profits, before any allowance was made for interest on the capital invested, or before any payment was made for the services of the firm as managers. In one year as much as $11,000 was divided among the laborers. Again, as in the case of the Briggs colliery, the experiment was brought to an end by an unreasoning submission to the pressure of outside workmen during a strike.331
But, all in all, industrial partnership332 offers a great field for [pg 531] that kind of improvement which is worth more than a mere increase of wages, and seems to make it possible to reach the heavy weight of sluggishness among the lower and more hopeless strata of society. And it is possible that it will stir in them the powers which may afterward find employment in the harder problems of productive co-operation.333
§ 7. People's Banks.
In Germany the struggle between the two theories—self-help and state-help—was fought out by Schultze-Delitsch—that is, Schultze of Delitsch, a town in Saxony—and Lasalle, and the victory given to the former. Schultze-Delitsch, as a consequence, was successful in directing the co-operative principle in Germany to giving workmen credit in purchasing tools, etc., when he had no security but his character. This form of co-operation works to give the energetic and industrious workmen a lever by which, through the possession of credit, they can raise themselves to the position of small capitalists, and thus widen the field of possible improvement. While the former schemes of co-operation described above have given the wages-receivers a share of the unearned increment from land, and tend to give them a share of the manager's wages, the plan of Schultze was to assist them to gain a share in the advantages belonging to the possession of capital. The capital was to be accumulated by their own exertions, and, in his scheme depended on the