the Brook Farm enthusiasts and "Associationists" of the forties, made famous by their intimate association with Ralph Waldo Emerson, had much in common with the present-day efficiency engineers. This "old" efficiency of theirs, like the new one, was chiefly concerned with increasing the production of wealth through the application of the "natural" laws of human nature. With the enormous increase in production to be brought about by "Fourierism" and "Association," the question of justice in distribution was relegated to a secondary place. Where they differed from the new efficiency was in method, for they believed efficiency would be attained if only the human instincts or "passions" were given free play, while the efficiency engineers of today trust less to unguided instinct and more to "scientific management" of human "passions."

Midway between trade unionism and the simon-pure, idealistic reform philosophies stood producers' and consumers' cooperation. It had the merit of being a practical program most suitable to a time of depression, while on its spiritual side it did not fail to satisfy the loftiest intellectual. It was the resultant of the two most potent forces which acted upon the movement of the forties, the pressure of an inadequate income of the wage earner and the influence of the intellectuals. During no other period has there been, relatively speaking, so much effort along that line.

Although, as we shall see, the eighties were properly the era of producers' cooperation on a large scale, the self-governing workshop had always been familiar to the American labor movement. The earliest attempt, as far as we have knowledge, occurred in Philadelphia in 1791, when the house carpenters out on strike offered by way of retaliation against their employers to undertake contracts at 25 percent less than the price charged by the masters. Fourteen years later, in 1806, the journeymen cordwainers of the same city, following their conviction in court on the charge of conspiracy brought in by their masters, opened up a cooperative shoe warehouse and store. As a rule the workingmen took up productive cooperation when they had failed in strikes.

In 1836 many of the trade societies began to lose their strikes and turned to cooperation. The cordwainers working on ladies' shoes entered upon a strike for higher wages in March 1836, and opened three months later a "manufactory" or a warehouse of their own. The handloom weavers in two of the suburbs of Philadelphia started cooperative associations at the same time. At the end of 1836 the hand-loom weavers of Philadelphia proper had two cooperative shops and were planning to open a third. In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the journeymen cordwainers opened a shop after an unsuccessful strike early in 1836; likewise the tailors of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville. In New York the carpenters had done so already in 1833, and the painters of New York and Brooklyn opened their shops in 1837.

Before long the spirit became so contagious that the Trades' Union of Philadelphia, the city federation of trade societies, was obliged to take notice. Early in 1837 a conference of about 200 delegates requested each trade society to submit estimates for a shop to employ ten members. However, further steps were prevented by the financial panic and business depression.

The forties witnessed several similar attempts. When the iron molders of Cincinnati failed to win a strike in the autumn of 1847, a few of their number collected what funds they could and organized a sort of joint-stock company which they called "The Journeymen Molders' Union Foundry." Two local philanthropists erected their buildings. In Pittsburgh a group of puddlers tried to raise money by selling stock to anyone who wished to take an interest in their cooperative venture.

The cooperative ventures multiplied in 1850 and 1851, following a widespread failure of strikes and were entered upon with particular readiness by the German immigrants. Among the Germans was an attitude towards producers' cooperation, based more nearly on general principles than the practical exigencies of a strike. Fresh from the scenes of revolutions in Europe, they were more given to dreams about reconstructing society and more trustful in the honesty and integrity of their leaders. The cooperative movement among the Germans was identified with the name of Wilhelm Weitling, the well-known German communist, who settled in America about 1850. This movement centered in and around New York. The cooperative principle met with success among the English-speaking people only outside the larger cities. In Buffalo, after an unsuccessful strike, the tailors formed an association with a membership of 108 and in October 1850, were able to give employment to 80 of that number.

Again, following an unsuccessful Pittsburgh strike of iron founders in 1849, about a dozen of the strikers went to Wheeling, Virginia, each investing $3000, and opened a cooperative foundry shop. Two other foundries were opened on a similar basis in Stetsonville, Ohio, and Sharon, Pennsylvania. These associations of iron founders, however, might better be called association of small capitalists or master-workmen.

During the forties, consumers' or distributive cooperation was also given a trial. The early history of consumers' cooperation is but fragmentary and, so far as we know, the first cooperative attempt which had for its exclusive aim "competence to purchaser" was made in Philadelphia early in 1829. A store was established on North Fifth Street, which sold goods at wholesale prices to members, who paid twenty cents a month for its privileges.

In 1831 distributive cooperation was much discussed in Boston by a "New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Other Working Men." A half dozen cooperative attempts are mentioned in the Cooperator, published in Utica in 1832, but only in the case of the journeymen cordwainers of Lynn do we discover an undertaking which can with certainty be considered as an effort to achieve distributive cooperation. Several germs of cooperative effort are found between 1833 and 1845, but all that is known about them is that their promoters sought to effect a saving by the purchase of goods in large quantities which were then broken up and distributed at a slight advance above original cost in order to meet expenses. The managers were unpaid, the members' interest in the business was not maintained, and the stores soon failed, or passed into the possession of private owners.

It was the depression of 1846-1849 which supplied the movement for distributive cooperation with the needed stimulus, especially in New England. Although the matter was discussed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even as far west as Ohio and Illinois, yet in none of the industrial centers of these States, except perhaps in New York, was it put into successful operation.

In New England, however, the conditions were exceptionally favorable. A strike movement for higher wages during a partial industrial revival of 1843-1844 had failed completely. This failure, added to the fact that women and girls were employed under very unsatisfactory conditions, strengthened the interest of humanitarians in the laboring people and especially in cooperation as a possible means of alleviating their distress.

Under the stimulus of these agitations, the New England Protective Union was formed in 1845. Until 1849, however, it bore the name of the Working Men's Protective Union. As often happens, prosperity brought disunion and, in 1853, a schism occurred in the organization due to personal differences. The seceders formed a separate organization known as the American Protective Union.

The Working Men's Protective Union embodied a larger conception of the cooperative idea than had been expressed before. The important thought was that an economy of a few dollars a year in the purchase of commodities was a poor way out of labor difficulties,