The _Christian Socialist_, which was the organ of Maurice and Kingsley, betrayed great simplicity as to the real nature of the economic problem. It neglected Owen’s principle of “community in land,” and supposed that by working together and selling articles of good quality at a fair price poverty could be eliminated, while yet every worker in the community was paying his tribute of economic rent to the owners of the instruments of production. Thus the movement had no economic basis; and when the moral idealism had departed from it, no wonder that it degenerated into mere “divvy” hunting and joint-stock shop-keeping. The economic advantages of joint-stock shop-keeping are thus summed up by Mr. Robert Somers in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” (Art., “Co-operation”): “Wholesome commodities, ready-money payments, a dividend of from five to ten per cent on share capital, and a bonus to non-members on the amount of their purchases.” As joint-stock shop-keeping, co-operation is a useful and cheap method of distribution, which has doubtless benefited a considerable number of persons; but the notion that it can solve the economic problem before society is “chimerical,” as Dr. J. K. Ingram tells us is the opinion of modern economists.[57] This, indeed, might only be expected from the fact that 961 out of every 1,000 persons in England die without furniture, investments, or effects worth £300.[58] Economically considered, co-operation is, now that the initial enthusiasm has died out of it, a subsidiary branch of the great joint-stock enterprise. Ethically considered, its results are often doubtful. In its chief stronghold, Lancashire, one observes a narrow selfishness among its votaries, which could not be surpassed in the most genteel quarters of Bayswater. Its ideal is not the raising of the working class as a whole, but the raising of certain persons out of the working into the middle class. If the advocates of co-operation will abate their pretensions, and claim merely (1) that their method is a useful and economic means of distribution among the lower-middle and upper-working classes; and (2) that by its agency working men can learn the important functions of organization and administration, their claim will be freely admitted. But if they go further their vaulting ambition will o’erleap itself. At the present rate of progress made by co-operative societies as compared with joint-stock capitalist companies, several generations will be in their graves before any deep or general impression is made. And meanwhile, unless economic rent is diverted from the class which at present absorbs it to the community which creates it, co-operators, like the rest of us, must pay tribute to the lords of the soil and of money. But the noteworthy fact about co-operation, is that its very existence testifies to the process of industrial and capitalist aggregation here insisted on as the great social factor of our period. For co-operative societies supersede