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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



deliverance by taking the workmen and the cus- 

 tomers into partnership in every form of busi- 

 ness it devises." In a yet briefer form I sought 

 to indicate that the consumer must be kept in 

 view, if cooperation is to be complete. These 

 were the words used : " Cooperation is a scheme 

 by which profits can be obtained by concert and 

 divided by consent, including with the producers 

 the indigent consumer." l 



These definitions were written to show that 

 the original and defensible purpose of coopera- 

 tion is the better distribution of wealth through- 

 out the whole community, including the consumer. 

 Cooperation to benefit the capitalist at the ex- 

 pense of the workman, or to benefit the work- 

 man at the expense of the consumer, would still 

 maintain a virtual conspiracy against the pur- 

 chasing public. Such cooperation benefits two 

 classes — leaves the third and larger class unpro- 

 tected and unbenefited, save indirectly or tempo- 

 rarily. It creates new forces of organized com- 

 petitors against the outlying community. Co- 

 operation should aim to cancel competition with- 

 in its own range of action, and mitigate its pres- 

 ence elsewhere. The present general state of 

 society is beyond our power of changing. The 

 claim of cooperation is that it is a new force cal- 

 culated to improve industrial society by intro- 

 ducing in distribution and production, wherever 

 it operates, the principle of common interests in- 

 stead of competition of interests. 



All cooperators who have, as the Italians say, 

 "eyes that can see a buffalo in the snow," will 

 see the policy of counting the customer as an ally. 

 Until this is done, productive cooperation will 

 " wriggle " in the markets of competition, as 

 Denner says in " Felix Holt," " like a worm that 

 tries to walk on its tail ; " whereas, when the con- 

 sumer finds his interest consulted, cooperation 

 has a new and an assured future before it. It 

 will tread as sure-footed as a behemoth, and, what 

 is more, secure the distribution of wealth by mak- 

 ing moderate competence possible to all who 

 work. The production of undistributed wealth 



1 In the first volume of my " History of Cooperation 

 in England," I have spoken of the capital-lenders and 

 labor-lender in a sense which may imply coequal par- 

 ticipation in profits. In all definitions in this paper 

 the term capital is intentionally absent. In the sur- 

 veys I have had to make of the whole field of co- 

 operation I have seen confusion everywhere from 

 capital being treated as a recipient of profit. There 

 never will be clearness of view in the cooperative field 

 until capital is counted as an expense, and when paid 

 done with. Labor by brain or hand is the sole claim- 

 ant of profits. 



is already ample, and an affliction in society, ren- 

 dering the poverty of the many sharper and more 

 abject by the side of the splendid, ever-growing, 

 bewildering, masterful, and aggressive opulence 

 of the few, which menaces by endowing dreadful 

 anarchy itself with the charm of change. There 

 never was security, except by the sword, where 

 the few have been rich and the many poor ; but 

 society will be secure without the sword when 

 the condition is reversed, and the many have 

 competence and only the few are indigent. 



Audiences unfamiliar with the subject I have 

 found to understand it by describing the three 

 features of it which experience and growth have 

 developed. Cooperation consists in — 1. Concert 

 regulated by honesty, with a view to profit by 

 economy; 2. Equitable distribution of profits 

 among all concerned in creating them, whether 

 as purchasers, service in distribution, or by labor, 

 or custom in manufactures ; 3. Educated com- 

 mon-sense in propagandism. 1 The general con- 

 ception of cooperation by outside economical 

 writers who have paid attention to it, is that given 

 by Dr. Elder in his recent work entitled " Topics 

 of the Day," who says : 



" In common use, the term cooperation is re- 

 stricted to such organized combinations of indi- 

 viduals as are designed to relieve them, as far as 

 practicable, of intermediates in productive indus- 

 try or commercial exchange. Cooperation is part- 

 nership in profits equitably distributed in propor- 

 tion to the severalties of capital, 8 labor, skill, and 

 management. This is more exactly the description 

 of those associations which are properly called 

 1 Cooperative Labor Societies,' or partnerships of 

 industrial producers. Another, and in natural 

 order an earlier, form of cooperative business asso- 

 ciations are partnerships of consumers, who pur- 

 chase in gross such commodities as they require 

 for ordinary vise, and distribute them according to 

 their several needs at the least possible cost of 

 distribution, being jointly the owners and venders, 

 and severally the final purchasers, of the goods 

 provided. . . . This form of the movement is 

 known as ' Cooperative Stores.' There is a third 

 form, the natural outgrowth of the two stages just 

 noticed, which in Germany is styled the • Credit 

 Banking System.' The emphasis of the descrip- 

 tive name falls properly upon the word credit in 

 the title. They differ from the ordinary money 

 banks mainly in this, that they lend only to the 

 members or depositors, of whom each for all, and 



1 Lecture to E'.eusis Club, 1877. 



2 Dr. Elder follows the old idea of including " capi- 

 tal " in the " severalties " entitled to profit For rea- 

 sons given in this paper, in definitions of cooperation, 

 "capital" is expressly excluded as a participant of 

 profit. Capital takes payment, but not profit. 



