s laid down simply and frankly
that, according to the usual custom in the whole industrial world, the
claims of labor were satisfied with the wages and that wages were
determined by supply and demand (we have seen above by what law).
"This fact," relates Professor Huber in his report of this affair,
"was considered valid without further question, as the natural
condition, needing no further justification, in opposition to a quite
exceptional, arbitrary innovation, even though it were according to
the statutes." Bravely, but only with very dimly understood emotional
reasons, this proposition for the changing of the statutes was opposed
by the original founders and managers of the association. In fact, a
majority of five-eighths of the workingmen stockholders voted for the
change of the statutes, taking exactly the same position as the
capitalist employers, and the change was defeated for the time being
only because, according to the statutes, a majority of three-fourths
of the votes was required. "But nobody," states Professor Huber, "is
unaware that the matter is not thereby settled; it is more likely that
still further serious internal dissensions are to be looked for by
this association, the outcome of which, perhaps even next year, may
well be a successful repetition of this attempt--all the more so since
the opposition is determined to make its influence felt in the
election of the officials of the association, an election at which the
majority elects, and through which the controlling offices of the
management may soon be in their hands."

Huber reports further in this matter that most of the associations
producing on a factory scale have fallen in at the outset with the
general custom, evidently without any further consideration or any
consciousness of a principle. Only a few have adopted the cooeperative
principle in favor of labor, and Huber must further admit, although
very unwillingly and with a heavy heart, for he is a partisan of
cooeperation depending upon individual workingmen alone: "There is no
doubt that this question will very soon come to discussion and
decision in all the producing associations where the opposition of
capital and labor exists, and that the competition of the industrial
macrocosm (i.e., the world's industry as a whole) is reproduced in the
cooeperative microcosm (the individual world represented by the
workingmen's associations)."

You see, Gentlemen, if you reflect about these fact