COOPERATION. 573 



\vage-earner, the marks of status do not wholly disappear. 

 For so many hours daily he makes over his faculties to a 

 master, or to a cooperative group, for so much money, and is 

 for the time owned by him or it. He is temporarily in the 

 position of a slave, and his overlooker stands in the position 

 of a slave-driver. Further, a remnant of the regime of status 

 is seen in the fact that he and other workers are placed in 

 ranks, receiving different rates of pay. But under such a 

 mode of cooperation as that above contemplated, the system 

 of contract becomes unqualified. Each member agrees with 

 the body of members to perform certain work for a certain 

 sum, and is free from dictation and authoritative classing. 

 The entire organization is based on contract, and each trans 

 action is based on contract. 



One more aspect of the arrangement must be named. It 

 conforms to the general law of species-life, and the law 

 implied in our conception of justice the law that reward 

 shall be proportionate to merit. Far more than by the 

 primitive slave-system of coerced labour and assigned sus 

 tenance far more than by the later system under which 

 the serf received a certain share of produce more even 

 than by the wage-earning system under which payment, 

 though partially proportioned to work, is but imperfectly 

 proportioned, would the system above described bring merit 

 and reward into adjustment. Excluding all arbitrariness it 

 would enable reward and merit to adjust themselves. 



But now, while contending that cooperation carried on by 

 piece-work, would achieve the desideratum that the manual 

 worker shall have for his product all which remains after 

 due remuneration of the brain-worker, it must be admitted 

 that the practicability of such a system depends on character. 

 Throughout this volume it has been variously shown that 

 higher types of society are made possible only by higher 

 types of nature; and the implication is that the best in 

 dustrial institutions are possible only with the best men. 

 Judging from that temporary success which has been 



