2. _Practically the plan has been made to work in a comparatively few simple industries._ The most notable examples of successful coöperation in America have been the cooper-shops in Minneapolis. There were a simple problem of costs, few and uniform materials, patterns, and qualities of product, few machines and much hand-labor, simple well-known processes, a sure local market. Mr. Lloyd, in a recent book, describes many successful societies in England, but they are all of a simple sort of industry, as agriculture and dairy-farming. Within the whole field of industry, this method of organization makes little if any progress. Most experiments have failed and the successful ones often become ordinary stock companies with the most able men in control. Therefore, whether losing or making money, they nearly all cease to exist as coöperative enterprises. This result has disappointed the prophecies of many wise men of seventy-five years ago. In the time of John Stuart Mill, great expectations were entertained of the future of productive coöperation, which was thought to be a solution of the whole social problem. [Sidenote: Its main difficulty] 3. _The main difficulty in productive coöperation is to secure managing ability of a high order._ There is no touchstone for business talent, no way of selecting it with any certainty in advance of trial. This selection is made hard in coöperative shops by the jealousies and rivalries, and by the politics among the workmen. A man thus selected by his fellows finds it almost impossible to enforce discipline. In coöperation there is occasionally developed good business ability that might have remained dormant under the wage system; some workmen showing unusual capacity cease to be handicraftsmen. But the unwillingness on the part of the workers to pay high salaries results in the loss of able managers. Having demonstrated their ability, the leaders go to competing industries where their function is not in such bad repute, and where higher salaries can be earned; or they go into business independently, being able easily to get control of the necessary capital. [Sidenote: Coöperators under-value the enterpriser's function]