PRESIDENT S ADDRESS — SECTION F. 139 



just pride whicli will choose to give good work for good 

 wages : for the most part their sole endeavour is to receive 

 as much and return as little in the shape of service as 

 possible. It will sooner or later become insupportable to the 

 employing classes to live in close and hourly contact with 

 persons whose interests and feelings are in hostility to them." 

 The condition has, indeed, become intolerable, and the en- 

 croachments of the trade unions have at last compelled 

 capitalists to combine for their own protection. The two 

 forces have gathered all their strength, and now stand face 

 to face awaiting the struggle. Can the struggle be averted ? 

 We shall see. 



It was probably the absolute and conspicuous failure of 

 trade unions to harmonise the interests of employers and 

 employed that led some social reformers to suggest co- 

 ojferation as the panacea for the evil, and much confusion 

 has arisen owing to a misconception of the aims and results 

 of co-operation. Believers in this remedy for the industrial 

 disease point with pardonable pride to the success which has 

 attended the operations of distributive co-operative associa- 

 tions, starting with the conspicuous example of the Rochdale 

 Society of Equitable Pioneers. This Society, which started 

 in ] 844 with a capital of £28, has achieved so marked a 

 success that, according to Miss Beatrice Potter, its capital at 

 the end of 1889 was £353,470, and its sales for that year 

 £270,685. According to the same authority, there were in 

 England in the year 1887 no less than 1516 societies of the 

 Rochdale type, whose capital was £10,344,216, and whose 

 sales for the year amounted to £34,483,771. These figures 

 do not include such co-operative establishments as the Civil 

 Service, the Army and Navy Stores, and such like. It is 

 not difficult to account for the success of these organisations ; 

 the advantages secured to the customer by the saving of a 

 large part of the expense of the middleman and the profit of 

 the capitalist merchant is at once obvious. But when we 

 come to deal with the question of productive co-operation 

 the advantage is not so apparent, and we are not surprised 

 to find that in this movement failure has been as conspicuous 

 as success in the other. The idea of productive co-operation 

 sprang from the brain of Robert Owen in the beginning of 

 the present century, and was further developed by Ludlow, 

 Maurice, and others known as the Christian Socialists, in 

 1849. In the British Economic Journal for June, 1891, Mr. 

 D. F. Schloss gives a table embracing 1554 co-operative 



