Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/62

52 The chairman is no less remarkable for his skill in the conduct of large undertakings than for that sympathy with the working-classes which led him to adopt this course. The manager had been himself a working-man; and so fully possessed the confidence of working-men that many migrated with him from the Midland counties when the company was formed. Further, the manager entered heartily into the plan—telling me himself that he had rejoiced over the founding of a concern in which those employed would have an interest. His hopes, however, and those of the chairman, were disappointed. After the lapse of a year, not one of the thousand shares was taken up; and they were then distributed among the proprietors. Doubtless, there have been in other cases more encouraging results. But this case is one added to others which show that the proportion of working-men adequately provident is not great enough to permit an extensive growth of better industrial organizations.

Again, the success of industrial organizations, higher in type, requires in the members a nicer sense of justice than is at present general. Closer coöperation implies greater mutual trust; and greater mutual trust is not possible without more respect for one another's claims. When we find that in sick-clubs it is not uncommon for members to continue receiving aid when they are able to work, so that spies have to be set to check them; while, on the other hand, those who administer the funds often cause insolvency by embezzling them; we cannot avoid the inference that want of conscientiousness must very generally prevent the effective union of workers under no regulation but their own. When, among skilled laborers, we find a certain rate per hour demanded, because less "did not suffice for their natural wants," though the unskilled laborers working under them were receiving little more than half the rate per hour, and were kept out of the skilled class by stringent rules, we do not discover a moral sense so much above that shown by employers as to promise success for industrial combinations superior to our present ones. While workmen think themselves justified in combining to sell their labor only on certain terms, but think masters not justified in combining to buy only on certain terms, they show a conception of equity not high enough to make practicable a form of coöperation requiring that each shall recognize the claims of others as fully as his own. One pervading misconception of justice betrayed by them would alone suffice to cause failure—the misconception, namely, that justice requires an equal sharing of benefits among producers, instead of requiring, as it does, equal freedom to make the best of their faculties. The general policy of trades-unionism, tending everywhere to restrain the superior from profiting by his superiority lest the inferior should be disadvantaged, is a policy which, acted out in any industrial combinations, must make them incapable of competing with combinations based on the principle that benefit gained shall be proportioned to faculty put forth.