COOPERATION. 569 



to the amounts they have earned in wages or salaries. 

 Causes of dissension are obvious. One who receives the 

 lowest wages is dissatisfied holds that he is as good a 

 worker as one who gets higher wages, and resents the de 

 cision of the foreman : probably ascribing it to favouritism. 

 Officials, too, are apt to disagree with one another, alike in 

 respect of power and remuneration. Then among the hand 

 workers in general there is pretty certain to be jealousy of 

 the brain-workers, whose values they under-estimate ; and 

 with their jealousies go reflections on the committee as 

 unfair or as unwise. In these various ways the equilibrium 

 of the body is frequently disturbed, and in course of time is 

 very likely to be destroyed. 



839. Must we then say that self-governing combina 

 tions of workers will never answer? The reply is that one 

 class of the difficulties above set forth must ever continue to 

 be great, though perhaps not insuperable, but that the other 

 and more serious class may probably be evaded. 



These members of industrial copartnerships, paying them 

 selves trade-union wages, are mostly imbued with trade- 

 union ideas and feelings. Among these is a prejudice against 

 piece-work, quite naturally resulting from experience. Find 

 ing what a given piece of work ordinarily costs in day-wages, 

 the employer offers to pay the workman for it at a certain 

 lower rate; leaving him to get, by extra diligence, more 

 work done and a larger payment. Immediately, the quan 

 tity executed is greatly increased, and the workman receives 

 considerably more than he did in wages so much more that 

 the employer becomes dissatisfied, thinks he is giving too 

 large a sum by the piece, and cuts down the rate. Action 

 and reaction go on until, very generally, there is an approxi 

 mation to the earnings by day-wages: the tendency, mean 

 while, having been so to raise the employer s standard, that 

 he expects to get more work out of the workman for the 

 same sum. 



