True Cooperative Individualism
E. B. Gaston
[an argument on the plan of Fairhope Industrial
Association, prepared 1894]
INTRODUCTION / Paul M. Gaston
Available evidence suggests that [E.B.] Gaston
completed the first version of this essay in August of 1893 and that
he sent it out then to a small group of men, most of whom he had
corresponded with earlier about the National Cooperative Company,
hoping to interest them in a new colony venture based on the ideas
discussed in the essay. He probably revised it slightly when he read
it to twelve Populist Party associates in his office on January 4,
1894. It was at this meeting that a decision was made to draw up
by-laws and a constitution for a new community, based on the ideas
presented in the essay. After the constitution was drawn up for the
Fairhope Industrial Association the essay was put in its final form.
It is this version that appears here. It was first published in
Liberty Bell, April 28, 1894. It appeared in the Courier, shortly
after the colony was established, in two installments, on February
15 and March 1, 1895. It was distributed, in printed forms that have
not survived, well before this. One correspondent, for example,
wrote to Gaston of having read his article on "Cooperative
Individualism" three months before it appeared in Liberty Bell.
D. N. Hartley to E.B.G., January 30, 1894.
The present social and economic order is doomed. In the height of
its marvelous achievements it bears within itself the seeds of its
own destruction. Clear headed economists and warm hearted
philanthropists long ago pointed out and denounced its enormous
waste of human energy and natural resources and its hideous
injustice and cruelty. It has been "weighed in the balance and
found wanting." It must go! that is settled! but the very
serious fear presents itself that we who now recognize and denounce
its evils and are striving to unite a majority of its victims for
its overthrow, may go before it goes -- in waiting the slow movement
of majorities.
To the one who has the true spirit of a reformer present
conditions are almost unbearable. Even though his own financial and
social standing may be secure; the injustice and attendant want,
misery, hardships and despair everywhere apparent fill his life with
sadness -- but the qualities of mind and heart which mark the
reformer and philanthropist are a serious disqualification for
financial success under existing conditions.
With the constant narrowing of opportunities, as one industry
after another goes into the hands of trusts and the broad acres of
our common heritage pass under the control of speculators,
competition becomes so fierce that none can hope to succeed but
those in whom heredity and training have most developed the
commercial instinct.
The man who pauses in the mad rush for wealth to study the causes
of increasing poverty amid rapidly accumulating wealth, or who
knowing the cause, gives of his time and means to the enlightenment
of his fellow men is almost certain to fall far behind in the race
and to be looked upon as a failure, not alone by those who have left
him in the rear, but even by the more unfortunate for whom he has
striven. Under the pressure of such circumstances the reformer must
face the alternative of being true to his higher convictions at the
expense of material comfort for the present and safe provision for
the future, or, turning his back on what he knows to be his true
self and higher convictions, pursue with the utmost concentration of
his energies the prize of material gain.
There is but one way to escape this dire alternative -- that the
way pointed out, not alone by the natural promptings of the
reformer's heart but, by the "logic of events" which has
forced the fiercest antagonists in business into associations for
mutual protection.
The earth is as fruitful, nature smiles as brightly, and rewards
effort as bountifully as if no "inhumanity of man to man made
countless thousands mourn."
What more reasonable, more practical, than for those who
understand the devices by which the labor of the many is taken for
the profit of the few, to unite for the elimination of the land
speculators, the usurers, the monopolists of public service, and all
the other parasites who fatten upon industry compelling the producer
to gnaw the bone while they eat the meat.
Believing not only in the wisdom and practicability of such an
effort, but that it offers the only hope of present escape from the
deplorable conditions everywhere prevalent, the plans herein
presented have been formulated for a model community to be free from
all forms of private monopoly, and which will insure to its members
equality of opportunity, the full reward of individual efforts and
the benefits of co-operation in matters of general concern.
