Section 6.— CO-OPERATION IN GENERAL.

If anyone asked me to state in one word what seemed likely to be the key of the solution of the Social Problem I should answer un­hesitatingly Co-operation. It being always understood that it is Co­operation conducted on righteous principles, and for wise and benevolent ends ; otherwise Association cannot be expected to bear any more profitable fruit than Individualism. Co-operation is applied association — association for the purpose of production and distribu­tion. Co-operation implies the voluntary combination of individuals to the attaining an object by mutual help, mutual counsel, and mutual effort. There is a great deal of idle talk in the world just now about capital, as if capital were the enemy of labour. It is quite true that there are capitalists not a few who may be regarded as the enemies, not only of labour, but of the human race ; but capital itself, so far from being a natural enemy of labour, is the great object which the labourer has constantly in view. However much an agitator may denounce capital, his one great grievance is that he has not enough of it for himself. Capital, therefore, is not an evil in itself; on the contrary, it is good — so good that one of the great aims of the social reformer ought to be to facilitate its widest possible distribution among his fellow-men. It is the congestion of capital that is evil, and the labour question will never be finally solved until every labourer is his own capitalist.

All this is trite enough, and has been said a thousand times already, but, unfortunately, with the saying of it the matter ends. Co-opera­tion has been brought into practice in relation to distribution with considerable success, but co-operation, as a means of production, has not achieved anything like the success that was anticipated. Again and again enterprises have been begun on co-operative principles which bid fair, in the opinion of the promoters, to succeed ; but after one, two, three, or ten years, the enterprise which was started with such high hopes has dwindled away into either total or partial failure