CO-OPERATION.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4032, 30 November 1881, Page 2

CO-OPERATION.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Sib,—The letters and criticisms that appear in our local papers are generally so well written, and the intentions of the writers are evidently so good that it U a wonder the Government don't prosecute or tax them. Dormant Cooperation will' ere long awake and sweep away, the pro* '-■ sent diabolically mischievous medium of exchange. The employers who organise plan, arrange invent, adapt, and superintend honest and productive industries, are workers with rest of the labourers, < and their interests are identical. Such employers should neither fear or suspect the remotest possibility of depredation or impoverishment by the elevation of the workers to a just position. For if they are wise and lit to superintend, their position will rise with that of the rest of the > labourers. But they must co-operate with them as partners or they will be left behind. As partners their shares might be larger than those of men who cost less | and are less skilful. Employers should 1 dread to incur the risk that they must inour if they continue to act in alliance with, or <. in subjection to the usurers. The wagelings are beginning to think and there, is a horrible temptation before them. They will see this when their eyes are open as they soon will be. A perpetual premium is constantly being offered on the;.de-; struction of wealth. Those who make it*' are allowed only to own a fraction of the wealth they make, and the fraotion is the smallest when they have made the most. .; If all the buildings in New Zealand were - destroyed, co- operative builders would be ' ' actually great gainers instead of great losers thereby, and be able to live in tetter/ houses and circumstances than they ever ;, were before. A system that cause's' the, ■" wealth makers, employing or employed,,. to gain by the destruction of the wealth' * they make is infamous to the very core, and should be destroyed. If the usurers t , ~ persist in defending it, and in obstructing' **' the radical reforms in land and money, -„ now so urgently needed, they may be destroyed, together with the evil systems they have originated, and blindly seek, to perpetuate. Let the working employers make in their own minds a general application of the illustrations I have used and test the soundness of my arguments*.* More space than I ought to occupy is \- ■• required for an elaboration of the subject * —for many details of the wrongs and many suggestions of the remedies. The root of the evils may be found in the- c money systems of the age, The usurers, once regarded as infamous by the laws

and the Church of England and plainly denounced in tlte scriptures and by moral .. writers and even political economists are \ „ now virtually the rulers of England and Governors of nearly the whole of ' Europe by means of Parliaments, - Treasuries, Mints, Banks, Stock Ex-

changes, and—l regret to say it—the Fourth Estate, to which may be added millions of subsidiary wheels and cranks of the great Shylock machine. ■ Volumes' could not describe fully the horrible ' wrongs and burdens imposed upon oar industrious classes by our present false .money system, but I earnestly urge all labourers, working employers, and employers to reflect seriously upon what I have written, and to take early steps .towards making 'an equitable arrange* ment of co operative partnership with their assistants.—l am, &c, ' „ Laboubeb. Thames, Nov.; 1881. * r , ;