In presenting to our co-laborers in the work of economic reform
these plans, we do so believing that they must appear to them as to
us, an open door to wider opportunities for usefulness and greater
possibilities of individual profit and enjoyment. Greater
opportunities for usefulness, for they that shall make good theories
work and prove the value of proposed social solutions by practical
demonstration, will do far more to move the world than the wisest
and most brilliant theorists. Greater possibilities for legitimate
individual profit, because securing the full product of their labor
and the opportunity to exchange it for the products of others with
the minimum of friction and loss; and of happiness, because
associated with congenial spirits and co-operating with them to
secure the utmost of comfort and culture.
These plans are submitted not as the views of a dreamer but as a
practical business proposition to practical men and women; not as
plans requiring for their successful fulfillment, qualities properly
supposed to belong to angels, (certainly not visible at present in
human kind) but the result of the joint efforts of many, agreed on
fundamental economic principles, to apply them in harmony with the
known and constant springs of human action.
We have not been carried away by dreams of an ideal society from
which selfishness was banished and men sought only the happiness and
good of others.
We have sought to build for humanity as it is -- not the worst,
not the best but plain every day average humanity seeking its own
interest.
Our motto is not "each for all and all for each" but "every
one for himself -- under the law of equal freedom." Not "from
each according to his ability and to each according to his needs,"
but "equal opportunities to all and to the laborer the full
product of his labor."
The framers of the constitution of Fairhope Industrial Association
have kept steadily in view two great laws of human nature and human
rights: "All men seek to satisfy their desires with the least
exertion" and "Every man has freedom to do all that he
wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."
To the lack of a proper recognition of these fundamental
principles may be traced the multitude of failures of social
experiments which have done so much to discourage reformers and to
strengthen the position of those who insist that what is, is right
and must continue.
Ignoring the first, experiments in community building have utterly
failed to measure the dominant forces of human nature. Failing to
recognize the second, they have substituted the tyranny of the
community for the tyranny of individuals, and the last state has
been almost, if not quite, as bad as the first.
We believe that one of the most common and most grievous errors
cherished by social reformers is that "Society" (with a
big S) is possessed of rights and powers superior to those of its
individual components. While vehemently denying the right of one
individual to control of the person or products of another, they as
vehemently assert the right of "Society" to direct the
action of all individuals and determine the share of each in the
joint product.
We hold that individuals have certain natural, inherent and
inalienable rights which society cannot possibly acquire any right
to suspend or abrogate and that chief among these is the right of
each to the exercise of his own powers for his own benefit and to
the use and enjoyment, equally with all others, of natural
opportunities.
A Pure Democracy
In form and practice our community is to be a pure democracy.
Every adult member, without regard to sex, having an equal voice in
its affairs, PERSONS will rule instead of PROPERTY. The organization
in this respect conforms more nearly to the rule in municipal
corporations than to the ordinary corporations for pecuniary profit.
There can under such rules be no possibility of a few stockholders,
through the control of a majority of the stock, "freezing out"
the remaining stockholders, sacrificing their interests of
subverting their rights. Each member has for guarantee of the
permanent enjoyment of the advantages obtainable through such
organization, the like and equal interest of all his fellow members.
The Initiative And Referendum
By the initiative and referendum all legislative power is reserved
in the whole people, and never delegated to a part, the powers and
duties of the officers of the company being confined to executing
the laws made by the whole membership and suggesting legislation to
be submitted for their final approval or rejection. Partisan
politics as now known, cannot exist with the initiative and
referendum. Party tyranny which is almost always exercised in the
interest of a few men is shorn of its power when measures are voted
for instead of men.
Salaries Not To Exceed Average Earnings
By constitutional guarantee that salaries of officers shall not
exceed the average earnings of like energy and ability in productive
industry, the tendency to corruption in office and the creation of
an office holding aristocracy, which is a marked feature of existing
conditions, will be corrected. "Public office" will then
indeed by a "public trust" and will be sought and bestowed
as a recognition of ability and trust reposed, rather than for its
opportunities of personal aggrandizement.
Land
In its provision for land holding and use, our plan applies in the
only practical and satisfactory way the law of equal freedom,
permanently securing the equal rights of all its members in the use
of natural resources.
