can conditions. European economists, when speaking
of the working class, assume generally that it is fixed in residence and
contrast it with capital, which they say is fluid as between city and
city and even between country and country. American labor, however,
native as well as immigrant, is probably more mobile than capital; for,
tradition and habit which keep the great majority of European wage
earners in the place where their fathers and forefathers had lived
before them are generally absent in this country, except perhaps in
parts of New England and the South. It is therefore natural that the
cooperative spirit, which after all is but an enlarged and more
generalized form of the old spirit of neighborliness and mutual trust,
should have failed to develop to its full strength in America.

Another condition fatal to the development of the cooperative spirit is
the racial heterogeneity of the American wage-earning class, which
separates it into mutually isolated groups even as the social classes of
England and Scotland are separated by class spirit. As a result, we find
a want of mutual trust which depends so much on "consciousness of kind."
This is further aggravated by competition and a continuous displacement
in industry of nationalities of a high standard of living by those of a
lower one. This conflict of nationalities, which lies also at the root
of the closed shop policy of many of the American trade unions, is
probably the most effective carrier that there is to a widespread growth
of the cooperative spirit among American wage earners. This is further
hindered by other national characteristics which more or less pervade
all classes of society, namely, the traditional individualism--the
heritage of puritanism and the pioneer days, and the emphasis upon
earning capacity with a corresponding aversion to thrift.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The National Labor Union came out against Chinese immigration in
1869, when the issue was brought home to the Eastern wage earners
following the importation by a shoe manufacturer in North Adams,
Massachusetts, of Chinese strike breakers.

[11] There were many cooperative stores in the eighties and a concerted
effort to duplicate the venture of the Sovereigns was attempted as late
as 1919 under the pressure of the soaring cost of living.

[12] Where Consumers' Cooperation has worked under most favorable
conditions as in England, its achievements have been all that its most
ardent cha