserably, and 

 either fallen into individual hands or been converted into joint-stock 

 companies. These failures of cooperative production have done some- 

 what to allay the bitterness of class-feeling among workmen toward 

 their employers. They find how rare really good business ability is, 

 and how necessary to success it is. They find that it is requisite at 

 times to guard intentions secretly, and to practice a boldness quite im- 

 possible when hundreds of interests exist to be consulted, timid about 

 deputing full powers either to managers or committees. 



Workmen who have toiled to save a few pounds, and have lost 

 them in a cooperative workshop, have awakened to the fact that the 

 gains of the capitalist are not merely interest on his money, but also 

 payment for the exercise of his judgment, foresight, and executive abil- 

 ity, without which his wealth, however great, would fast melt away in 

 the strifes of business. It is true that cooperation seeks to abolish 

 many of the hazards which make modern business require unusual 

 talent for its management ; judgment will be relieved from many 

 questions when credit is curtailed, and consumers are federated to a 

 factory conducted by their own capital and directors ; yet in the actual 

 present, while cooperation still remains in its infancy, the existing con- 

 ditions of competition beset capitalists with difficulties of which only 

 experience has made workmen aware. 



MODERN ASPECTS OF THE LIFE-QUESTION* 



By Professor GEOEGE F. BARKER. 



The number of roots in our equation of life increases the difficulty of solving 

 it, but by no means permits the acceptance of the lazy assumption that it is 

 altogether insoluble or reduces a sagacious guess to the level of the prophecy of 

 a quack. Haughton. 



THE discovery of new truth is the grand object of scientific work. 

 The exultation of feeling which comes from the possession of a 

 fact, which now, for the first time, he makes known to men, must ever 

 be the reward of the scientific worker. As investigators and as stu- 

 dents of science we are met here to-day at this our annual session. 

 Each of us during the past year has been endeavoring to push out- 

 ward further into the unknown, the boundary of present knowledge. 

 When, therefore, we thus meet together, it is fitting that, from time 

 to time, our attention should be called to the progress which has been 



* Address of the retiring President of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, delivered at the Boston meeting, August 25, 1880. 