Obviously equal rights in land cannot be secured by an
apportionment of equal areas because tracts of equal area vary
greatly in value from differing advantages of location and natural
qualities. Experience demonstrates, too, that even though an
apportionment of equal values should be made, such values could
hardly be expected to remain in equilibrium for a year, certainly
not permanently. The only way to maintain this equilibrium, to
secure from year to year the equal rights of all members in the
common domain, is to ascertain annually the relative value of all
tracts (exclusive of improvements) and to collect from each the
amount required to equalize all land holdings. The requirement of
permancy of possession, which experience has shown to be beneficent,
is secured by perpetual lease, voidable only by the lessee; while
the freeing of labor-added values from taxation will encourage every
improvement calculated to increase the use-value or add to the
enjoyment of the possessor.
The fund thus provided and the taking of which by the community is
absolutely necessary to maintain equality of opportunity will be
ample for all community purposes, increasing naturally as the needs
of the community increase and doing away with all necessity for levy
of taxes upon the persons, or labor created property of others.
Land speculation and monopolization will be effectually destroyed
by removing all incentive to the holding of land except for use.
As this system could not be enforced under existing laws against
individual land owners the association, as the trustee for all its
members, will retain the title to all lands upon which its community
is located.
Public Utilities
In the control and operation, by the association, of all "public
utilities" the comfort and convenience of the members will be
made the first consideration therein, instead of the pecuniary
profit of a few investors. Vast sums will be saved to the people,
which under the prevailing plan flow into private pockets, and the
people of a small community be enabled to enjoy advantages afforded
now only by the largest cities, and at much less cost.
The officers of the community will be protected from the
corrupting influence exerted by franchise holders seeking to retain
or increase their advantages.
Light, power, water (and heat if necessary), will be supplied from
the most advantageous point, and will be under one management, and
as the land, freed from private speculators, will be so platted as
to group the population, without crowding, around a common center,
the saving to be effected in these departments can hardly be
estimated. It will certainly bring within the command of all those
conveniencies [sic] -- even necessities -- of modern civilization
which are now denied entirely to our rural population, and are so
expensive that they can be afforded by a very few, comparatively, in
the cities.
Insurance of persons and property will also be conducted by the
company at the lowest possible cost consistent with absolute safety.
It will be the purpose of the association to supply all these
advantages at the earliest practicable moment and the most essential
will be furnished as soon as settlement is made upon the chosen
site.
Among other things conducive to the comfort, pleasure and
elevation of its members which it will be the purpose of the company
to provide, as soon as possible, free of charge to individuals, will
be public schools, libraries, parks, baths, etc., and to make free
speech an actuality, an adequate place of public assemblage, free to
all citizens desiring to use, under such regulations only as will
secure its proper care and the equal enjoyment thereof by all.
Commercial Features
The commercial advantages to be secured are many and great. A very
large part of the cost to the consumer, of almost all commodities,
is added after the producer has parted with them, in the complex and
antagonistic method of modern exchange. The interests of both
producer and consumer demand that the cost of distribution be made
as low as possible. If distribution can be so organized that one man
can perform the work of two or four without organization, common
sense dictates organization. Experience and observation must
convince everyone that such a result can be effected by co-operative
distribution. The universal approval of government operation of the
postal system attests the conviction of all that the efficiency of
the service is thus greatly increased and the cost greatly lessened
over what it would be with the business in charge of many rival
companies. The same reasoning applies with equal force to
distributive merchandising.
There are often in a single block a half dozen places for the sale
of the same lines of merchandise, occupying a half dozen store
rooms, paying rent or taxes thereon, and for light, heat, water,
fire and police protection, street paving, cleaning and lighting,
insurance, clerks, book-keepers, interest on capital invested in
duplicate stocks, etc., where any one of the six with slight
increase in space occupied, capital invested and help employed,
could serve the trade now divided among all with equal convenience,
and, if the saving thus made were divided among the patrons, to
their far greater satisfaction. Nor would any hardship be imposed by
such a consolidation upon the persons now engaged in such business
either as principals or employees. The fierce competition among
retail dealers, losses from bad accounts, demoralization or prices
by bankrupt stocks thrown on the market at less than ordinary cost
to the dealer, and the many other hazards of business, cause a very
large percentage of failures in retail trade and keep the survivors
filled with anxiety, while for the employees nothing can be expected
but a bare living.
