But let, secondly, a dozen, or fifty, or a hundred journeymen say to
one another: "It is competition that, is ruining us, and competition is
division, disunion, every man for himself, every man against his brother.
The remedy must be in association, co-operation, self-sacrifice for the
sake of one another. We can work together at the honourable tailor's
workshop--we can work and live together in the sweater's den for the
profit of our employers; why should we not work and live together in our
own workshops, or our own homes, for our own profit? The journeymen of
the honourable trade are just as much interested as the slopworkers in
putting down sweaters and slopsellers, since their numbers are constantly
decreasing, so that their turn must come some day. Let them, if no one else
does, lend money to allow us to set up a workshop of our own, a shop of our
own. If the money be not lent, still let us stint and strain ourselves to
the very bone, if it were only to raise one sweater's security-money, which
one of us should pay into the slopseller's hands, in his own name, but on
behalf of all: that will at least save one sweater's profit out of our
labour, and bestow it upon ourselves; and we will not spend that profit,
but hoard it, till we have squeezed out all the sweaters one by one. Then
we will open our common shop, and sell at as low a price as the cheapest
of the show shops. We _can_ do this,--by the abolition of sweaters'
profits,--by the using, as far as possible, of one set of fires, lights,
rooms, kitchens, and washhouses,--above all, by being true and faithful
to one another, as all partners should be. And, then, all that the master
slopsellers had better do, will be simply to vanish and become extinct."
And again, let one man, or half-a-dozen men arise, who believe that the
world is not the devil's world at all, but God's: that the multitude of
the people is not, as Malthusians aver, the ruin, but as Solomon believed,
"the strength of the rulers"; that men are not meant to be beasts of prey,
eating one another up by competition, as in some confined pike pond, where
the great pike having despatched the little ones, begin to devour each
other, till one overgrown monster is left alone to die of starvation. Let a
few men who have money, and believe that, arise to play the man.