The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1892-11-03
From the Montreal Witness.
(COnclu

(COnctuded)
When cooperation was proposed
by Robert Owen as a practical sub
stitute for the relation of employers
and employed it was hailed as Cos
pei eminently English. The essence
of cooperation is that the working
men are to engage in trade with the
money they themselves have saved
or borrowed. 1t is not Joint stock
company employing men, as single
capitalist might employ them, but
the use of ''joint capital by Joint ac-
ton for joint purposes" SIN former
times" says Mr.. Holyoake, capital
lists hired labor, paid its market
price, and took the profits. Co
operative labor proposes to reverse
this process. Its plan is to buy CAPT
tai, pay for it its market price, and
itself take all the profits" A CO.
operative workshop is one in which
labor hires capital, devises its own
arrangement and works for its own
need. In 1S4S the triumph of CO.
operation was confidently predicted.
Owen had succeeded sufficiently to
make others believe that if they re-
jected his extravagant views, which
had wrecked his best enterprises, his
methods would succeed. Louis
Blanc, as member of the Provisional
Government of France, was allowed
to try it, with the aid of liberal pub
lie subsidies. But while 1S4S was
the year Of faith in coming mil.
lenium, political, social and indus
fri.1 1910 +rrpol ont hn thn ,n,r
of unfultilled prophecies. The social
workshops in Paris aided by the
state, all failed, so did the co-opera-
tive efforts in England aided by en-
thusiastic philanthropists; SO did
most of the efforts started on self
reliant basis, and conducted wholly
by workingmen. The failures dis
couraged most of those who "'"e
preached the cooperative faith
Mr.. Holyoake still believes, and, l.
like Elijah, he does not complain l. d,
is left alone. In his last work
1.-THE cooperative movement to-
day, in 1891, he explains
away the failures, and is as conf
dent as ever that, though it should
take centuries, the industrial world
must come to the new way. But
surely the fact that trades unions.
including the best and the best paid
workingmen, do not invest in CO.
operative workshops is more sugges-
tive than evhn failures that can be
explained away. If profits are usu-
ally SO great, why do they not reap
these for themselves? A wise in
stinct deters them, and they prefer
to spend their funds on Benefit OBJ
jects," and an occasional strike.
They may be willing or able to state
their reasons clearly, but they are
too closely in contact with certain
facts and laws, not to appreciate
their full force. First, the solution
of economic problems must be econ
omic on peril of bankruptcy. Econ
omic laws are as absolute in their
operation as the laws of gravitation.
Secondly, inequality of capacity is a
fact, the range and reach of which is
almost incalculable, and its natural
consequence is inequality of remun-
Grafton. Capital recognizes this,
but the average man kicks against it,,
or admits it grudgingly Thus Co
operators would think manager
we'll paid at $1,000 year, and would
refuse to trust him, but capital
would look out for the right man,
pay him ten or fifty times as much,
and trust him absolutely. When a
syndicate agreed with our Govern
ment to build the Canadian Pacific
Railway it offered salary of $4,000
to its chief engineer, If the Govern
ment ventured to pay any man half
that sum it would be denounced at
every roadside, yet it spends millions
on public works, while the difference
between first and second rate man
would mean the saving of perhaps a
million a year. Thirdly, capitalism
has extended and consolidated it.
self, and business has become so
swift, complicated and extended,
that the methods of cooperation in
competition with CORNERS" opera
tors, rings, or even with the regular
directors of industry that capital
employs and stimulates, would be
like the competition between the
stage coach with the railway, or of
Brown Bess with the arms of preci-
sion.
There are forms of industry to
which the cooperative principle
lends itself and in these it should be
tried. Last summer i visited Lunen-
burg, N. S., and found the harbor
the home of a hundred white winged
fishing vessels, almost all of them
built, owned and managed by the CO.
operative method. So with the
"Mackerel Adventures" of the vt
of England, described at tn %
operative congress of 1886. But Il
these cases large capital is MT
needed. Each vessel is managed in
dependently of others. The methods
seldom vary. The product is always
the sama and little intel actual cana