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state of comparative indigence, and, on his family, the visitation of calamities, so awful, that it looked as if the avenging power of retributive justice had laid its iron hand on him and them. In how short a time Blincoe's career will verify the prediction of the old sybil of Chapel-aFrith remains to be seen; but it is in the compass of probability, that he may, in the meridian of his life, be carried as high, by the wheel of fortune, as in the days of his infancy and youth, he was cast low!!

END OF THE MEMOIR OF ROBERT BLINCOE.

CONFIRMATION OF ITS VERACITY

Samuel Davy, a young man, now employed in the Westminster Gas Works, has called on the Publisher of Blincoe's Memoir, and has said, that his own experience is a confirmation of the general statement in the Memoir. Samuel Davy, when a child of seven years of age, with thirteen others, about the year 1805, was sent from the poor-house of the parish of St. George's, in the Borough of Southwark, to Mr. Watson's mill, at Penny Dam, near Preston, in Lancashire; and successively turned over to Mr. Birch's mill, at Backborough, near Castmill, and to Messrs. David and Thomas Ainsworth's mill, near Preston. The cruelty towards the children increased at each of those places, and, though not quite so bad as that described by Blincoe, approached very near to it. One Richard Goodall, he describes, as entirely beaten to death! Irons were used, as with felons in gaols, and these were often fastened on young women, in the most indecent manner, from the ancles to the waist! It was common to punish the children, by keeping them nearly in a state of nudity, in the depth of winter, for several days together. Davy says, that he often thought of stealing, from the desire of getting released from such a wretched condition, by imprisonment or transportation; and, at last, at nineteen years age, though followed by men on horseback and on foot, he successfully ran away and got to London. For ten years, this child and his brother were kept without knowing any thing of their parents, and without the parents knowing where the children were.' All applications to the Parish Officers for information were vain. The supposed loss of her children, so preyed upon the mind of Davy's mother, that, with other troubles, it brought on insanity, and she died in a state of madness! No savageness in human nature, that has existed on earth, has been paralleled by that which has been associated with the English Cotton-spinning Mills.

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Printed by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet- street.

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No. 9. VOL. 1.] LONDON, Friday, February 29, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

CO-OPERATIVE COMPETITION against COMPETITIVE CO-OPERATION; or what is the best system, or state of society, TO PRODUCE PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL AMONG MEN?

NOTE ON MR. CHEESE'S LETTER.

By co-operative competition, I distinguish the present state of society-that state in which men seek distinction and the pleasures of life, by individual exertion, or by companies, carrying on but one trade. This may be termed the competitive or emulative state of society, the moral principle of which is, moral prey. I use the words moral prey, in distinction from physical prey, to express that condition in which men struggle for advantages without danger to the persons of their neighbours, physical prey being meant to express the prey of animal upon animal, as food. Moral prey, therefore, is the struggle for superiority in talent, in industry, and in property, by which one man accumulates more capital, more influence, more respect, more of the comforts and pleasures of life, than another man; and, with all due deference to Robert Owen, and the co-operatives of Red Lion-square, I must take the liberty to express my view of this, as the highest possible social state of mankind.

By competitive co-operation, I mark the system which Robert Owen seeks to introduce among us, being that of men forming themselves into societies, co-operating in their different trades; though I do not see how they are to do this free from the competitive principle, or upon any principle of just equality of produce and consumption, of disposition and satisfaction; but forming a competition with reference to every person beyond their community; that is, alleged co-operation in each community;

No 9.-Vol I.

Printed by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet Street.

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but competition between communities as there is now between nations. My present impression is, after long consideration of the matter, after reading much, talking much, thinking much, about it, that this proposed new state of society will be a retrogression-a worse general state than now exists, without any hope of amendment; for the proposed co-operative system is a limit to amendment. There you will be in a circle-genius linked to dulness, industry to idleness, vice to virtue; round and round you may go in the circle, partaking of your constrained and low equality; but not one of you can emerge from it, not one of you can elevate yourself above the mediocre, perhaps less, but never higher than mediocre state, in which that plan of cooperation will place you.

If your co-operating principle be any thing more than that which I have stated it to be, you have misnamed it, and it is really competitive; it is, or will be, just upon the average, what the state of society is at present. I have joined the words. competitive co-operation—for I do not see how, humanly speaking, they are to be separated. Competition, individual or national, may exist without co-operation; but, to exist without competition, your co-operation must make a community of the whole human race. I will take a case from the alleged cooperatives as an instance.

