At a later stage we shall have to study all those various co-operative and semi-co-operative forms of business more in detail, and to inquire into the causes of their success or failure in different classes of business, wholesale and retail, agricultural, manufacturing and trading.But we must not pursue this inquiry further now.Enough has been said to show that the world is only just beginning to be ready for the higher work of the co-operative movement; and that its many different forms may therefore be reasonably expected to attain a larger success in the future than in the past; and to offer excellent opportunities for working men to practise themselves in the work of business management, to grow into the trust and confidence of others, and gradually rise to posts in which their business abilities will find scope.
11.In speaking of the difficulty that a working man has in rising to a post in which he can turn his business ability to full account, the chief stress is commonly laid upon his want of capital: but this is not always his chief difficulty.For instance the co-operative distributive societies have accumulated a vast capital, on which they find it difficult to get a good rate of interest; and which they would be rejoiced to lend to any set of working men who could show that they had the capacity for dealing with difficult business problems.Co-operators who have firstly a high order of business ability and probity, and secondly the "personal capital" of a great reputation among their fellows for these qualities, will have no difficulty in getting command of enough material capital for a considerable undertaking: the real difficulty is to convince a sufficient number of those around them that they have these rare qualities.
And the case is not very different when an individual endeavours to obtain from the ordinary sources the loan of the capital required to start him in business.
It is true that in almost every business there is a constant increase in the amount of capital required to make a fair start;but there is a much more rapid increase in the amount of capital which is owned by people who do not want to use it themselves, and are so eager to lend it out that they will accept a constantly lower and lower rate of interest for it.Much of this capital passes into the hands of bankers who promptly lend it to anyone of whose business ability and honesty they are convinced.
To say nothing of the credit that can be got in many businesses from those who supply the requisite raw material or stock in trade, the opportunities for direct borrowing are now so great that a moderate increase in the amount of capital required for a start in business is no very serious obstacle in the way of a person who has once got over the initial difficulty of earning a reputation for being likely to use it well.
But perhaps a greater though less conspicuous hindrance to the rise of the working man is the growing complexity of business.The head of a business has now to think of many things about which he never used to trouble himself in earlier days; and these are just the kind of difficulties for which the training of the workshop affords the least preparation.Against this must be set the rapid improvement of the education of the working man not only at school, but what is more important, in after life by newspapers, and from the work of co-operative societies and trades-unions, and in other ways.
About three-fourths of the whole population of England belong to the wage-earning classes; and at all events when they are well fed, properly housed and educated, they have their fair share of that nervous strength which is the raw material of business ability.Without going out of their way they are all consciously or unconsciously competitors for posts of business command.The ordinary workman if he shows ability generally becomes a foreman, from that he may rise to be a manager, and to be taken into partnership with his employer.Or having saved a little of his own he may start one of those small shops which still can hold their own in a working man's quarter, stock it chiefly on credit, and let his wife attend to it by day, while he gives his evenings to it.In these or in other ways he may increase his capital till he can start a small workshop, or factory.Once having made a good beginning he will find the banks eager to give him generous credit.He must have time; and since he is not likely to start in business till after middle age he must have a long as well as a strong life; but if he has this and has also "patience, genius and good fortune" he is pretty sure to command a goodly capital before he dies.(8*) In a factory those who work with their hands have better opportunities of rising to posts of command than the book-keepers and many others to whom social tradition has assigned a higher place.But in trading concerns it is otherwise;what manual work is done in them has as a rule no educating character, while the experience of the office is better adapted for preparing a man to manage a commercial than a manufacturing business.
