than in any other way. For it is to be said that in some of its forms co-operation gives the most promising economic results as regards the condition of the laborer which have yet been reached in the long discussion upon the relations of labor and capital.
§ 4. Distributive Co-operation.
It will be my object, then, to describe the chief forms in which the co-operative principle has manifested itself. These may be said, in general, to be four: (1) distributive co-operation, by which goods already produced are bought and sold to [pg 524] members without the aid of retail dealers; (2) productive co-operation, by which associations are formed for producing and manufacturing goods for the market; (3) partial productive co-operation in the form of industrial partnerships between laborers and employers, without dispensing with the latter; and (4) co-operative, or People's, banks. There are, of course, many other forms in which the principle of co-operation has been applied; but these four are probably the most characteristic.
Distributive co-operation is at once the simplest and the most successful form, not merely because it requires less for capital than any other for its inception, but also because it calls for less business and executive capacity. The number of persons capable of managing a small retail store is vastly greater than the class fit to assume control of the very complex duties involved in the care of wholesale houses—or, at all events, of mills and factories. Distributive co-operation has its origin in the fact that the expenses of a middle-man between the producer and consumer may be entirely dispensed with, and in the fact that more capital had collected in the business of distribution than could economically be so employed. Its educating power on the men concerned in teaching them to save, in showing the need of business methods, and in instilling the