690 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
gets, first, his wages, if an employe ; second, his share of 40 per cent, of the profits, according to his wages ; third, an extra payment as member of the committee, which, if there are, as here, nine members, would be one-ninth of 10 per cent.; fourth, his dividend on whatever share capital he may have in; fifth, his interest on whatever loan capital he may have deposited ; sixth, his share of the benefits of the provident and educational fund ; and last, but not least, his general benefit as a cooperator.
The weakness of this system, which Mr. Lloyd does not clearly see, is the failure to insure the same interest of the consumers as is secured in the Rochdale system. Against this may be set, however, the higher standard of work secured through labor copartnership. It must be recognized that, while the British and Scottish Wholesale Societies, with their remarkable system of stores and factories and farms, form a won- derfully organized industry, and provide an admirable education in democracy, the system has done little to raise the standard of work- manship beyond paying a good rate of wages and avoiding adultera- tion. It has not viewed the worker, as such, as a necessary object for improvement. It has tended to improve him only incidentally, while striving to satisfy the demands of the consumer.
Mr. Lloyd has performed a great service in calling attention to the significance of this new movement, which represents now an investment of over $5,000,000, annual sales $11,000,000, and dividends of $80,000 paid on wages. It seems evident that the next problem of cooperation is to harmonize these two movements, each of which has a principle indispensable to the extension of democracy in industry. Mr. Lloyd's book ought to be a means of demonstrating the necessity that the older movement should recognize and adopt the principle of the new. There are two or three items which need correction in a subsequent edition, which will doubtless be a necessity, as this movement is growing so rapidly. Mr. Lloyd does not carefully discriminate in his account of the Irish dairies between those which are on a labor copartnership basis and those which are not. He uses the word "capitalist" as a term of reproach when applied to the English Cooperative Wholesale Society, but seems to ignore the capitalistic character of the labor copartnership societies. It must be admitted that the English Whole- sale Society is not all that it ought to be, and Mr. Lloyd's criticism would be more effective if there were not this loose use of the term "capitalistic." The experience of the South Metropolit^in Gas Com- pany has been given undue prominence. There is only an external
