Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/620

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600 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

reason and because accustomed to paternalism, these schemes will meet with greater success. From certain forms of consu- mers' cooperation, especially that of governmental management and control. Professor Hadley seems to hope for better results. At least when there are not opportunities for considerable gain, profit-sharing is to be condemned as only multiplying the occa- sions for misunderstandings between the employer and his work- men.'

Mr. Herbert Spencer affords a fair type of the class of socio- logical critics. Profit-sharing is merely one variation of many, cooperation being the one among these to be developed by evolutionary forces. Mr. Spencer finds the great obstacle to the success of the present form of cooperation to be the injurious effects of "trade-union" ideas, especially as to piece-work wages. He suggests as a solution of the difficulties industrial coopera- tion on the basis of piece work ; the rate of remuneration being somewhat lower than that which, at the ordinary speed of pro- duction, would give the ordinary wage. The workman then exists in a double capacity, as a unit in the body taking the place of the employer, and as an employe of that body, partici- pating, in both capacities, in the product of his labor. Then can there be no rivalry of interests between the two capacities, and in the one capacity or the other he will receive the full returns upon his labor. In regard to such a system Mr. Spencer concludes : " What would be the character of these arrangements, considered as a stage in industrial evolution ? We have seen that, in common with political regulation and ecclesiastical regu- lation, the regulation of labor becomes less coercive as society assumes a higher type. Here we reach a form in which the coerciveness has diminished to the smallest degree consistent with combined action. Each member is his own master in respect to the work he does, and is subject only to such rules, established by the majority of the members, as are needful for maintaining order. The transition from the compulsory cooper- ation of militancy to the voluntary cooperation of industrialism

■ A. T. Hadley, Economics: an Account of the Relations between Private Welfare and Public Property, chap. 12, "Co-operation."