THE NEW PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY. 



525 



be returned to purchasers would give him five 

 pounds a year besides his little five per cent, in- 

 terest on bis capital. Thus it could be shown 

 that the customers contributed more to the prof- 

 its of the store than the capitalist. This is a 

 conceivable form of the argument. But no state- 

 ment of it exists. In some form it excited in- 

 terest and obtained force, and putting it into 

 practice was the making of cooperation. 



The purchaser, therefore, was taken into the 

 partnership. Thus the mere form of distributing 

 profits actually increased them. The interest of 

 the purchaser revived. He became a propagan- 

 dist. He brought in his neighbor. Business 

 grew, profits augmented, and new vitality was in- 

 fused into cooperation. The conception of it 

 grew. The vague principle that the producers 

 of profit should have it took a defined form, and 

 the purchaser was henceforth included in the 

 participation of store-gains. 



Definitions grow as the horizon of experience 

 expands. They are not inventions, but descrip- 

 tions of the state of a question. No man sees all 

 through a discovery at once. Had Christ fore- 

 seen the melancholy controversies over what he 

 meant which have since saddened the world, he 

 would have written a book himself, and never 

 have trusted the conditions of salvation to the 

 incapable constructions and vague memories of 

 an illiterate crowd. Foreseeing definitions, guid- 

 ing cooperation at successive points, would have 

 been a great advantage, but it had to wait for 

 them. When it became clear that the purchaser 

 must be taken into partnership as well as the 

 capitalist, it did not occur to any one that co- 

 operation was not complete so long as the ser- 

 vants of the store were left out. If profits were 

 to be shared by all who contributed to produce 

 them, the servants of a store must be included. 

 The definition of the cooperative principle in 1844 

 had attained this form : Cooperation is a scheme 

 of shopkeeping for the working-people where no 

 credit is given or received, where pure articles of 

 just measure are sold at market prices, and the 

 profits accumulated for the purchasers. It was 

 not until twenty-four years later — namely, 1868 — 

 that Rochdale attempted to extend the principle 

 of cooperation to manufactures. The obvious 

 way of doing this wa3 to divide profits with the 

 artisan. Those who had discovered that the in- 

 terest of the purchasers was worth buying, were 

 ready to admit that the interest of the workmen 

 was also worth its price. Clerks, managers, who- 

 ever in any capacity, high or low, were engaged 

 in creating or promoting the profits, were to be 



counted in the distribution. Fourteen years more 

 elapsed before any published definition of coop- 

 eration contained this addition : The main prin- 

 ciple of cooperation now is that in all new enter- 

 prises, whether of trade or manufacture, the prof- 

 its shall be distributed in equitable proportions 

 among all engaged in creating it. 1 



At the Social Science Congress, held in Edin- 

 burgh in 1868, 1 asked Prof. Fawcett to take oc- 

 casion, in one of the sections, to define coopera- 

 tion as he conceived it, that we might be able to 

 quote his authority in our societies. He did so 

 in useful words, including the laborer as one who 

 should share in the gains of labor. The most 

 comprehensive statement of cooperation is that 

 given by a master of definitions. It occurred 

 in the first public speech Mr. John Stuart Mill 

 was known to have made. A great cooperative 

 tea-party of members of cooperative societies in 

 London was held in the Old Crown and Anchor 

 Hall, Strand, then known as the Whittington 

 Club. Being acquainted with Mr. Mill, I solicited 

 him to define the nature of cooperation, as he 

 conceived it ought to be stated, for our guidance. 

 The words he used were: "It is not cooperation 

 where a few persons join for the purpose of mak- 

 ing a profit, by which only a portion of them 

 benefit. Cooperation is where the whole of the 

 produce is divided. What is wanted is that the 

 whole of the working-class should partake of the 

 profits of labor." This was a pillar of fire by 

 night, showing the way to the wanderers in the 

 wilderness of industry. The Cooperative Con- 

 gress at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 18*73, agreed upon 

 a floating definition of a cooperative society, 

 stating that " any society should be regarded 

 as cooperative which divided profits with labor 

 or trade, or both." Prior to this I had taken 

 some trouble to show that if the purchaser 

 from a manufacturing society should be placed 

 on the same footing as the purchaser from a 

 store, a similar extension of business and profits 

 would be likely to arise in the workshop which 

 had accrued in the store, and the costs of adver- 

 tising, and travelers, and commissions, would be 

 greatly reduced. This led to a more comprehen- 

 sive definition of the scope of the cooperative 

 principle, which I ventured thus to express : " Co- 

 operation is an industrial scheme for delivering 

 the public from the conspiracy of capitalists, 

 traders, or manufacturers, who would make the 

 laborer work for the least and the consumer pay 

 the utmost for whatever he needs of money, ma- 

 chines, or merchandise. Cooperation effects this 



"Logic of Cooperation,'' by the present writer. 



