Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/246

Rh 218 COMMUNISM si ve or exhausting toil. But there arc no idle members, and every member works well and steadily while he is working. That the quality of their work is good is proved by the fact that their commercial repiitntion stands very high. The garden seeds, the production of which is the staple trade among the Shakers, have been celebrated for their excellence for more than seventy years all over the United States. &quot; The Oneida Perfectionists established the reputation of their silk twist in the market by giving accurate weight and sound material ; the woollen stuffs of Amana command a constant market, because they are well and honestly made ; and in general I have found that the communists have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing among their neighbours, wherever their products are bought and sold &quot; (Nordhoff). It must, however, be remembered that a few small communities, such as those which exist in America, afford no fair test of what would be the effect of a general adoption of communism on industrial activity and efficiency. The communists in the United States only number about 5000, including children ; and though there are eight different societies, these are drvided into 72 separate communities, the Shakers alone having 58. On an average, therefore, each community consists of less than 70 persons. The elaborate despotism of communistic government, together with the minute surveillance which the small size of these communities renders possible, makes it easy for the leaders of these societies to exact from each member his quota of toil ; idleness would be at once detected and would not be suffered to exist, as the power of expelling an idle member would be resorted to if the voice of public opinion were not sufficient to induce him to mend his ways. Similar means of detecting and preventing idleness would be completely absent if communism were generally adopted. There would, of course, in this case be no power of ex pelling an idle member, and the difficulty of detecting and proving to the central authorities a disposition on the part of any of the members to avoid a fair share of work would increase pari passn with the size of the community. The motive of self-interest in promoting good work is much more powerful in a small communistic society than in a large one. A man can appreciate the value of his own industry much more clearly if the resulting product is shared between GO or 70 persons, every one of whom is well known to him, than he can if it is thrown into the common stock of 20,000 people. The weakening of the motives of self- interest which is inherent in communism is reduced to a minimum in small communities, but it would act with fatal results to industrial activity if there should ever be an attempt to make communism universal. For, much as ths present system falls short of making the most of the great engine of self-interest among those who merely work for wages, there is no such failure among the other indus trial classes. Capitalists, landowners, inventors, Cornish tributers, and members of co-operative productive societies and copartnerships are all brought under the stimulating influence of self-interest, and thus devote themselves to industrial projects with a zeal completely and necessarily unknown among those who work for wages or those who are members ef communistic societies. It is the special feature of co-operation that it brings the motive of self- interest into activity among manual labourers. Without attempting, as communism does, to overthrow all existing economic institutions, it takes these as they are, and men and women as they are, and suggests a means by which the labourer, no less than the capitalist, can be stimulated by direct self-interest t,o throw some energy and enthusiasm into his work. We referred above to the melancholy picture drawn by Karl Marx, Louis Blanc and others of the condition of the English poor. Since they wrote, co-operation has in Co some parts of England done much to brighten the social tiv and industrial condition of the workirig classes. The sc Times of 18th August 1875 gives an account of the co operative manufactures in the town of Oldham. In this one town there are 80 joint-stock co-operative mills; in the county of Lancashire there are 150. The bulk of the share holders are artizans, who labour in the mills, and who there fore have a direct and immediate interest in the results of their industry. Cotton-spinning and weaving are the principal businesses carried on in these mills. The principle of self-interest has had the effect of producing, not niece activity on the part of the labourer, but thoroughly sound and honest work. We are told by the Times that these mills possess a high reputation for probity of manufacture. They are worked partly with capital subscribed by the shareholders, in 5 or 10 shares, and partly with borrowed capital which bears a fixed rate of interest. Many of the mills pay a dividend of 10 per cent, on their share capital ; the ledgers and account-books of each society are open to all the shareholders, who also exercise the power of electing in open meeting the managers and officers of the association. The shareholders frequently invest money on loan to the societies of which they are members, so that the interests of the lenders and of the shareholders are identified in the most absolute manner possible. The most important of these associations is perhaps the Industrial Co-operative Society of Oldham founded in the year 1850-1. From very small beginnings it has gradually extended its opera tions until in the year 1874 it divided a dividend of 40,000 among its shareholders in four quarterly instal ments of 10,000 each. The total turnover of this society is 250,000 a year. It forms, as it were, a kind of bank to the other co-operative societies. At Christmas 1874 it had out on loan to these associations a number of sums varying from 11,732 downwards, making a total of 45,437. The Sun Mill Company, another of the Oldham co-operative associations, has a share capital of 100,000. It is stated in a parliamentary return published in 1874 that there are in England and Wales 790 co-operative societies, with 340,930 members, a share capital of 3,334,104, and a loan capital of 431,808. Their net profits for the year 1873 were 958,721, of which 861,964 was distributed as dividends among the members ot the society, and 18,555 was paid away as interest to non- members. There can be no doubt that co-operation was to a great extent originated in England by communists. It is an outcome of the communistic movement, for it was in the first instance mainly promoted by social reformers who had proved by many failures the futility of communism as an engine of social regeneration. Notwithstanding itf origin, there is, however, no movement more distinctly non- communistic than co-operation. It strengthens the principles- of capital and private property by making every co-operator a capitalist, and thus personally interesting him in the maintenance of the present economic condition of society. When the really great results of co-operation in this country are compared with the very limited success of nearly a century of communism in America, the conclusion is inevitable that co-operation is much more effectual than communism in producing a radical improvement in the condition and status of labour, that it is easier to graft upon existing institutions, and that its working is unaccompanied by the despotism, the crushing of individuality, and the discouragement of self-help, which are the admitted dangers ami drawbacks of communism. The state banks and national workshops of M. Louis Blanc s economic dreams were realized in 1848-50 in a manner that must have caused the severest disappointment to their philanthropic author; failure and discredit were their only practical results. The