328 
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
figures include the productive and the wholesale societies as 
well as the distributive stores, but, as yet, the productive 
societies bear a small proportion to the others. According to 
the returns sent in for 1883, there were thirty-four productive 
societies, including ten corn-mills, doing an annual business of 
over ^1,720,000. Their aggregate capital was a little over 
half a million, and their profits upon this were ;¿’61,000, or an 
average, after covering all losses, of twelve per cent. From 
fifteen to eighteen of these productive societies are known to 
be based upon the principle of copartnership with the workers 
in shares, in profits, and in management. 
Co-operative distribution, useful work as it is in many ways 
doing, will never of itself create a new industrial order, will 
never make the workman his own employer. It is, however, a 
valuable means towards that end. It habituates working men 
to thrift, it teaches them business habits, it inspires them with 
mutual confidence, it is an ever-growing moral and intellectual 
educational agency, and it promotes “ the saving of joint capital 
by joint action for joint purposes.” One of the most important 
of these joint purposes is the establishment of productive co 
operative enterprises. There are considerable differences of 
opinion both as to the principles upon which such productive 
enterprises should be founded, and as to the best agencies for 
carrying them on. Into these questions I cannot enter here, 
but I may be permitted to express the hope that whatever plan 
is ultimately adopted, wherever the distinction of employer and 
employed remains, the co-operative employers will see their 
way to giving their workmen a direct interest in the results of 
their labour, otherwise the most important principle of true 
co-operation will be infringed. How can working men expect 
employers to admit them to a participation in profits, if they 
themselves, in their capacity of employers, “ do not as they 
would be done by?”* 
Strictly speaking, the term “ Co-operative Production ” 
* Why Socialist employers, who express such virtuous indignation at the 
“ wage-slave” system, and who think that profits are the produce of unpaid 
labour, do not adopt this principle, if only as a pis-aller, is—for them to 
explain.