I appoint as executor of this my last will and testament, my friend Louis Browning, to serve without bonds, and I direct that for his services as executor, and in lieu of all commissions, he receive the sum of $50,000 out of my estate.
I direct my said executor to forthwith pay to the widows, or next of kin, of each man slain in the late riot, the sum of $10,000, to each man permanently disabled by wounds received therein, the sum of $5,000, and to each man wounded but not permanently disabled, the sum of $1,000.
I direct my said executor to proceed as speedily as possible to prudently dispose of all my estate, and convert the same into money, to be paid over by him to the corporation hereinafter named.
I request that my said executor, Louis Browning, shall, in co-operation with the Governor of California, the Mayor of San Francisco, and my friends David Shelburn, Lawrence Slayter, George Morrow, and Francis Dalton, proceed forthwith to form a corporation under the laws of this State, to be entitled the ‘Lorin French Labor Aid Company,’ to which corporation, when organized, I direct that the proceeds of my estate be transferred, to be used by it in providing capital for the use of such co-operative and profit-sharing corporations as may, from time to time, be organized to avail themselves of its aid.
The Lorin French Labor Aid Company will not itself engage in any industrial enterprise, but will confine itself strictly to loaning money at three per cent per annum to such organizations of mechanics as may seek its assistance and comply with its rules. Those rules must require that one-fourth of the wages and all the profits of the members of the borrowing corporation shall be paid to the Lorin French Labor Aid Company, until the debt due the latter is discharged, and that the borrowing corporation shall be organized and conducted in accordance with certain conditions and rules.
My meaning may be made more clear by the following illustration:—
Suppose that five hundred men shall desire to establish a co-operative foundry. They will make a preliminary organization and apply to the officers of the Lorin French Labor Aid Company for the capital necessary to conduct the enterprise. Those officers will—after careful inquiry—ascertain that the buildings, land, machinery, and plant of such a foundry will cost $900,000, and that it will require a cash capital of $100,000 to carry the current business. They will purchase such a foundry, taking title in the Lorin French Labor Aid Company in trust, and will select a general manager, who will employ and discharge men, fix the rate of wages and hours of labor, and have full charge of the works. After the indebtedness of the Foundry Company to the Aid Company shall have been fully paid with interest, the members of the Foundry Company may elect their own general manager, but, until then, that officer shall be chosen by, and be subject to the control of, the directors of the Aid Company.
Each man employed in the works, from the general manager to the lowest-paid helper in the yard, must be a shareholder, the number of shares to be held by each being regulated by his wages. If a workman should die, or leave employment, either on his own motion or because of his being discharged, his shares would be turned over to his successor, who would be required to make good to the outgoing man or his widow or heirs whatever amount had been paid upon the shares, and the money for such payment might be advanced when necessary out of a fund for such purpose provided by the Foundry Company, the shares standing as security for the advance. No shares could be transferred except to a successor—employed in the foundry.
A portion, say one-fourth, of the shares of the corporation should be reserved for allotment to workmen whose employment might be required by the growth of the works, though it will be the object of the directors of the Lorin French Labor Aid Company to encourage the continued organization of new co-operative labor corporations rather than the enlargement of old ones. Yet such encouragement must be prudently granted, having reference to the natural growth of business and the demands of a healthy trade, and overproduction must not be stimulated, for it is my main purpose to help the laborer to rid himself of the payment of high interest and large commissions, to bring him as nearly as possible in direct communication with the consumer, to save him the waste of strikes, and the salaries of the brawlers who foment difficulties between laborers and their employers, to make him his own employer and his own capitalist, to encourage him in sobriety and thrift and the possession of such high manhood as of right belongs to citizenship of our republic.
The capital stock of such an iron-workers’ co-operation might be fixed at the sum borrowed from the Lorin French Labor Aid Company, say $1,000,000, divided into shares of the par value of $10 each.