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THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MUTUALISM APPLIED TO MODERN COMMERCE

PREFACE

I here came to me one day an earnest, intelligent, industrious man tormented by his worries. He wanted me to tell him what caused "hard times" and panics; and whether it was not in the power of the industrial classes to do something to avert them. In a series of letters I unfolded to my questioner a plan of Industrial and Commercial Credit Cooperation.

These letters, just as they were written, have been collected, forming this booklet.

The author is persuaded that no scheme for the amelioration of misery, however beautiful the ideal animating it, no program for the regeneration of society or the elevation of the individual, can find a common-sense lodgment, as long as we tolerate royalty as expressed in money monopoly, land grants, or governmental special privilege of any kind.

Man is capable of producing all things needful for his material welfare. The earth yields her harvest from field, stream, mine and forest. Nature fails not; yet is a large proportion of the human family miserable because of interference between man and his access to nature.

Abolish all royalties, and the way is clear for every man who wills to work to win a competency. There has never been a time when men have not united into guilds, trades assemblies, labor unions, merchants' organizations and manufacturers' associations, and the like, for mutual benefit; always with meager success because always dealing with effects instead of causes.

Mutualism, scientifically operated, will succeed where all such undertakings have failed, and the benefits of success will be diffused to all men instead of to a class.

Innumerable schemes for the rehabilitation of society have been proposed, but always the establishment of these has involved change in the governmental structure, requiring a majority voting population. Majorities have frequently been secured for measures that seemed to promise larger freedom; subsequent experience proving governmental agencies inadequate, majorities had again to be enlisted to reconstruct these undertakings, or to repeal what was found unhelpful, disappointing or disastrous; every step relying on the support of majorities.

The business of co-operative credit associations requires no majorities. A few people in any community who will organize their credit will have so potent a commercial advantage that competitors will see the advantage of becoming cooperators. The plan is a modern application of the principles underlying the Mosaic republic; a method whereby the teachings of the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth may be rescued from the inanity to which theology has relegated them, and made the basis of a commerce fit for free and honest men.

The working people supply the credit underlying and maintaining every enterprise, however great. In the term "working people" I do not mean merely the "hewers of wood and drawers of water. "The designers of great enterprises and small; the organizers of industrial forces; all who in any mode or degree aid effectively in the production, transportation and exchange of useful things, a truly producers as the miner, farmer, lumberman and builder. Society cannot afford to withhold from any such what they earn as producers. Society cannot afford to pay any of them what they may claim under any of the guises of usury.

When the producing classes learn that it is their own credit which makes great enterprises possible, and will find the way to organize their credit, no useful commercial or industrial undertaking will be too large for them to conduct successfully.

No scheme of co-operation, however, can, or deserves to succeed which will not promote the well-being of each member. Scientific mutualism demands no sacrifices, requires no martyrs, and will not undertake to benefit the community at the expense of the individual. Individual growth, individual happiness -- the exaltation of the Ego -- these are the essence of any co-operative plan deserving to succeed.

Worry comes from fear, and in the economy of nature there is no place for fear. Whatsoever makes us afraid is superimposed upon us by artificial and preventable agencies. Our poverty is the result of our acceptance of what these agencies put upon us.

The author, who can be addressed in care of the publisher, invites correspondence either by way of criticism, advocacy or encouragement.

A DEFINITION OF MONEY [] CRITIQUE OF HENRY GEORGE'S THEORY OF INTEREST