By the cheapening of labor products to the consumer, through the
great saving effected in co-operative distribution, consumption will
be greatly increased and all who are displaced in distribution will
be needed in production; while the freeing of the land, the great
passive factor in production, will equalize opportunities and enable
the employed to secure from the capital investing employer their
fair share of the joint product. Producer and consumer win alike be
benefited in the greater stability of prices under organized
distribution and in the facilities afforded for collecting
statistics of relative production and consumption. In its provisions
for acting as the agent of its members in the sale of their products
outside its limits, our association will apply this rule in dealing
directly with the great trade centers of the world's markets,
missing the products of many individuals in quantities best suited
to the demands of the market, and saving for the producers the share
of their product which now goes to local buyers and intermediate
brokers in profits, commissions, shortages and the many technical
terms which represent the pIuckings of middlemen. Other advantages
might be shown the chief of which will appear in the discussion of
the proposed financial system.
These Rules Do Not Apply To Production
It may appear to some that the rules here laid down in regard to
distribution apply to production as well, and that considerations of
equal weight demand that the association conduct productive as well
as distributive activities, according to the plans of extreme
socialists. Careful reflection, however, will, we think, convince
anyone that these two great departments of human activity rest on an
entirely different basis.
It has been said that competition is war, and all war is
destructive, but this is not true. War of individual against
individual and nation against nation is destructive, but the
conflicts of individuals against the forces of nature are not
destructive, but productive. The trade for which men compete in
merchandising is practically a fixed quantity. The effects of their
strife are shown in the relative shares of that trade gained by
each. One thrives at the expense of the other and ofttimes
competition, which has been called "the life of trade,"
proves "the death of traders." It leads to a duplication
of efforts in which one is lost. A housewife has a bill of groceries
to order, agents of two rival groceries competing for her trade call
for her order, one gets it, and the other gets -- left, and his
efforts are just as much wasted as if he had amused himself by
carrying bricks from one pile to another and back again. The same
wasteful duplication of effort, though on a more expensive scale, is
seen in the contests of rival wholesalers for the trade of
retailers.
Competition In Production
... brings exactly contrary results. Every motion of an arm or
revolution of a wheel is made effective. Human labor and the
harnessed forces of nature are utilized to the utmost limit of
knowledge. The inventive genius is constantly exercised in devising
methods and machinery by which their efficiency may be increased.
Under competition production is immensely stimulated, processes
cheapened and there is a constant tendency for prices to reach the
lowest possible cost of production.
Production differs from distribution, again, in that primarily the
individual producer is alone concerned in it. There is a very large
part of production in which the producer is also the direct
consumer. The farmer and his family consume in large part the fruits
and vegetables, the milk and butter, the poultry and eggs, and other
products which they produce. It is only the surplus which seeks
consumers in the markets, in which the balance of the community is
in any wise concerned, and in it their interest and that of the
producer is the same, viz: to effect its distribution from one to
the other with the greater economy, which can only be done by
cooperative distribution as we have shown.
Distribution, however, necessarily involves the interest of more
than one individual, and in our complex industrial system generally
many, thus logically calling for co-operation to secure mutual
benefits.
Leaving production free to individual enterprise furnishes also a
scientific solution for the wage problem of those engaged in the
public service or in the employ of others, the earnings of like
ability and energy in free productive industry being the standard.
Regarding manufacturing enterprises requiring large capital and
the labor of many workers, the policy of the association will be to
foster voluntary co-operation of both capital and labor investors,
but where such enterprises seem vital to the success of the colony,
and cannot practicably be secured otherwise, the association may
establish and conduct the same as self-supporting departments of its
business.
