opportunities, and contingencies, which, at least, make the difference between great and merely moderate success, are not to be had at a salary.'

Yet I do not claim that the effect of this would extend so far as to neutralize all the great advantages of coöperation. If a body of workmen possessed the faith and patience necessary to carry them through the period of outlay and experiment, if they had the good judgment to select the best manager they could find, the good sense to pay him enough to keep him solidly attached to them, and the good humor to support him heartily, submit promptly to his decisions, and remain harmonious among themselves, coöperation might become a triumphant success with them. But let us see how much all this demands from poor human nature.

In the first place, there is the all-important choice of a manager. Not to dwell on the danger of a body of workmen mistaking presumption for a true self-confidence, a brave show of information for thorough knowledge, an affected brusqueness for decision of character; or being led away by the plausibility and popular acts of a candidate, we have the almost certainty that such a body would, in the result, lose the best man, if not by turns every competent man, through indisposition to pay a sufficient salary. In his address before the Coöperative Congress already quoted, Mr. Thomas Brassey asked: "Where shall we find coöperative shareholders ready to give £5,000 a year for a competent manager? And yet the sum I have

"It is impossible to hire commercial genius, or the instincts of a skilful trader."-Fred'k Harrison, Fortnightly Review, III, 492.

"I am confident that the manual operations will be skilfully and probably more diligently performed in a cooperative establishment. The personal interests of the workmen will be so directly advanced by their application and perseverance that they will naturally work hard. But their best efforts will fail to ensure a satisfactory result, unless the general organization is perfect also."-Mr. Brassey, at Hali fax. The Times' Report.

named is sometimes readily paid by private employers to an able lieutenant." 1 But it is not merely an able lieutenant, but a "captain of industry," that coöperators must secure, if they are to conduct purchase, production, and sale in competition with establishments under individual control. Can we imagine such a body paying $50,000 a year to a manager, when they receive on an average not more than $500 themselves? Would not jealousy of such high wages sooner or later, in one way or another, overcome their sense of their own interest? Even if we suppose them intellectually convinced of the expediency, upon general principles, of paying largely for good service, will they not be found calculating that for this particular manager this particular sum is altogether too much, or, without any disparagement of his merits, experimenting to see how much they can "cut him down" without driving him off, an experiment always dangerous, always breeding ill-feeling, and preparing the way for a separation. For why should the man who has the skill and knowledge necessary to conduct business on his own account be content to remain on a salary greatly below the amount he might fairly expect to earn for himself? Is it said his salary is regular and his profits always more or less uncertain? But the men of the temper to conduct. business are not generally timid men or self-distrustful; they like responsibility and the exercise of authority-it is a part of their pay. Nor are they averse to a risk well taken; it braces them up and makes the game exciting. Is it said that want of capital may constrain some of the best men to seek employment at the hand of such associations? This is true, in a degree, and here is one of the possibilities of coöperation. Yet if a man have the real stuff in him, want of capital is not likely long to keep him under. The history of modern industry teaches that.

The Times' Report.

Getting into business in the most humble way, the merchants from whom he buys his materials, those to whom he sells his products, and the bankers to whom he resorts with his modest note,1 all soon take his measure, and when they have taken his measure they give him room. Genius will have its appointed course: antagonism and adversity only incite, inspire, instruct.

We have thus far spoken only of those difficulties of coöperation which attend the selection and retention of able managers. On the difficulties to which this is but an introduction, arising out of the tendency to intrigue which exists in all numerous bodies, and the disposition to meddlesomeness on the part of committees or boards of directors, I need not dwell. A sufficient lively impression of them is likely to be created by the merest mention. I will only further refer to an embarrassment which attends the extension of the coöperative plan to all branches of manufacture which employ laborers of very different degrees of industrial efficiency. Thus, in a cotton or woolen mill are to be found persons of both sexes and of all ages, earning under the present system from a few pence up to as many shillings a day. Under the coöperative plan, how is the scale of prices to be fixed? To say that all should be paid alike would be monstrous, impossible. It would be grossly unjust, and would be quite sufficient to wreck the enterprise from the start.3

1

My honored father has told me of the discussion once held over a note for $250, offered at the bank of which he was a director, signed with the then unknown name of James M. Beebe.

