Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... XV ZIbe flDoral Influence of Cooperation Strictly speaking, this chapter ought to have been headed so as to comprehend the social influence as well as the moral influence of co-operation. The last chapter dealt with the material advantages of co-operation; but co-operation has a soul as well as a body, and it teaches ethics as well as economies. A study of the Alloa Society, or, for that matter, a study of the history of co-operation anywhere, shows that co-operation has fought the battle of the weak against the strong. At once someone will say: "What about the weak shopkeeper who is being crushed out by this powerful movement?" The inquirer is best answered in the words of the Right Rev. Dr Gavin Lang, the Archbishop of York, who, at the Co-operative Congress at Stratford, said: "We feel sympathy for any man who suffers from the spread of saner and truer economic conditions. We cannot look back on industry without feeling sorry for the master manufacturers of the days of domestic industry who were supplanted by great capitalists. We cannot but feel sympathy for the hand-loom weaver on the introduction of the power-loom, and yet these things were for the greatest good of the greatest number." The science of industrial and commercial organisation leads to combination, before which it is almost impossible for the individual shopkeeper to survive. We have evidence of the growth of combinations in Alloa in the number of multiple-shop firms that have opened up in the town, and there is evidence elsewhere in the multiplication of trade syndicates. The great opposing forces in the commercial and industrial struggle of the future will be, on the one hand, soul-less capitalist combines, sweating their workers, and attempting to corner and hold up...
