CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION.*

Mn. BENJAMIN JONES has been, and is probably still, a can- didate for Parliamentary honours. A Cabinet Minister ushers his work into the world. The Clarendon Press prints and publishes it. Signs of the times, surely, when the London manager of a great Manchester trading society can win for himself such a position, having no claim to college training. How many departed Deans of Christchurch—to say nothing of other Oxford potentates—must have turned in their graves at the news And the work is one, no doubt, up to a certain • Cooperative Production. By Benjemin Jones. With Prefatory Note by ths Right Hon. A. H. Dyke Aeland, M.P. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1894. point, of solid merit, and which will have to be taken account of by all who deal with its subject in future. But in so

doing—whilst acquitting Mr. Jones of all intentional unfair- ness towards other forms of co-operative production—it must be borne in mind that by his position he represents that form in which production is only so fax co-operative that it is carried on by an association of consumers for their own benefit, the actual producers being as such mere receivers of wages. To many, that form of production does not appear to deserve the name of co-operation. Grant that the workers receive good wages, work under good sanitary conditions, and are otherwise well treated; they are in no other position than any who work under a benevolent master, firm, or company ; the old antagonism of interests between the wages-payer and the wages-receiver subsists; the greatest of social discords remains unsolved. With this unavoidable bias in favour of the consumer every failure of co-operative production on other bases must necessarily present itself to Mr. Jones's mind as a foregone conclusion ; thorough success in such cases he could not admit without condemning himself and his employers.

His book, indeed, it must be admitted, except when it deals with the bodies with which he is himself connected, produces

nluch the effect of a literary cemetery, with memento mori in- scribed on every grave for the benefit of those who come after.

The custodian of the cemetery is solemnly conscious of his funereal office. In recording the careers of the departed ones he' never demeans himself by a smile. The gloom of the volumes is indeed preceded by a sunny introductory sketch, showing the magnitude of the co-operative movement generally, and, above all, that of the two co-operative wholesale societies. Moreover, in the final chapter, whilst Mr. Jones avows his belief that "the best form of democratic organisation is where the people are combined together on the basis of consumption; where, for their services as capitalists, or as workers, the members are remunerated by the payment of such fixed interest and wages as the majority of the members of these organisations consider to be just, and where all the members receive the goods produced, or the services rendered, at the exact cost of producing the goods or supplying the services ; " yet he considers that "where there are people who will not or cannot join in these co-operative efforts, though they are willing to have transactions with co-operators, and co-operators are desirous of transacting business with them the best form of co-operation is for the people with capital to join with the people who wish to be employed, in forming democratic associations for mutual benefit, to carry on business with those people who are unable Or unwilling to become co-operators ; " and "as in these last-mentioned cases each of the four contributors to the business—viz., the seller, the capitalist, the worker, and the buyer—helps to build up the fund commonly known as profit,' each is entitled to a share of it ; " though "there can be no harm, either as a matter of principle or as a matter of practice, in any one of the four contracting to let any of the others have the profit, so long as the contract is made voluntarily, and with full knowledge of what is being done, as well as of what the results of the action will be." The meaning of which not over-lucid deliverance appears to be that, until consumers are prepared to carry on any branch of production for their own benefit, benevolent employers may do so, sharing profits with their capitalist backers, their workmen, and their customers, or allowing the

whole to go to any of the three classes, or keeping the whole in their own pockets. But does not the worker help to build up the fund commonly known as " dividend " in a consumers' association for productive purposes ? Is the saving in such cases, so to speak, anything else than an inverted profit ?

