ividend upon their
wages. There are also a few local federations of stores, mostly for
corn-milling and baking.

Co-partnership.

Strongly contrasting with this production by associations of consumers,
or "consumers' production," is the co-partnership, or labour
co-partnership, branch of co-operation. Its simplest form is an
association of producers formed to carry on their own industry.
Originally such societies were intended to consist solely of the workers
employed; the ideal was the "self-governing workshop," introduced from
France by the Christian Socialists of 1850; but membership is now open
to the distributive societies, which are the chief customers, and
usually, to all sympathizers. Shares are transferable, not withdrawable.
Profits first pay the agreed "wages of capital," usually 5%, and of what
remains the main part goes to the employees as a dividend on their
wages, and to the customers as a dividend on their purchases. In
well-established societies the dividend on wages averages about 1s. on
the L. This is not usually paid in cash, but credited to the employees
as share capital, whereby all may become members. Besides other
producers' associations, more or less co-operative, there are over a
hundred co-partnership societies at work in England, against a dozen or
fifteen in 1883. They are engaged in boot-making, printing, building,
weaving, clothing, wood-working, metal-working, and so on. Some of them
are very small, while others have businesses of L50,000 a year or more,
the average being about L10,000. The majority show fair, sometimes large
profits. Each is governed by a committee, which is elected by the
members and appoints the manager. A minority of them sell in the open,
i.e. the non-co-operative, market, and a few sell largely for export.

Rival theories.

We constantly hear that co-operative production is a failure. There have
no doubt been failures, especially of big experiments attempted among
men totally unprepared. But many of the failures counted were not truly
co-operative. At the present day consumers' production is successful
beyond all question, while the net growth of producers' associations in
the last twenty years has been marked both in number and importance.
These two forms of production best illustrate the two rival theories
which divide British co-operation, and between whose partisans the
conflict has at times been sharp. The consumers' theory maintains that
all profi