THE NEW PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY. 



521 



master ( Que puedo dar leccion d mi maestro). All 

 the necromantic things Faust does, or gets done 

 for him by Mephistopheles in Auerbach's cellar, 

 in the Hartz Mountains, or* elsewhere, are of no 

 greater importance than the above, when we 

 think of the dreadful price he has agreed to pay 

 for them. If this view be accepted, we may say, 

 and with profoundest respect for the " dead 



kings of melody," that another fable of Faustus 

 may yet be imagined, though not very easily 

 written. Thus : Extreme personal enjoyments 

 and egoistical triumphs can only charm for a 

 few years ; and the world around needs all sorts 

 of improvements and peaceful glories. When 

 thou hast obtained preternatural power — Faus- 

 tus of a nobler time ! — what wilt thou do with it ? 

 — Contemporary Review. 



THE NEW PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY. 



Br GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 



f I TO what chaos is industry tending ? Its in- 

 -*- surgency increases. Will its perturbations 

 ever end ? From being aggressive will trades- 

 unions become destructive forces ? Will the 

 proletariat finally take the field, and the capital- 

 ist have to fight for his life ? Excited, empty- 

 handed labor seems on fire, and the political 

 economist, albeit a damping creature, seems 

 powerless to extinguish it. Doctrinal streams of 

 " supply and demand " poured upon it act but as 

 petroleum upon flame. Organized capital grinds 

 industry as in the mystic mill of the gods — very 

 small. The isolated laborer is frightened, and 

 flees to combination for safety. No protest that 

 capital is his friend reassures him. Terror has 

 made him deaf, and experience unbelieving. Can 

 the struggle of ages, made deadlier now by in- 

 creasing intelligence, end save by the despotism 

 of the knife ? Every man asks these questions, 

 to which there is but one answer. A new princi- 

 ple has entered industry, which has slowly awak- 

 ened hope, and will surely bring deliverance. Its 

 name is Cooperation. 



Any one sitting at a mid-story window in the 

 Marina, St. Leonards-on-the-Sea, has before him 

 no mean emblem of the wayward industrial world, 

 as most persons know it. The great ocean lies 

 before him, alive with tumultuous and ungovern- 

 able motion. It surges and roars, tossed and 

 driven by the masterful winds. Its waters seem 

 as though they reached the walls of the house 

 from which you watch them. The observer 

 knows there is unfathomable cruelty in its mur- 

 derous waves. It has swallowed armed hosts. 

 Vessels laden not merely with hostile squadrons, 

 but with anxious emigrants or life-giving men of 

 science, have been sucked by it down to death. 

 As far as the eye can see it covers the far-stretch- 



ing space before you, resembles some boundless 

 and awful beast. It might tear the town away 

 as though it were a toy, and leave no vestige, and 

 a future age would dispute whether a town ever 

 existed upon that spot. If the spectator saw the 

 sight without knowledge, he would be filled with 

 terror ; but he has no dread. He knows the way 

 of the sea. It comes up like destruction, but it 

 ebbs away at the shore. He who looks upon the 

 restless ocean of society is alike unalarmed, if ho 

 has the instruction which comes by the coopera- 

 tive principle. He foresees the new way the world 

 of industry will take, and the scene which was 

 once a terror to him is now a mere spectacle. 

 Society is heaving with the turbulent unrest of 

 competition more devastating than that of the 

 sea. Its remorseless billows wash away the fruits 

 of humble labor which can be recovered no more. 

 On the shore there is no bay or cavern where 

 property lies, but is guarded by capitalists or 

 traders, whose knives gleam if the indigent are 

 seen to approach it. The cooperator is not one 

 of them. He foresees that the rapacity of insur- 

 gent trade and the tumult of greed will be stilled, 

 as the principle of equity in industry comes to 

 prevail. 



The reader who would understand the nature 

 of that movement which has been extending it- 

 self since 1821 in England, will know that the 

 rise of stores and manufactories, and increase of 

 members and business, would be a story as ab- 

 stract as the statistics of the Board of Trade, and 

 as uninstructive, without a comprehensive expla- 

 nation of the principles which have inspired the 

 new industrial change, and given it the force and 

 distinction it has attained. 



First, it is necessary to apprise the reader, if 

 he has not observed it for himself— and very few 



