268 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



many enough of them work with their head and their judgment, as 

 well as their employers — to a share in the ordering of their business 

 and in the division of its proceeds : in other words, co-partnership, 

 raising the workmen, from the grade of simple hirers-out of their 

 labour, to fellow-workers in the concern and more or less self- 

 employers, such as enlightened employers have long since recognised 

 them as being — fellow-workers, with no longer opposed, but now 

 united interests and an identical object, potent because affecting 

 each person's own interest, for the increase and cheapening of 

 production. To the bulk of persons engaged in industry co-partner- 

 ship is a new and not understood thing, and majorities on both 

 sides shake their heads doubtingly at the suggestion. The 

 employers suspect in it some unfair inroad upon their rights and 

 upon their pockets, and, in any case, an inconvenient addition to 

 their labours. Trade unionists, on the other hand, have disparaged 

 it because, of course, it must weaken their power for war, which is 

 what they most prize. However, for reasonable men war is only 

 the hateful preparation, and an instrument, for peace — not an end in 

 itself. And Mr. Holyoake, than whom working men, trade unionists 

 and even socialists could have no truer and more level-minded friend, 

 has often enough in his lifetime pointed out to trade unionists that 

 in rejecting co-partnership and profit-sharing — which is the straight 

 avenue to it, planing the path for its acceptance and clearing away 

 the obstacles which, no doubt, He in its way — they are repudiating 

 their own avowed and acknowledged ends, throwing away the very 

 thing that they are avowedly striving for because it is offered to 

 them as a gift. One may be thankful to know that, as the support 

 openly given by very representative trade unionists to the present 

 year's Congress on Co-partnershij), in the Crystal Palace, indicates 

 this view now to have been accepted to a large extent in trade 

 union ranks. 



Profit-sharing and co-partnership have been tried in practice, and 

 have excellent results to record. In agriculture there is not much 

 room for co-partnership, because an owner could not — and much 

 less could a tenant — assign to his labourers a share in his capital, 

 represented by his estate or his lease. But there is ample room for 

 profit-sharing. Indeed, it is in agriculture that, first of all, profit- 

 sharing was introduced. This question affects agriculture as well 

 as industry, because whatever is done in industry is sure, sooner or 

 later, to reproduce itself in agriculture. We already see the con- 

 tention and strife previously a monopoly of industry having their 

 offshoots in agricultural employment. 