They have, in London and in Brighton, formed a small trading fund association, selling a few of the articles commonly used as food. Proposals state, that profits, if any, shall be applied as capital, for the purposes of further co-operation. This tradingfund, small as it is, scarcely, perhaps, exceeding a hundred pounds, is called a co-operation among the subscribers. But what is the state of such a co-operation? Is it not a competition with other trading funds? Is it not the following up of a practice which the principle of co-operation is stated to condemn, the practice of employing distributors of produce distinct from the producers, and thus, by additional necessary profit, enhancing the price of that produce? Scheme after scheme, project after project, has arisen among these London co-operatives, some of them of a very romantic order, and at last, the only scheme they can reduce to practice, is founded on the principle which they profess to oppose, for the overthrow of which they have associated; they co-operate for the alleged purpose of overthrowing or setting a better example to competitors, and the end of their co-operation is the most simple and most mischievous form of competition, a mere sectarian or trading common fund, like that of the Israelites of Ashton-under-Line, and like those of the Moravians at Fairfield in Lancashire, and at Fullake in Yorkshire! They say to one another, you are of our sect, and, therefore, you should buy your necessaries at our shop. This sectarian form of competition is its worst form; and, indeed, the

only form of competition that is vicious-and this is form that the sect of co-operatives in Red Lion-square and in Brighton have adopted as its first step in the endeavour to overthrow all competition! This may be called a fighting of the enemy with his own weapon; but this is a foul sort of warfare, the warfare of low cunning and expediency, that is always to be suspected as to the sincerity of its principles, and that is never adopted by an open, generous, and sound-principled enemy.Many have said to me, you will be in less danger if you fight your enemy with his own weapons-my answer in my practice has invariably been, the scorn to use such weapons.

To me it appears that the great means of mending the physical condition of man is, first, to mend his moral condition, to make his reform begin at home, and to render him an object morally qualified to enjoy the benefits of an improved physical condition. If this be not done, nothing is done; and it is here that I am at issue with the theoretical co-operatives of Red Lion-square. By all that I have seen, in reading what they have published, and in going among them, their system aims more, even in its theory, to mend the physical than the moral condition of man; and hence, I perceive, the cause of the continued abortion of their system. I have noticed among them a squeamishness, and even a vote, as to the propriety of reading a paper, that distinctly touched upon the question of religions, which I deem moral reform. I have seen in their magazine several trucklings to religious prejudice, and an empty attempt to show that the principle of co-operation is a christian or a religious principle. Against this conduct of the London co-operatives, I have the admission of Robert Owen, that religion is the bane of his system of co-operation; that he has, by his experience in America, proved it to be so ; and that henceforth he will, there and in England, lecture boldly against every kind of religion, and show that its every principle is an evil in society. I am very happy to see, by the New Harmony Gazette, that he has manfully acted upon such a pledge at New Harmony, and I shall hail with pleasure his promised return to England for a similar purpose.

Mr. Cheese tells me that I must learn the co-operative system, and then promulgate it with zeal. I hope that I have learned it well and fully. I attended the first introduction of it in London, at the City of London Tavern, in 1817, by Mr. Owen, and as is my habit on any subject that is put forth as important, I have Occasionally considered it through the last ten years. I am of opinion that I know it well, in all its bearings; and I hope I shall leave Mr. Cheese no ground to complain that I want zeal to promulgate what I do know of it. I have been lately paying peculiar attention to it for that purpose. I have been desired by another gentleman, whom I have every reason to respect, to state my objections to co-operation, in the present systematic sense of that

word, that he may have an opportunity to answer me. Mr. Owen expressed his desire to me, in September last, that I would pay attention to it, adding, that it wanted the assistance of all the popular political writers. So I am fairly called forth to say what I can say, for or against it.

I am of the same opinion which the late David Ricardo expressed to Mr. Owen, that co-operation cannot produce any better than a mediocre state of society, and, with him, I hate the cooperative system that would monotonously tie down the talent or utility of mankind, so as to make the ingenuity of the genius subservient to the dulness of the dolt. The equality which we, the advocates for co-operative competition, seek, is an unrestrained equality, in which each shall rise as high in happiness as he can, and all be free to follow, to imitate, and to partake with him.

The objection which I made, in answer to Mr. Owen's request that I would consider it, was, that the phrenological inequality of human disposition rendered any principle of general co-operation for equality, to me, apparently impracticable. He replied, that since the phrenologists admitted the possibility of mending, for moral purposes, a morally defective organization, he hoped, and was of opinion, that all men, by proper education, might have their minds sufficiently formed for virtue, to co-operate for virtuous purposes. Here, then, it follows, upon Mr. Owen's own admission, that there can be no immediate co-operation for the acquisition of physical benefits; but that the principle of moral reform must precede it-and it is upon this ground that I make a charge against the co-operatives of Red Lion-square, that they there waste their time, and associate for no useful purpose. I know no useful purpose for association of any kind, but that for breaking down the prejudices and superstitions of mankind; and, except that purpose may be called a system, I know of no good system that can arise from any kind of partial association. As well may these co-operatives talk about altering the courses of the planets, as to talk about altering the courses of mankind, or of any part of mankind worthy of notice, by any thing they say, do, or propose to do, in or beyond Red Lion-square.

If, as Mr. Cheese calls upon me to do, we are to leave off grappling with superstition and talk about agricultural co-operation, I fear that we shall be found cherishing the old superstitions by the introduction of a new one; for, whatever misleads mankind from the path of truth and rectitude of action, may be properly called a superstition. And I would have Mr. Cheese and his brother co-operators to mark, that I have no system to set up, none to defend, beyond the propriety of attacking and endeavouring to overthrow the existing superstitions among mankind, not doubting that, if we proceed and continue to remove whatever is proved to be evil, the good will successively present itself.

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