It is constantly and rightly said that business can never dispense with that which makes the secret of capital's success in large industry and trade, namely, generalship.

Co-operation can, it is admitted, capitalize labor for the small industries, in which it is capable of making workingmen their own employers, but it is said it can never, through committees of management, carry on large industries or trade.

I can, however, see no reason why hereafter it may not enable large associations to hire superior directing ability at high salaries, just as paid generals give to republics the leadership which kings used to supply in monarchies.

There are in the savings-banks of many manufacturing centers in our country amounts which if capitalized would place the workingmen of those towns in industrial independence; moneys which, in some instances, are actually furnishing the borrowed capital for their own employers.

In such towns our workingmen have saved enough to capitalize their labor, but for lack of the power of combination, let the advantage of their own thrift inure to the benefit of men already rich.
They save money and then loan it to rich men to use in hiring them to work on wages, while the profits go to the borrowers of labor's savings.
But the chief value of co-operation, in my estimate, is its educating power.