“I am not an admirer of the civilization of the nineteenth century, Mr. West,” Forest exclaimed. “I simply maintain, that the principles of _competition_ under which society worked a hundred years ago was far _superior_ to the _communism_, under which we are laboring. The unjust profits of the employers, of which you complain, could have been easily done away with, if your workmen had organized themselves into co-partnerships or associations. There was no law a hundred years ago to prevent a dozen shoemakers renting a loft with steam power, purchasing a few sewing and other machines and making boots and shoes at their own risk. There was no law to prevent all the other workingmen buying their boots and shoes at the shop of the co-operative association, thus securing for the members of the latter the profits of the manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and workman. The laborers of all the different trades had a perfect right to organize such co-operative societies and thus secure all the profit that was in their labor. If the workmen preferred not to make use of this chance, if they did not care to assume the cares and risks of conducting a business for themselves, if they would rather work for an employer, leaving the cares and risks of the managements entirely to him, they had certainly no reason to complain of the profit of the employer. And if they were not satisfied with their treatment they could at any time seek other employment;--a thing that the workmen of our days _can not do_, for there is only one employer, the national administration.--The principle, that a man has a right to what he produces, was not questioned under your form of production. But we have in the name of equality and justice established the “right” to rob an industrious man of a part of the product of his labor and give this booty to his lazy comrade. If the workingmen of the nineteenth century, instead of sacrificing enormous sums in strikes, had organized one trade after another into co-operative associations, they would have solved what they styled the social questions with comparatively little trouble. And they would have saved us from the present outrageous form of society.” “The strikes were an effect merely of the concentration of capital in greater masses, than had ever been known before”, I said, repeating the views of Dr. Leete on this question. “Before this concentration began ... the individual workman was relatively important and independent in his relations to his employers. Moreover, when a little capital or a new idea was enough to start a man in business for himself, workingmen were constantly becoming employers and there was no hard or fast line between the two classes. Labor unions were needless then and general strikes out of the question”.[7] [7] Page 52.