LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP. 
By Councillor THOMAS FOSTER, of Padiham. 
November 27th, 1906. 
The lecturer said that industrial remuneration was an 
interesting and important part of the social question, and an 
equally important branch of economics. The general im- 
pression is that remuneration for industrial service is confined 
to a time and piece basis, but there were other methods, or, 
at least, variations from the more general methods. The 
present relation was the purchase by one set of men (employers) 
of the labour of another set (the employees) on terms which 
are not, as a rule, much more than enough to enable the bulk 
of employees to secure a very moderate standard of comfort, 
with practically no luxury. Intermediate between mere wage 
remuneration and co-partnership is profit-sharing, which has 
a wages basis, supplemented by an agreed percentage of the 
employers’ profit. But this was not the best ideal. He out- 
lined the French profit-sharing scheme of Leclaire (1842) and 
Godin at Guise, and Robert Owen at New Lanark. From 
these experiments there were considerable moral results, and 
the failures of some of these schemes stimulated other men to 
experiment further on more business-like lines. 
A real practical application of co-partnership principles 
was made by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1854, when they began 
cotton spinning, ‘“ by which its members may have the profits 
accruing from the employment of their own capital and 
labour.” But not till 1884 was any organised effort made to 
establish such businesses on a definite, systematic basis. In 
that year the Labour Co-partnership Association was formed, 
and at the end of 1904, independent of private businesses 
which had instituted co-partnership arrangements, there were 
in the British Isles 126 businesses organised by working men, 
with capital of over 14 millions, trade of over 3} millions, and 
net profit £200,000. Underlying all these was the basis of 
standard wages and good working conditions. 
