Lord Rosebery opened the Co-operative Congress at Glasgow on Monday
with a pleasant speech, in which, however, he avoided the burning question,—the refusal of most producing Societies to make partners of their men. After describing the greatness of the Societies—best indicated, perhaps, by the fact that their profits last year exceeded £3,400,000—he remarked with just emphasis on the great service which Co-operation had rendered in making opinion tolerant of large social pro- posals. It has helped to kill the unreasoning horror of any innovation supposed to be Socialistic. It was seen at once that co-operation in distributing or producing was no more anti-social than in its old form of life-insurance. Lord Rose- bery then praised in a rather weak way the results of Co-opera- tion, hinting that " the profits " derived from it might without it have gone to the public-house, which is nonsense, unless capitalists drink up their gains ; and at last, growing a little excited with his subject, indulged in a wonderfully optimistic sentence. Co-operation, he said, did not instil all the cardinal virtues, for if they could be purchased by subscribing £1 to Co-operative Societies, shares in them " would go up to a. fancy price." That surely is a rose-coloured view of the aspirations of humanity, which seems at most periods to prefer prosperity to goodness. Lord Rosebery concluded by declining into politics. The Co-operative Societies give a. shareholder only one vote in their management whatever his stake, and he drew from this the deduction that the principle of " One man, one vote," was sound. We do not care to dis- pute the deduction, but we do dispute the implied premiss. The producing Societies do not allow their working classes any votes at all, and are, in fact, managed by a bourgeois oligarchy of shareholders, very like our Ten-Pounders of old.
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