Let it, however, be distinctly borne in mind that, while the
association will engage in distributive (and under certain
circumstances productive) enterprises it will assume no authority to
prohibit any individual member of the community from engaging in any
of these enterprises. If any individual should desire to enter into
competition with the company's stores he has the undeniable right to
do so. If he pays to the community the full rental value of the land
he uses he has as much right to establish a grocery upon it and
solicit the trade of his fellow citizens as he has to raise potatoes
upon it; and other members of the community have the same right to
trade with him, if they choose, instead of at the associates stores.
In fact, however, it is clear that none would care to enter into
competition with the communal system of organized distribution
conducted at cost and with the advantages accruing from doing
business on a large scale, nor would anyone want to trade away from
the company store when it would be impossible for any private store
to sell so cheaply.
Financial
A commonly accepted medium of exchange is recognized as a
necessity of an advanced civilization. Manifestly it is something
which individuals cannot supply each for himself, and which,
therefore, it is the duty of the nations to supply in sufficient
quantities and on equal terms to their people. The national
government under which we live has, however, refused to discharge
this plain obligation, but on the contrary, has practically given
over to a few non-producers, whose chosen occupation has been
recognized by philosophers in all ages as a curse to industry and a
menace to liberty, the full control of the financial system of the
country, thus making what should be one of the chief aids to the
prosperity and advancement of all people, one of the chief
instruments for the virtual enslavement of the many by the few.
In its provisions for supplying its members with a safe, adequate
and independent medium of exchange will be found one of the most
valuable features of our enterprise. We accept the definition of
money given by the well known political economist, Francis A.
Walker, and approved by the Encyclopedia Britannica: "That
which passes freely from hand to hand throughout the community in
final discharge of debts and full payment for commodities, being
accepted equally without reference to the character or credit of the
person who offers it, and without the intention of the person who
receives it, to consume it or enjoy it or apply it to any other use
than in turn to tender it to others in discharge of debts or
payments for commodities."
To supply its members with such a medium our association will
issue its noninterest bearing evidences of indebtedness, in whatever
form is most convenient and not in conflict with United States
statutes, preferably in the form of scrip of the familiar
denominations of U. S. currency, which will be put in circulation by
paying it out for products offered for sale to or through the
association, for advances on non-perishable property stored in the
association's warehouses to a safe percentage of its value; for
salaries of officers and employees of the association and for
services of any kind performed for it.
These evidences of indebtedness the association will receive at
their par value in the hands of whomsoever presented, in whatever
quantities, for all dues or obligations to the association of
whatever nature. As the members of the association will be indebted
to it annually for rentals of land occupied by them, and as the
association will conduct all public utilities and through its
commercial department furnish all staple articles of merchandise,
the "redemption" thus provided is full and complete.
Some Things The Association Will Not Do
Perhaps the plans of our association will be made more clear by
specifying some of the things which it does not propose to do, for
it is in these that it differs most from other experiments to found
model communities. It does not Propose to control ALL the activities
of its members; to say what each shall do and what compensation he
shall receive for doing it. It does not propose to interfere in any
way with the religious beliefs and practices or social intercourse
of individuals--to dictate what kind of houses they shall build or
what style of clothes they shall wear; to whom they shall sell or of
whom they shall buy.
We have here presented the chief features of an association under
whose rules we feel confident can be secured advantages which can
not be hoped for outside of it or kindred organizations with the
lifetime of this generation at least a community wherein he who
labors will reap the fruits of his labor, no less, no more; where no
robber barons armed with special warrants under the law will bar
access to the bounties of nature, or stand on the highways to exact
toll from labor caravans; where men instead of wasting their
energies in contests where both are sure to lose will join
intelligently to make the labor of both most effective; where there
will be every incentive to industry and none to idleness; where the
necessities of the people will be the concern of all instead of the
opportunity of a few; where there will be neither the isolation of
the farm nor the crowding of the city; but where the farmer and the
worker in store or in factory will enjoy advantages now denied to
both; where men, always including women, will be the rulers and
wealth the servant. A community, in short, where intelligent men and
women, drawn together by a common purpose, will strive to make
practical applications of the best thoughts of the best minds of all
ages to a solution of the problems which threaten to-day the
existence of every nation of the globe. In such an effort we invite
the cooperation of all of kindred aims.