A History of Trade Unionism in the United StatesPerlman, Selig
History
A History of Trade Unionism in the United States
Perlman, Selig
Labor unions -- United States -- History
But the results of the Troy experiment, typical of the others, show how
far from a successful solution of the labor problem is productive
cooperation. Although this "Troy Cooperative Iron Founders' Association"
was planned with great deliberation and launched at a time when the
regular stove manufacturers were embarrassed by strikes, and although it
was regularly incorporated with a provision that each member was
entitled to but one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the
maximum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand shares, it
failed as did the others in furnishing permanent relief to the workers
as a class. At the end of the third year of this enterprise, the
_American Workman_ published a sympathetic account of its progress
unconsciously disclosing its fatal weakness, namely, the inevitable
tendency of cooperators to adopt the capitalistic view. The writer of
this account quotes from these cooperators to show that "the fewer the
stockholders in the company the greater its success."
A similar instance is furnished by the Cooperative Foundry Company of
Rochester. This venture has also been a financial success, though a
partial failure as a cooperative enterprise. When it was established in
1867 all employes were stockholders and profits were divided as follows:
Twelve percent on capital and the balance in proportion to the earnings
of the men. But the capitalist was stronger than the cooperative
brother. Dividends on capital were advanced in a few years to seventeen
and one-half percent, then to twenty-five, and finally the distribution
of any part of the profits in proportion to wages was discontinued.
Money was made every year and dividends paid, which in 1884 amounted to
forty percent on the capital. At that time about one-fifth of the
employes were stockholders. Also in this case cooperation did not
prevent the usual conflict between employer and employe, as is shown in
a strike of three and a half months' duration. It is interesting to
notice that one of the strikers, a member of the Molders' Union, owned
stock to the amount of $7000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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