goes to support productive labor.... Though the fund for the
remuneration of mere labor, whether skilled or unskilled, must, so long
as industry is progressive, ever bear a constantly diminishing
proportion alike to the growing wealth and growing capital, there is
nothing in the nature of things which restricts the laboring population
to this fund for their support. In return, indeed, for their mere labor,
it is to this that they must look for their sole reward; but _they may
help production otherwise than by their labor: they may save, and thus
become themselves the owners of capital;_ and profits may thus be
brought to aid the wages-fund." [Footnote: "Some Leading Principles of
Political Economy Newly Expounded." By J. E. Cairnes, M.A. New York,
Harper & Brothers.]

Aside from systematized emigration to unsettled or thinly peopled
regions, which the Trades-Unions of Europe ought to organize on a great
scale, but which they have entirely neglected, the other outlets for the
mass of dissatisfied hand-laborers lie through co-operative or
communistic efforts. Co-operative societies flourish in England and
Germany. We have had a number of them in this country also, but their
success has not been marked; and I have found it impossible to get
statistical returns even of their numbers. If the Trades-Unions had used
a tenth of the money they have wasted in futile efforts to shorten hours
of labor and excite their members to hatred, indolence, and waste, in
making public the statistics and the possibilities of co-operation, they
would have achieved some positive good.

But while co-operative efforts have generally failed in the United
States, we have here a number of successful Communistic Societies,
pursuing agriculture and different branches of manufacturing, and I have
thought it useful to examine these, to see if their experience offers