Workmen's advocate., 1888-06-09
AN ICY &;s,% sss, ,,%;s,A,TUUS. THE STATUS OF F, ~as nt N-
 OPERATION. 'etsh.
COrrObOratiye Opininn of Opposing Minds-Small Co.0peratOrs Can. not Compete with Large CapitaliTs-The So.
 cialist Idea.

uC ubl1I lullult VI bllt SCIlclIlC u lrlvate cooperation to better the condition of the wage working class has been so fully demonstrated that 1t would hardly seem to require con- tirmation at the hands of the co-0pe- rators themselves. The mere ad- vancement of the material interests of the stockholders is nothing more than is accomplished by ordinary stock companies, when competition, or degree of absence of competi- tion, permits. In this connection it will be interesting to read and compare the views of an English So- cialist paper, the London Justice, and an American capitalist paper, the New York Sun. They are moved to comment by the occur renee of the Annual Congress of the English Cooperative Societies at DewSbury last month. Justice is the organ of the Social-Democratlc Fed eration, and its opinion may there fore be accepted as representative. Under the caption of "Thc Co-ope- rative Will-o'-the- Wsp," it says:
 This week the Annual Congress of Co., operative Societies has been in session at Dewsbury. Few institutions in our day, which have absorbed so much energy and so much money, have so little to show for their work in the shape of real improvement of the condition of the workers-to which object they are sup posed to be devoted. It is indeed quite pitiable to observe their hopeless efforts to contend with the power of capitalism around them. Where they have been most successful, as in Rochdale and in Northumberland they leave the condi- ton of the working classes much as they found it. The noble Robert Owen, the originator of cooperative societies in Great Britain, was himself Socialist and an Atheist. He saw clearly the lim- Its of these petty profit-sharing concerns but could he have forseen the mannerin which these establishments have been turned to reactionary account, and the way in which they have developed a mean, pettifogging spirit among the ar tisans, he would have strangled his off spring in it's cradle. Mere distributive cooperation has, indeed, had a long trial and has been found utterly want ing In capacity to solve the great social problem. Mr. Vansttart Neale-the same gentleman who dare not debate with Herbert Burrows, or any other Social Democrat, on the merits of cooperation delivered the inaugural address. In that address he practically admitted the failure of cooperation, so far, to seri- ously improve the condition of the work CTS. Those figures alone, properly read, settle the question. SociaI-Demo- crats are, of course, co-operators; but they are co-operators who recognize the absurdity of trying to build up co-ope- ratlve system when all the great means of production, exchange, transmission and distribution are in the hands of small minority of the population. Hap ply, many members of cooperative so- cieties have learned the truths of social ism during the late period of continuous depression, and, without ceasing to be mercantile co-Operators for their own gain-for which we do not blame them they are now working hard for the So- cial Revolution, which will bring about genuine international labor co-opera- tion in the near future. Meanwhile Mir Nansittart Neale's half.hearted semi-So cialist address will necessarily tel in our favor, and enforce the harder i. achings of hard facts. Nor will the shams of profit sharing" and associated homes" check the growing tendency towards So- clal-Democracy.
 So much for the avowed English Socialist. Now, it will hardly be urged that the capitalist New York Sun has any sympathy with the So- cialist movement, and yet its editor manages to give an apparently cor roboratlve opinion, though the cap ltal'st editor may, and undou btedly does, intend stab at socialism, whose principle of cooperation he does not understand. He says:
 If the cooperative principle is to be extended to production, it must logically be applied to raw materials no less than to their manufacture, as was argued at thls Congress, so as to include agricul-