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- 52 * O : ? t . ¦ " m ¦ r ¦ * ¦ ' * - i . :
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* CO-OPERATION . *
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No one who has a comfortable and abiding sense of the perfection of all existing institutions , —who is deeply impressed witlithe conviction that ' the poor must be always with us ; ' that * ignorance is the mother of obedience •/ that ' innovations are ever to be dreaded as dangerous ;'—no such person , we say , dreams of doubting the great and simple fact , that co-operation is folly , infidelity , and flat rebellion ; or that co-operators are downright
dreamers and impertinent disturbers ;—nay , perhaps actual atheists , Socinians , and levellers , to boot . There are however ^ persons extant who , feeling less and still lessening veneration for the beatitude of the good old times , venture coolly to examine theories and principles , though ever so new and strange . No £ on the one hand ; for instance , believing in Robert Owen , nor , on the other hand , holding that a co-operative community must be
ridiculous , because the configuration of its residence is supposed to be quadrangular ;—that it must be essentially impracticable , intolerable / arid inconsistent with individual comfort , because its housework is assisted by the perfection of mechanical and chemical science , and because its dinner parties are large;— -they have come to the conclusion that the proposed state of society , as prescribed by writers on co-operation , more or less modified by
circumstances , is actually practicable ; and that it would greatly conduce to the happiness of very many who now ' groan and sweat under the weary yoke * of institutions in whose formation they had no share , of circumstances which are daily pressing them more and more nearly to a prostrate position . The ironworkers in the employ of Messrs . Bernard and Wallace f , who could not afford to
starve , and who foolishly thought they could destroy competition by shattering machinery;—the Nortons of the pleasant village of Brooke , who discovered , by bitter experience , and acknowledged , with groanings that could not be uttered , that henceforth there must be no agricultural gradations between the wealthy cultivator and the day labourer ;—those who read , with a melancholy and despairing smile , the sage advice of the Working-man's Companion , ' to become capitalists , and go out of the labour-market;—all these , as some think , may find in co-operation a better remedy for their woes , than either rioting or savings banks .
* Proceedings of the Third Co-operative Congress , held in London , and composed of Delegates from the Co-operative Societies of Great Britain and Ireland ; on the 23 rd of April , 1832 , and the six following days , ( Pp . 136 . ) Strange , Paternoster Bow , London . The Co-operator ; in numbers , 1828-9 . Sickelaiore , Brighton . Practical Directions for the speedy aud economical Establishment of Communities on the Principles of mutual Co-operation : B / W . Thompson , ( P p * 0 Strange , X-ondon . . . . . . t Vide The Hill and the Valley . By Harriet Martineau .
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No , 68 . % V
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 521, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/17/
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