The field for coöperation is so vast that it cannot be traversed in the scope of this work. I shall close this subject therefore with the suggestion that all coöperatives—even the capitalistic—are good and useful, for they tend to educate. It is true that they may also occasion evil; as for example, the Steel Trust when it encourages employees to purchase stock, while it discourages and destroys trade-union organization, and thereby creates an aristocracy of labor which tends to prevent the sense of solidarity in labor ranks that Marxians regard as essential to the triumph of the Socialist cause.
But the evil it does is probably compensated by the good. Incidentally it furnishes us Socialists with a triumphant answer to Mr. Carnegie: Here in his city of Pittsburg which he built up with his genius, is the principle of coöperation adopted which he regards as the solution of all our ills; yet it is this very Pittsburg that to-day furnishes to the whole world the most abominable picture of exploitation ever presented.[132] We Socialists are indeed fortunate that this picture has been drawn not by ourselves, but by those who are to-day the most intelligently opposing us.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] "Problems of the Day," by Andrew Carnegie, p. 76.
[132] The Pittsburg Survey, published by the Russell Sage Foundation.