TEE NEW PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY. 



529 



capacity and honest pride of the workman, and 

 really have a claim upon him in these respects. 

 But the opposite system has grown, it has not 

 been invented, and has certain advantages in the 

 eyes of a large class of persons, more than are 

 imagined. It is quite conceivable that many 

 working-men will yet, for a long time to come, 

 prefer the present independent relation of master 

 and servant. MaDy a man who has the tire of 

 the savage state in him, and whom civilization 

 has not taught by example or opportunity how 

 much more happiness can be commanded by con- 

 sulting the welfare of others than by considering 

 only himself, prefers working on war terms, un- 

 fettered by any obligation. He prefers being 

 free to go where he will and when he will. He 

 has no sympathy to give, and he does not care 

 that none is offered him. He would not recipro- 

 cate it if it was. He dislikes being bound by 

 even interest. Any binding is objectionable to 

 him. Hate, malevolence, spite, and conspiracy, 

 arc not evils to him. He rather likes them. His 

 mode of action may bring evils and privation 

 upon others ; but he is not tender on these points. 

 And if he be a man of ability in his trade he can 

 get through life pretty well while health lasts, 

 and enjoy an insolent freedom. There are " sen- 

 timental" cooperators who overlook this. All 

 the nonsense talked about capital, and the impu- 

 tations heaped upon it, which political economists 

 have so naturally resented, have arisen from 

 workmen always seeing its claws where it has 

 mastery absolute and uncontrolled. No animal 

 known to Dr. Darwin has so curvilinear a back, 

 or nails so long and sharp, as the Capitalist Cat. 

 Except its proper place and pacific moods, or as 

 the master of industry, in generous hands, capital 

 bites very sharp. As the servant of industry, it 

 is the friend of the workman. Nobody decries 

 capital in its proper place except men with oil in 

 their brains, which causes all their ideas to slip 

 about and never rest upon any fact. Capital is 

 the creator. It is nevertheless pretty often selfish 

 when it takes all the profits of the joint enterprise 

 of money and labor. It can be cruel in its way, 

 since it is capable of buying up markets and 

 making the people pay what it pleases. It is 

 capable of shutting the doors of labor until men 

 are starved into working on its own terms. Cap- 

 ital is like fire, or steam, or electricity — a good 

 friend, but a bad master. Capital as a servant 

 is a helpmate and cooperator. To limit its mas- 

 tership it must be subjected to definite interest. 

 This was the earliest device of cooperators ; but 

 its light has grown dim in many minds of the 



106 



last generation, and in the minds of the new 

 generation it has never shone. 



The definite cooperative principle — the one 

 maintained throughout these pages — is that which 

 places productive cooperation on the same plane 

 as distributive, and which regards capital simply 

 as an agent, and not as a principal. In distribu- 

 tive cooperation the interest of capital is treated 

 as a cost, and its expenses to be paid before 

 profits are counted, and in productive cooperation 

 the same rule must be followed. But on the way 

 to the stage of production this idea has been 

 practically dropped out. Yet capital must never 

 be recognized as other than a cost. That this is 

 consistent doctrine will be admitted by many who 

 have never thought of acting upon it. In the 

 minds, in the practice wherever they could induce 

 it, of the best-known living contemporaries of 

 the older cooperators, this conception is clearly 

 apparent, but it has not been made sufficiently 

 apparent. It has not been explained in detail 

 and made conspicuous as a principle. In tracing 

 the steps of constructive cooperation in the his- 

 tory heretofore alluded to, it soon became evident 

 that this omission has been the cause of the con- 

 fusion of ideas in every stage of development as 

 to the place and claim of capital in the new in- 

 dustrial companies. Students of cooperation in 

 other countries who have mastered the question 

 have naturally directed their inquiries to this 

 point. Almost the first question Mr. Eoswell 

 Fisher, of Montreal, put to me related to it. He 

 had quite independently thought out the question 

 from a commercial point of view. He regards 

 the distributive form of cooperation, as seen in 

 the operation of a store, as a form of capitalist 

 commerce. The members of the store contribute 

 the capital which it uses, and the profit they make 

 on their sales is the profit derived from the skill- 

 ful use of their capital, and is not made upon 

 labor except so far as the directors, manager, and 

 servers of the store may be counted workers, and 

 they are seldom as such accorded a share of the 

 profit. Should they be included as participants 

 in the profits, the proportion earned by their 

 labor will always be small compared with the 

 larger profits earned by the economical admin- 

 istrative use of capital employed in purchasing 

 stores for sale. Store-profits being mainly de- 

 rived from the uses of capital, Mr. Fisher consid- 

 ers the store as a form of capitalist commerce, 

 the store being an association of small capitalists 

 who create an aggregate fund from which they 

 derive a common profit. 



But in England we do not apply the term 



