successful strikes. The most important undertakings were among the
workers in iron, undoubtedly due in large measure to the indefatigable
efforts of William H. Sylvis, the founder of the Iron Molders'
International Union.

At the close of 1869 members of the Iron Molders' International Union
owned and operated many cooperative foundries chiefly in New York and
Pennsylvania. The first of the foundries established at Troy in the
early summer of 1866 was followed quickly by one in Albany and then
during the next eighteen months by ten more--one each in Rochester,
Chicago, Quincy, Louisville, Somerset, Pittsburgh, and two each in Troy
and Cleveland. The original foundry at Troy was an immediate financial
success and was hailed with joy by those who believed that under the
name of cooperationists the baffled trade unionists might yet conquer.
The New York _Sun_ congratulated the iron molders of Troy and declared
that Sylvis had checkmated the association of stove manufacturers and,
by the establishment of this cooperative foundry, had made the greatest
contribution of the year to the labor cause.

But the results of the Troy experiment, typical of the others, show how
far from a successful solution of the labor problem is productive
cooperation. Although this "Troy Cooperative Iron Founders' Association"
was planned with great deliberation and launched at a time when the
regular stove manufacturers were embarrassed by strikes, and although it
was regularly incorporated with a provision that each member was
entitled to but one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the
maximum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand shares, it
failed as did the others in furnishing permanent relief to the workers
as a class. At the end of the third year of this enterprise, the
_American Workman_ published a sympathetic account of its progress
unconsciously disclosing its fatal weakness, namely, the inevitable
tendency of cooperators to adopt the capitalistic view. The writer of
this account quotes from these cooperators to show that "the fewer the
stockholders in the company the greater its success."

A similar instance is furnished by the Cooperative Foundry Company of
Rochester. This venture has also been a financial success, though a
partial failure as a cooperative enterprise. When it was established in
1867 all employes were stockholders and profits were divided as follows:
Twelve percent on capital and the balance in propo