It will, no doubt, be urged by some that whatever assistance is afforded by the talents of the few to the industrial efforts of the many, may be secured by a third means, which is neither slavery nor yet the wage-system—that is to say, by what is called the system of “co-operation.” Co-operative production, however, when it differs in anything except in name from production as carried on under the ordinary {164} wage-system, differs from it only in being the wage-system under a thin disguise. For the ideal cooperative factory is simply a factory in which all the shareholders are workers, and all the workers are shareholders, and in which, being shareholders, they elect their manager. Under such conditions, each of these working shareholders may receive his remuneration under the form, not of wages, but of profits. But if any shareholder, or any group of shareholders, should systematically shirk working, or disobey the manager’s orders, the whole, or a part of the payment that would be otherwise due to him, would be withheld; for unless some regulation of this kind were in force, it would be impossible to ensure any co-operation amongst the co-operators, or any order, or any equality of diligence. Each worker’s profits, then, are in reality his wages, being essentially a payment which is made to him only on condition that he performs certain specified tasks in a certain specified way. We are thus brought back to the point from which we started—namely, that there are two methods only by which, in the domain of industry, the superior faculties of the few can direct the faculties of the many: firstly, the capitalistic wage-system, which is the method of inducement; secondly, slavery, complete or partial, which is the method of coercion. And of the truth of this assertion the reader shall now be presented with a highly interesting and curiously conclusive proof, taken from the very last quarter in which he would naturally expect to find {165} it. This proof is afforded us by the schemes which, with ever-increasing clearness, have of recent years been put forward by all the more thoughtful socialists.