CO-OPERATION : ITS PRACTICE AND PRINCIPLES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8767, 6 January 1892, Page 5

CO-O PERA TION : ITS PRACTICE AND PRINCIPLES.

A topic which an interviewer of the London Figaro recently discussed with Mr. Joseph Cowen at Stella Hall was tho principle of co-operation as opposed to its practice. "Mr. Cowen spoko lovingly of Owen and his great work, which ho in the North had done so much for and lost so much by. ' What Owen meant,' said in effect my entertainer, ' was that co-operation should abolish credit, should insure quality and correct weight, anil should nob provoke competition. There was to be no underselling. It was for all those things that ho and hi- disciples-preached, slaved, and in some cases died. And now, turn from this picture of co-operation as ib should be to that of co-operation as it really is. lb has done one good thing, and credit largely hides its diminished head. Bub of all the meannesses in God's creation and tho sweating practised therein, the modern co-operator is tho worst living embodiment. I know of things,' continued Mr. Cowen, ' done and I being by societies in the North here, of dishonest dealings, of underpaying, of sweating the life's blood out', of the employed, of a wanting of the littlest of the doctrines of honest commercialism that make ono despair of tho success of great schemes over tho baseness of human schemers. Co-operation, a3 they spell it, • killed Dr. Rutherford, the best friend to me, to all, and to everybody that ever lived.' And hero he pointed to tho portrait of the great local philanthropist and worker, which looked down on us from tho pretty stained window of which it formed an integral part. And us for its non-competitive-ness, Mr. Cowen illustrated the condition of things at the neighbouring borough of Gateshead, where the shopkeeper had been ruined, and in whoso boggarly array of wretched streets tho emblem 'to let' persistently met tho gaze." The Bishop of Durham, speaking on November 13 at Blaydon on-Tyne, Newcastle, said the co-operative store was intended to improve the domestic and social condition both of producer and consumer. So fur as the consumer was concerned this had been effected. It had fulfilled its work, and had extinguished what would have been profit in private business. But co-operators should consider the producer as well as the consumer. The first object of tho managers should be to secure such conditions as would provide for tho highest efficiency of all omployod as regarded hours, wages, and environments, and provision for old age. He believed.. profit-sharing was the bridge bo .the collective ownership of largo works by workmen, and ib had been proved that workmen were able to administer largo works without thought o* personal gain.' Co-operators should regard their store rabhor as* embodying principles than as serving interests.