Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/533

Rh of organization rather than with the kinds of capital required for the development of the industrial surplus source.'

For trade and commerce the familial system was found inadequate from the outset. For handicraft and manufacture also the domestic system was only applicable in certain circumstances and to a limited extent at that. On the whole, therefore, the development of industry and commerce is characterized by the extensive and intensive application of the personal system of association. During the early days of the craft and merchant guilds the cooperative system included all classes of producers, the apprentices, the journeymen and the guild masters. Later on when the wage system was established there was a differentiation of cooperative groups, the apprentices and Journeymen cooperating henceforth as industrial laborers, and the masters combining as capitalists in partnerships, companies and corporations. This differentiation of cooperative groups was due to the gradual monopolization of the sources of the industrial surplus. We should accordingly shift our standpoint slightly and study the subject from this side.

At first the sources of the industrial surplus were too widespread to admit of monopolization. As a result, the early guilds were organized along purely cooperative lines. As each guild chose its particular line of production, the then existing surplus sources came in time by custom to be regarded as monopolies of the several guilds. But as every member of the community was allowed to Join a guild and rise from apprentice to Journeyman, to master, such collective monopolies worked no injury to any one. It had the effect, however, of restricting the normal development of industry. Beyond the limited lines of production controlled by the guilds there were practically limitless industrial opportunities open to those who would work for themselves. This being the case, the guilds—even though they sought and for the most part obtained the support of the state—were not able to hold their artificial monopolies of the surplus sources. Not to go into the history of the subject, suffice it to say that in some countries by revolution and in others through peaceful progress, the older guild privileges were everywhere broken down and industrial opportunities opened to all. In this manner the way was cleared for the development of the competitive system, which was a compromise of the older cooperative and coercive systems, and a transitional stage, as it were, between the two.

Under the new regime the surplus sources were opened to competition, and by the laws of private property each producer was allowed to hold and pass by testament so much of the surplus source as he succeeded in developing. In considering the conditions of this contest it should be noted at the outset that for the development of the industrial surplus organized labor was not enough; a certain