CO.OPERATION.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4014, 9 November 1881, Page 2

CO.OPERATION.

(To the Editor of the Evening 3xab.) Sib, —Hope is the strength of life, sustained by it the ever brave struggle for equity. Despair is the feebleness of incapacity, and he who despairs of success in a just cause is a moral coward. The principle of co-operation, not in its complete and scientific sense, but in the limited aspect now under consideration,, means an equitable share of the product of labor in all transactions between it and the capitalist, and it is based firmly and absolutely upou equity and justice. The managing employer should, however, never be classed with the capitalist, the land usurers, and money usurers, for he is one of the useful workers. The land gods and gold gods tax him as they tax the man he hires. He is not a usurer, but one of the oppressed subjects of the . usurers. He aids in the production of wealth that the usurers consume without rendering any equivalent return. It is to these active employers that special attention is now directed, and that the terms employer and employe will be hereafter used conventionally. The idea of the employer that it is one part of the duty of the employe to express by his demeanour that he confesses himself to be an inferior debtor, subject, serf, or slave must be utterly relinquished. The employer must learn to regard his employe as an equal, so far at least as their mutual relations as contractors are concerned. The terms "master" and "servant," as also the. ideas and conduct that have permitted such terms, must be absolutely discontinued, for until this is done there can be no peace. Why should an employer con; sider it right that the supply of workmen should always be so much larger,than the demand, so as to cause them to solicit employment as a favor and condescension? Why should this be recognised as a more just condition than if the supply of employers always exceeded the demand, and they had to solicit men to assist them, in their undertakings ?'-. Is it that workmen are a drug, and that money is more precious than manliness P All employers who study the signs of the times will perceive that the age of master and servant is rapidly passing away, and that if employers will not treat their employes as co operators, their assistants will leave the masters to do their own work, and will co-operate without them, and leave Ihem far behind, too, in the earning and getting of wealth. Legislators have unceasingly obstructed the natural workings of the' great law of demand and supply. All statutes that interfere with labor and money are interferences with the laws of demand and supply—such as the Customs dues, licenses, patent laws, concessions to railways, gas, water, mining, and other speculative companies. Thousands of such interferences could be named, bnt those mentioned are sufficient to indicate there nature. Have employers never suspected that all these interferences operate to their and their employees injury P. Have employers never perceived that by such, and other unjust legislation, their labor and that of their co operatives has been excessively burdened, and shamefully depreciated as to value in the market? Have not the usurers misled the people with their books, and statutes, and statistics, and political economy? Have they "not ignored active employers' capital value and that of their employees, and have active employers not ignoranily treated the workmen, as though such teaching were reasonable and just? Have they not in their turn ignored the capital value of the laborer? When a horse is hired for a month or a year, interest is reckoned on the cost of animal, and charged in addition to a sum for depreciation by use; but account is never taken of the cost or capital value of man. The Thames Evening; Stab of the 6th ult., and 3rd and sth instants, strikes the true key note in its valuable leading articles of those dates. The writer shows himself profoundly acquaicted with the true wants and real interests of all classes of men, and reasons and advises well. It is to such men, free from all trammels of prejudice, and unbound by oaths of secret societies, that political confidence should be given ; for by such miriUs the battle of intellect will be fought by intellect—a sharper sword than ever yet drawn, and capable of cutting down a whole army of injustice and giant wrong. —I am, <fee., .'■ Labobbe. Thames, November Bth, 1881.