[11] There were many cooperative stores in the eighties and a concerted effort to duplicate the venture of the Sovereigns was attempted as late as 1919 under the pressure of the soaring cost of living.
[12] Where Consumers' Cooperation has worked under most favorable conditions as in England, its achievements have been all that its most ardent champions could have desired. Such is the picture presented by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in the following glowing terms:
"The organization of industry by Associations of Consumers offers, as far as it goes, a genuine alternative to capitalist ownership, because it supersedes the capitalist power, whether individual or joint-stock, alike in the control of the instruments of production by which the community lives, and in the absorption of the profits, which otherwise support a capitalist class. The ownership and control are vested in, and the profits are distributed among, the whole community of consumers, irrespective of their industrial wealth. Through the device of dividend on purchases the Cooperative Movement maintains an open democracy, through the control of this democracy of consumers it has directly or indirectly kept down prices, and protected the wage-earning class from exploitation by the Credit System and from the extortions of monopolist traders and speculators. By this same device on purchases, and the automatic accumulation of part of the profit in the capital of each society and in that of the Wholesales, it has demonstratedly added to the personal wealth of the manual working class, and has, alike in Great Britain, and in other countries, afforded both a valuable financial reserve to the wage earners against all emergencies and an instrument for their elevation from the penury to which competition is always depressing them. By making possible the upgrowth of great business enterprises in working class hands, the Cooperative Movement has, without divorcing them from their fellows, given to thousands of the manual workers both administrative experience and a well-grounded confidence; and has thus enabled them to take a fuller part in political and social life than would otherwise have been probable."—New Statesman, May 30, 1916. "Special Supplement on the Cooperative Movement."
Indeed the success of the consumer's cooperative movement in European countries has been marvellous, even measured by bare figures. In all Europe in 1914, there were about 9,000,000 cooperators of whom one-third lived in Great Britain and not less than two and a half millions in Germany. In England and Scotland alone, the 1400 stores and two Wholesale Cooperative Societies controlled in 1914 about 420 million dollars of retail distributive trade and employed nearly 50,000 operatives in processes of production in their own workshops and factories.
CHAPTER 3
THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
With the practical disintegration of the organized labor movement in the seventies, two nuclei held together and showed promise of future growth. One was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor" and the other a small trade union movement grouped around the International Cigar Makers' Union.
The "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," while it first became important in the labor movement after 1873, was founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, a tailor who had been educated for the ministry, as a secret organization. Secrecy was adopted as a protection against persecutions by employers.
The principles of the Order were set forth by Stephens in the secret ritual. "Open and public association having failed after a struggle of centuries to protect or advance the interest of labor, we have lawfully constituted this Assembly," and "in using this power of organized effort and cooperation, we but imitate the example of capital heretofore set in numberless instances;" for, "in all the multifarious branches of trade, capital has its combinations, and, whether intended or not, it crushes the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity into the dust." However, "we mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital." The remedy consists first in work of education: "We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of values or capital) and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has created." The next remedy was legislation: "We shall, with all our strength, support laws made to harmonize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone gives life and value to capital, and also those laws which tend to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil." Next in order were mutual benefits. "We shall use every lawful and honorable means to procure and retain employ for one another, coupled with a just and fair remuneration, and, should accident or misfortune befall one of our number, render such aid as lies within our power to give, without inquiring his country or his creed."