There are, no doubt, two objections at least which may be raised against the adoption of any scheme founded on these hints: first, one on the score of increased expenditure; secondly, one condemning increased centralization. With regard to the former, my answer is that health, especially the health of the aggregate mass of the body politic, cannot possibly be bought too dear; and that nothing really is so costly to any community as pestilence and death. As to the latter, I have no other defence to urge than my firm conviction that, much as it is railed against, centralization is as nearly an unmixed good as it is possible for anything in this sublunary (and marvellously complex) sphere to be. Everybody knows how inadequate the very best isolated efforts are to exterminate any widespread evil; and even organizations which are independent of, and do not radiate from or gravitate to, a common centre, frequently cross each other’s paths, and to some extent defeat each other’s purposes; occasioning a great waste of wholesome energy, which, well directed, might achieve marvellous results. As cosmos is greater than chaos—as a well-spliced rope is stronger than its separate strands—so is centralization and cohesion greater and stronger than individualism and segregation.
Pocket.
Many a vigorous arm has applied the axe to that dense and matted jungle, the indigence of the lower orders; but little more has been accomplished than the blunting of the hatchet and the exhaustion of the pioneer who wielded it.
This being the case, it would be the height of folly for me, with my far feebler frame and my puny weapon, to attempt to do more than to peer cautiously around the deep shades, and try to find out, as a dweller within those murky woods, if here a little path and there a little opening, into which a gleam of sunlight penetrates at times, be not discoverable, half hidden, perchance, by clumps of brushwood, which it will cost but little trouble to clear away. I shall therefore restrict myself to indicating such of these openings as I see, or fancy I see, from whence operations might, according to my notion, be directed towards the demolition of portions at all events of this swart and gloomy forest.
One of the largest of these clearings is undoubtedly, I think, Co-operation, of which there are two kinds—viz., combinations between masters and men in the shape of limited partnerships, a per-centage on profits, &c.; and combinations amongst the wage-earners themselves for certain specified purposes.
With regard to the first named, I am rather inclined to doubt the probability of its ever becoming an important factor in the sum of human progress, on account of the unlikelihood of its being generally adopted either in the near or distant future, and I am still more sceptical as to its efficacy as a panacea, even if it were universally reduced to practice, especially in these days of commercial disasters.
Coming, then, to the other mode of co-operation—associations of manual workers—this also divides itself into two branches, having two distinct objects—namely, the receipt of higher wages for labour performed, and the obtaining greater value in commodities in the disbursement of such wages. Both these are, no doubt, laudable aspirations; and, although at the first glance they may appear incompatible with, if not altogether antagonistic to, each other,—inasmuch as increased remuneration to the producer means an increase in the price of the thing produced,—yet it will be seen, on mature reflection, that as a very large proportion of operatives are employed in the manufacture of articles of luxury, of which they are not consumers or purchasers, so much of the increase in the price of such articles as finds its way into the pockets of the artificer in the shape of added wages is a net gain to that portion of the labouring classes, and will inevitably exude from such portion to the benefit of the whole, in the same manner as what may be called in contradistinction their normal earnings.
I should like to say one word about combinations of workmen in this place, which may be distasteful to unqualified panegyrists of the system: such combinations should invariably be in accordance with our recognized code of morals, and they must be in obedience to the ordinary laws of Nature; and it is to be feared that these desiderata to perfection in co-operation have at times been lost sight of in the past. I am compelled to blush for my order when I find them seizing the opportunity of their employers being under a heavy time-contract for the execution of important public or other works to organize a strike: this is clearly an infraction of all the ethics of morality. Neither can I appreciate their sense of the fitness of things when I hear them laying it down as a sound axiom that wages should be equalized, so that the stupid, idle, or inferior workman should be on a par with the skilled and industrious one. This is a blunder against one of the most immutable of Nature’s laws—that of variety and infinite gradation; the suggestion implies a yearning after the utterly unattainable, which it is astonishing men of otherwise sound judgment should seriously entertain for one moment. As a comrade of mine pithily observed, not long since, when we were discussing the possibility of devising a scheme by which all men should receive the same amount of remuneration for their labour, and, when received, be enabled to make it go equally far—“You might as well try to make men all o’ one height.”
Remove these excrescences from our combinations, and when it is found we can be practical as well as earnest, co-operation will have acquired a new vigour, and will be able to accomplish greater results. The main citadel will be none the less impregnable because our forces are not scattered abroad in various directions, in the vain endeavour to strengthen totally indefensible frontiers.
But, after all, it is from the other branch of co-operation—the co-operative store system—that the greatest advantages may be expected to accrue. This is growing into favour yearly, still growing (despite recent diatribes in the newspapers), and is extending its ramifications into quite primitive districts. The knowledge that this is an undoubted fact should afford gratification to the well-wishers of the poor.