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The principle of aristocracy is irradicably bound up in the Arabian social economy. The levelling and co-operative system has no place here. The Sheikh's factotum is a noisy, roguish-looking Arab, with several bullet-marks about him received in the late wars. As he does all his master's dirty work, he is universally detested. Master and man swear the country is ruined.
At present, many co-operative undertakings are nothing more or less than huge Joint Stock Limited Liability concerns, shares of which are held largely by working people, but not necessarily, and sometimes not at all by those who are actually employed in the so-called co-operative business. Now, why is this?
After all, what was a duke to a man who was president of the People's Traction and Suburban Co., and the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative, and chief director of the People's District Loan and Savings? If a man with a broad basis of popular support like that was proposing to entertain a duke, surely there could be no doubt about his motives? None at all.
The new scientific spirit, working side by side with the new spirit of a broader and deeper humanity, has demonstrated, and is demonstrating, the truth, that in no other union is there such great strength as in the union of those who are working together, creating wealth for themselves and serving humanity. This is the mutual, co-operative ideal in employment.
Why do co-operative firms, co-operative factories, and co-operative Utopias so very often come to grief? I believe the cause is an open secret, and can be discerned by anyone who will look at the subject with an open eye. The success of industrial concerns is largely a question of management.
Democracy of the modern type, manhood suffrage and so forth, became a conspicuous phenomenon in the world only in the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Its genesis is so intimately connected with the first expansion of the productive element in the State, through mechanism and a co-operative organization, as to point at once to a causative connection.
It is said to be indispensable for the co-ordinated development of man and the giraffe and the elk, but appears to be unnecessary for the evolution and the maintenance of wonderful structures and habits and instincts in a thousand species of ants and bees and termites. It is the only possible means of complex evolution and adaptation of co-operative parts, and yet in Mr.
Hansen, of Los Angeles, a German lawyer and civil engineer, a man of culture, was appointed by his associates to select and secure the land; and eventually he became the manager of the whole enterprise, up to the point where it lost its co-operative features and the members took possession of their farms.
It will be noticed that among the other activities of the Congested Districts Board, I have specially mentioned the work of promoting co-operative credit by means of village banks managed on the Raffeisen system. The I.A.O.S. is a voluntary association of a strictly non-political character.
"Does this exhibit appeal to you as a reasonable basis for the accumulated savings named in your questions?" "I am sure the exhibit has astonished me greatly! Your figures and statements are both fascinating and convincing. They are all, most excellent arguments in favor of co-operative methods.
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