United labor bulletin. (Denver, Colo.) 19??-1915, 1910-05-12
THE AGE OF COOPERATION.

One of the unexplainable features of
American life to students of economies
is the hardness which shows itself in
the matter of taking up cooperation
among the ordinary people. While 1t Is
true that the great captains of industry
have been alive to its advantages and
have "co-operated" among themselves IN
such a manner as to practically enaple
them to CONTROL not only the commercial
avenues of life, but the political avenues
as well, until today the United States Is
the most trust-ridden land in the world.
But the ordinary American citizen has
been content to give true cooperation lit
tie or no attention and today, when he Is
waking to the fact of its absolute neces-
sity. if he is to live with anything like
decency he finds that others who have
been more wakeful and watchful than he
has been have been entrenching them
selves with all kinds of organizations
which it will take years to get control
Of Witness the great combinations OF
the railways and the exhorbitant frelght
rates they are enabled to squeeze out OF
all classes of goods that have to depend
upon railway transportation to. reach the
markets. One never hears of any sucn
thing as competitive freight rate in
this age 1t is true that different rail-
ways keep travelling freight agents to
call on shippers, but it matters absolute
" nothing to him which agent he treats
with the amount of the freight Dill Is
the same The orignators grasped the
commercial side of cooperation and bent
its objects to such an extent as to enable
them to use them for their own benefit
and profit until one is almost inclined to
compare a trust magnate" talking CO.
operation to the Devil quoting Scrip
ture.
True cooperation teaches us all that
it is the duty of each to work for all
and all for each and recognizes the fact
that blood is more valuable than mere
dollars. 1t affects no one but the mil
lionaire or the pauper; it encourages
thrift and puts the savings of the citizen
away from the reach of greedy and I'M
scrupulous spectators; it pays capital
its Just and rightful share, but does not
allow it to be used in manner which
enables it's holders to wiring an unfair
profit from the appetites and necessities
of women and children; it engenders a
spirit of liberation and kindness instead
of fostering in our natures the blood lust
that characterizes our modern CONNER
cialism; it fixes the value of money by
paying a stated rate of interest, but it
leaves individual effort free to exercise
itself to it's fullest capacity
Industrial unions have done and are
doing a grand and noble work and there
are many labor leaders today who are
doing missionary work among their fell
low laborers which bears favorable COM
parison with the work done by the
Christian missionaries of the Middle
Ages, and when one sees the markets SO
controlled by few capitalists that any
benefits that seemingly won by the eff
forts of labor organizations can be
promptly snatched away from the peo-
pie, one can be forgiven for wondering
how long it will be before the shrewd,
free American citizen wakes to the fact
that his slower European brother has al
ready begun to solve the problem of at
least in measure controlling the price
of the necessities of life, as he does in
the great cooperative institutions which
he has built up and is today successfully
running.
1t is little short of a national dis
grace that we have allowed a system to
operate us which keeps squeezing the
farmers profits further and further to-
wards the vanishing point each succeed