lack of capital, the lack of suitable legislation on the subject of
cooperation, the mutual isolation of the educated and wage-earning
classes, the lack of business ability among wage earners, and the
altogether too frequent venality and corruption among cooperators.

Probably the lack of adequate leadership has played as important a part
as any. It is peculiar to America that the wage earner of exceptional
ability can easily find a way for escaping into the class of independent
producers or even employers of labor. The American trade union movement
has suffered much less from this difficulty. The trade unions are
fighting organizations; they demand the sort of leader who is of a
combative spirit, who possesses the organizing ability and the "personal
magnetism" to keep his men in line; and for this kind of ability the
business world offers no particular demand. On the other hand, the
qualifications which go to make a successful manager of a cooperative
store, namely, steadiness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detail
and business punctuality always will be in great demand in the business
world. Hence, when no barrier is interposed in the form of preempted
opportunities or class bias, the exceptional workingman who possesses
these qualifications will likely desert his class and set up in business
for himself. In England, fortunately for the cooperative movement, such
an escape is very difficult.

The failure of consumers' cooperation in America was helped also by two
other peculiarly American conditions. European economists, when speaking
of the working class, assume generally that it is fixed in residence and
contrast it with capital, which they say is fluid as between city and
city and even between country and country. American labor, however,
native as well as immigrant, is probably more mobile than capital; for,
tradition and habit which keep the great majority of European wage