economic factor. In the United States they are for all practical purposes an unknown quantity. The reason for this will be obvious to any student of American industrial conditions.
Imagine, if you can, a "co-operative" steel mill, or any number of such mills floated with the pennies of the workers, trying to compete with the billion dollar steel trust which, in addition to possessing the most highly perfected machinery for manufacturing steel products, also controls the sources of raw materials and the transportation facilities related to that industry! Or, imagine a "co-operative" railroad set up in competition with the great transportation systems covering the whole country like a spider's web, and owned and controlled by a half dozen magnates who are likewise the heads of other great trusts! Or, think of a system of "co-operatives" designed to manufacture and distribute food products in competition with the beef trust!
Such propositions are obviously ridiculous, and suggest that "co-operatives" in America must necessarily be limited to the proportions of the peanut stand or the push cart. But even that suggestion calls for some allowance, seeing that the push cart has also been trustified—that even the fruit peddlers of the great cities are under control of the big commission merchants.
So we may safely predict that "co-operatives" are not destined to play any part in this country toward bolstering up the decadent middle class, and training "middle class socialists" to the qualifications of "good business men."
I will dismiss that phase of the subject touched upon by Kennedy and Simons, and pass on to the more significant question of
GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP.
A recent publication of the Bureau of Labor at Washington contains some information regarding the system of municipal ownership prevailing in Glasgow,
