earners in the place where their fathers and forefathers had lived
before them are generally absent in this country, except perhaps in
parts of New England and the South. It is therefore natural that the
cooperative spirit, which after all is but an enlarged and more
generalized form of the old spirit of neighborliness and mutual trust,
should have failed to develop to its full strength in America.

Another condition fatal to the development of the cooperative spirit is
the racial heterogeneity of the American wage-earning class, which
separates it into mutually isolated groups even as the social classes of
England and Scotland are separated by class spirit. As a result, we find
a want of mutual trust which depends so much on "consciousness of kind."
This is further aggravated by competition and a continuous displacement
in industry of nationalities of a high standard of living by those of a
lower one. This conflict of nationalities, which lies also at the root
of the closed shop policy of many of the American trade unions, is
probably the most effective carrier that there is to a widespread growth
of the cooperative spirit among American wage earners. This is further
hindered by other national characteristics which more or less pervade
all classes of society, namely, the traditional individualism--the
heritage of puritanism and the pioneer days, and the emphasis upon
earning capacity with a corresponding aversion to thrift.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The National Labor Union came out against Chinese immigration in
1869, when the issue was brought home to the Eastern wage earners
following the importation by a shoe manufacturer in North Adams,
Massachusetts, of Chinese strike breakers.