—E ee 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 917 
While the majority of the societies have not yet got beyond the elementary 
stage of co-operation, which is shopkeeping, large numbers have added productive 
departments, such as baking, tailoring, dressmaking, and bootmaking. The 
annual production is estimated to be 3,500,000/. Twenty-three societies also 
work corn mills, with an annual output of over 1,500,000. The oldest exist- 
ing society was started in 1795, and its first mill cost 2,200/. The newest corn 
mill belonging to co-operators is on the Tyne, and is approaching completion. Its 
cost will be 100,000/., and it will add about 400,000/. a year to the total output of 
the co-operative mills. 
There are two co-operative wholesale societies which supply the retail societies 
on the same principles as the latter supply their individual members. 1,123 
societies have shareholders. Their annual trade is 9,300,000/., and they manu- 
facture boots, woollen cloth, clothing, soap, biscuits, jams, &c., to the value of 
370,000/. a year. 
Thirty-seven societies are engaged in farming operations, and there are seventy- 
three other societies that are organised specially for various manufacturing opera- 
tions. Their annual produce is about 700,000/. 
A very important deyelopment of co-operation has been the formation of 
working-class joint-stock companies in the cotton industry. The oldest existing 
company was started at Bacup in 1850. Now half the cotton spinning of Oldham 
and district is done by these companies. ‘ 
Among the miscellaneous efforts of co-operators are the building of houses for 
their members, the expenditure of 30,0007. a year on education, the granting of 
11,0007. a year to charitable purposes, and the subscription of 5,000/. a year to the 
Co-operative Union, which is an organisation comprising most of the societies for 
propagandist, educational, and defensive purposes. 
The sense of the injustice of the ordinary industrial and commercial methods 
is the cause of the inception and growth of co-operation. The leading idea has 
always been a desire for equity; and they have felt that, just as in political 
matters, the more democratic the organisation of a government becomes the more 
the wants of the great masses of the people are considered ; so, in the world of 
labour, democratic organisations would give to the worker that just consideration 
and treatment which the master-and-man system has failed to supply. 
Co-operators fully recognise the benefits of division of labour, and of free 
exchange of products. But they think that to ensure equitable exchange there 
must be full knowledge and equal power, or, in their absence, a cultivated self- 
restraint on the part of the best informed and most powerful. ‘They insist on the 
necessity for publicity in all essential matters, on the advisability of the one man 
one vote principle in industry as well as in politics, on the necessity for all men 
possessing capital, and on the abolition of all monopolies. 
They think that co-operation ensures to every willing man an easy means of 
acquiring capital, and of securing equity in all things; and if co-operators cannot 
break down monopolies without the aid of the Legislature, they will not fail to seek 
that aid in the same manner as they have repeatedly done in the past, when other- 
wise insuperable obstacles required to be removed. Co-operators look upon local 
and imperial government as links in the chain of a complete system of co-opera- 
tion, and they are steadily increasing their active share in the task of government. 
Personally, the writer thinks that there are indications of co-operators taking a 
rapid step in exerting greater influence on the Legislature, as a means of accele- 
rating the progress of industrial co-operation. 
3. The Value of Labour in relation to Economic Theory.' 
By James Bonar. 
The author, after pointing out that labour is valued by the labourer as the 
means of living, and by the employer as a means of production, said that the 
essence of work for wages is that some one other than the labourer owns the 
1 Printed in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (Harvard), 1891. 