And is it likely to conduce to the success of the co-operative movement that the worker should be told,—" From an ordinary employer you are, in principle, entitled to your wages, and something more; from a co-operative body, to your wages, and not a farthing beyond" It is, however, but justice to Mr. Jones to say that he looks forward, up to a certain point at least, to production by local communities, or by the community at large :—

"The nation, being itself the consumer or user, should under- take to perform for itself, as part of the ordinary functions of Government, everything that is required to be done, if the thing required is wanted in sufficiently large quantities to justify the

formation of an establishment for doing it The County Councils and Municipalities would organise their own services,

instead of employing private firms, wherever the work to be done was sufficiently important to warrant them in doing so; and in cases where each had similar wants, which in themselves are too small to be supplied by a local establishment, the local authorities should combine in establishing a joint-department; or the Im- perial Government should do the work for them. After the nation and the local authorities have co-operated for the performance of all the services that the citizens have deemed it desirable for them to undertake, the voluntary co-operative associations of consumers, both individualistic and federal, come into use to fill up the gaps and vacancies that have been left. And finally, after them, should come the associations of people with capital, and people without capital but willing to work, who should co-operate to supply or exchange services with those people who do not wish to co-operate or who are in a position, which will occur while society is in a state of transition, where they cannot co-operate. But this imperfect form must be prepared to give way to the more per- fect form of co-operation by the consumer, as soon as the people left outside the co-operative ranks are willing to he enrolled in them."

Logically, Mr. Jones's ideal is that of a State the sole owner of property and sole employer of labour. Nor can there be any doubt that the sphere both of State and muni- cipal action, is perceptibly widening, and so far, it would appear, beneficially. Bat those who entertain such an ideal, as well as those who do not, should alike bear in mind that man does not become an angel by being elected on a County Council, or even called to a seat in the Cabinet; that municipal bodies have ere this been nests of corruption, and Houses of Parliament not less so ; and that the fight for righteousness will not be leas necessary, to whatever extent the machinery of human society may be perfected, simply because that machinery works on human material, by human power.

In the meanwhile, notwithstanding Mr. Jones's unfavourable accounts of co-operative production, when based on any interest other than that of the consumer, a table published in the first number of Labour Copartnership shows that in 1893 there were in England fifty-nine such societies (ten of them twenty years old and upwards), having 2310,459 capital, and doing a trade of 2633,034, these figures not including establishments under the control of capitalists who share profits with their workmen. The Report of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for 1893 shows moreover that, out of ninety-two new societies registered during the year, "thirty-five were of the productive class," as against forty of "the ordinary distributive stores ;" so that, as respects new societies, the two classes are almost on a level.

Criticism in detail of a work so crammed with facts as that of Mr. B. Jones, would be impossible. One misstatement, made twice over, though Mr. Jones admits it to have been contradicted already, must not however be overlooked. He states of the older Christian Socialist movement, that the promoters "gave up the task in despair." Considering that when the "Association for Promoting Industrial and Provident Societies" determined for the time to confine ite work to education, several of the co-operative bodies estab- lished by it were still in existence and flourishing, such despair wonld hardly have been justified. The fact was that the Association, through the Co-operative Conference called by itself in 1852, had brought into existence another body, the Committee appointed by that conference, which was assuming the 'direction of the co-operative movement, and that the Executive Committee of the Association had reported its opinion "that two bodies, one of them chosen by the Co- operative Societies, the other self-appointed, cannot under- take the same functions without the risk of frequent clashing, and of both becoming inefficient ; " and as the Conference Committee had expressly adopted the principles of the Asso- ciation, the latter retired from the field, suspending sine diet its business meetings.

Whilst quoting from the Christian Socialist and Journal of Association, Mr. Jones does not seem to be aware of the existence of the Co-operative Commercial Circular, latterly

Co-operative Circular, a monthly journal (1853-54), from which the last details above given are derived. Nor does he mention among the productive associations of the past the London Co-operative Cabinetmakers Society (represented at the Co-operative Congress of 1869), a body established' mainly out of the resources of its own members, which did

excellent work daring the lifetime of its first manager, Mr. E. Meads, but could not maintain itself after his death. The "City Working Tailors Association" mentioned on p. 115 of Vol. I., was also succeeded in after years by another, which

did good work. But the subject is one so vast that absolute completeness in dealing with it is impossible.