Mr. Thornton (On Labor, p. 441) argues that while societies of workingmen may be unable to administer their affairs directly, they may be competent, like political societies, "to provide for their own government." To the contrary, Mr. Harrison urges (Fortnightly Review, III., 492) that "he who is unfit to manage, is unfit to direct the manager."

Mr. Babbage has shown (Econ. of Manufactures, p. 172-183) that the earnings of persons employed in the production of pins, in his day

But if the laborers are to be paid at different rates, who, I ask again, is to determine the proportions in which the product shall be divided? How is general consent to be obtained to a scheme which must condemn the great majority to receive but a contemptible fraction of their proportional share? Without general consent, what chance of harmonious action? But if we suppose the scale of distribution to be fixed, who is to assign the personnel of the association to their several categories, to say that this man shall go into one class, and that man, who thinks quite as well of himself, shall go into a lower class! Is there not here the occasion, almost the provocation, of disputes and bad blood highly dangerous to such an enterprise?

I have no desire to multiply objections to this system. or to magnify the scope of those that offer themselves to view. Heartily do I wish that workingmen might be found rising more and more to the demands which coöperation makes upon them; but I entertain no great expectations of success in this direction. The reduction of profits through increasing intelligence, sobriety and frugality on the part of the wages class, securing them a prompt, casy and sure resort to the best market, is the most hopeful path of progress for the immediate future. There are of course some departments of industry where the services of the entrepreneur can be more easily dispensed with, than in others. Here coöperation under good auspices

may achieve no doubtful success.

It would appear that if coöperation could be introduced anywhere, it would be in agriculture: yet in no

ranged from 41⁄2d. to 6s. If the workmen who were capable of doing the higher parts of the work (pointing, whitening, etc.) were to be put to making the whole pin, through all the ten processes described, the cost of the pins would be three and three-quarter times as great ag under the application of the division of labor, with payments to each workman according to his capacity.

department of production have the experiments tried proved less satisfactory. One reason which, in addition to those already enumerated, will probably always serve to delay the extension of the coöperative system in this direction, is the great difficulty of determining the actual profits of a year or a term of years, with reference, as is essential, to the value of unexhausted improvements. So long as the coöperators hold together and divide the yearly produce, all goes well; but if at any time one desires to withdraw, and men will not enter into associations of this character without the right of retiring, at pleasure, without forfeiture, the question of undivided profits becomes. of the most serious importance. To settle it with absolute justice is simply impossible, and no method of arriving roughly at a result of substantial justice, is likely to avoid deep dissatisfaction and sense of wrong.

An apparently successful experiment in this direction obtains notice in Prof. Fawcett's Pol. Econ., pp. 292-3, note.

Perhaps the difficulty of the problem will be best outlined, to those who are not familiar with this special subject of undivided profits, or "unexhausted improvements," in agriculture, by presenting the following classification of tenants' expenditures on the soil, which was embraced in the Duke of Richmond's Bill of 1875. That bill divided improvements into three categories; permanent, wasting and temporary. In the first class were included reclaiming, warping, draining, making or improving watercourses, ponds, etc., roads, fences, buildings, and the planting of orchards and gardens. With respect to these, it was proposed that an outgoing tenant should be allowed compensation for the unexhausted value of such of them ag he might have made within 20 years of the termination of his tenancy with the written consent of his landlord. The second class included liming, claying, chalking, marling, boring, clay-burning, and planting hops, and it was proposed that the tenant should be able to claim for these processes, if done within seven years of the end of his tenancy, no consent being necessary. So also with respect to the third classconsuming by cattle, sheep, or pigs, of corn, cake, or other feeding stuffs, or using artificial manures-where, however, a claim could not go back beyond two years.