Page 369 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

A New Idealism.
to have opened its eyes. Searching for a means of turning common
metals into gold, the alchemists discovered chemistry. Looking
toward the Owenite ideal of self-employment, the new pioneers
perceived the consumer, and dividend on purchases, and the
practicable idea of public self-supply. Contesting the disintegrating
schemes of independent workshops, and building up their alternative,
the federal co-operators discerned the natural unity and essential
democracy of a consumers' movement. They reaUsed that the
consumers' interest was the first, the pubUc interest. These were
steps all leading on. The official reahsation that the power and
success of the co-operative movement depended upon its having
something Uke an equal freedom to enter the commercial field, was
a next step. Although expressed in commercial terms, and so
misinterpreted by the ideahsts, it meant that the C.W.S., at any
rate, should be true to its own purpose, to the mission inherited
from the pioneers and the federal leaders. If another road were to
be taken, leadmg to the consumer becoming subordinate to the
producer, and co-operation a mere detail in the labour movement, it
would be a calamity for both parties. An "aristocracy " of organised
purchasers benevolently spending its strength within the httle circle
of its own employees, would be a river drjnng up in sands. The not
unfriendly demand that C.W.S. industry should have a reasonably
equal freedom meant co-operation reaUsing its own dignity as a
separate, albeit complementary movement. It meant the
strengthening of co-operation, not merely to become a model yet
perpetually confined employer, but to win against the mastery of
capitaUsm in a contest for the control of industry by an ever-
widening body of consumers, that is to say, by a democratic public,
the "body pohtic."
Economically speaking, the powers of producing and consuming
are to the normal human being as left hands and right. Or, better
still, the hands are the producers, and the mouth that eats and the
eyes that see the beauty of the world are consuming powers, and
those that feed the desires of the heart by which the hands are
governed. Properly there should be no conflict between such
natural faculties; or between the labour movement and the
co-operative. But if the sense of unity is lost, and the hands take
bread out of the mouth, or the Umbs will not carry the eyes to their
boon, then a counter action is needed. And in the present world
there is Uttle sense of unity. Poetry and art, philosophy and reUgion
already inspire and find inspiration in the cause of labour, but exclude
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