The eight-hour movement of Chicago's furniture workers gave one tangible result, and we hope it will endure. A co-operative furniture factory has been planned.

If workers become their own bosses, that would be the surest and most sensible way to raise the economic standard of labor. It is rather remarkable how the workers, in comparing themselves with their employers, should become so class conscious and place themselves on a lower social level than necessary--particularly here in America. This attitude is a sort of adaptation of customs prevailing in foreign lands, and is entirely out of place in this country. In speaking of European factory workers, who regard themselves as slaves 2and look upon capitalists as bitter enemies of the people, we can understand the viewpoint that no lasting peace is possible between the two factions, and that a truce is all that can be hoped for. In Europe, due to the density of population, and the class consciousness which has existed for thousands of years, the lot of the factory worker has indeed become hopeless, and labor sees no salvation, except in a complete destruction of the present order.

But, in America, we have different conditions, particularly in the West. Among any hundred employers in the upper income bracket, one can hardly find a man who did not start as a common laborer; and we have no unsurmountable barrier here between classes. Daily, one notes the transition from worker to employer, and, of course, there are also occasional reversals.

The assertion that it was possible for a laborer to become wealthy, twenty 3or thirty years ago, but that this condition does not prevail today, is nonsense. For a few years after the crash, the evolution from labor to employer came almost to a standstill, and in some instances there was a retrogression. Thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of capitalists lost their wealth, and an equal number of workers managed to pull through--or nearly so. But these are temporary and exceptional conditions. As a matter of fact, one finds that the larger cities have not yet fully recovered from the depression, but that smaller localities are thriving, places which today present the same conditions found in Chicago thirty or forty years ago; and in those localities the rise from employee to employer is constantly apparent. The growth of capital (the variety which evolves by saving money from wages)--in other words, the laborer who acquires a surplus--this condition manifests itself throughout the land, but in the crowded cities the rise is not so prevalent as in those smaller communities where ambitious, diligent individuals are not lost in the crowd--places where there is still elbow room, and where every man can carve out his fortune.

And, even in Chicago, the proletarians don't seem to be so hard up, if the workers are actually considering organizing a co-operative furniture factory, where laborers will provide the capital by buying from one to twenty shares, at $25 a share. Figuring on the basis of twenty shares to a man, that represents $500. No great fortune, to be sure, but even the smallest amount, $25, is much more than a workingman in Germany could afford for such a purpose. How many of Borsig's employees in Berlin, for instance, can save one hundred marks, not to mention two thousand marks, from their meager wages of $1.25 to $3.00 per week--barely enough to keep body and soul together? Just how much could Borsig's men save, so that they might organize a co-operative factory?

Is it not actually sacrilegious for our American workers to regard them-selves as proletarians, when they enjoy more luxuries here, and earn more, than most of the shop owners or bosses in Germany?

Our American workers are no proletarians, by any means, and they are not undernourished wage slaves; they are free citizens, and facts show that, if our laborers save only a little from their wages, they are capitalists in comparison to the European proletarians, and yet our workers claim to be on the same low social level.

Regardless of whether our workers admit it or not, their efforts to become their own bosses deserve acclaim. We shall always give hearty encouragement to a scheme of this kind, where workers try to solve the social question by emerging from the level of mere existence to that realm where men employ themselves.

When the workers become their own bosses they will learn one fact: The belief that the producer can name his own price is erroneous. The men will find that production costs are not the basis of the selling price, but that 6the demand for an article is the controlling factor. If a buyer cannot be found, then any merchandise is worthless, regardless of efforts which may have been expended in producing a perfect article. And, therefore, a cooperative factory will be able to pay wages only in proportion to its income. The worker's weekly pay envelope may therefore contain more or less money than it did when he was working for an employer. The amount may be less, for instance, if competition [sic] decreases the price of the finished article. In the latter case--since the men are their own employers--they must share a loss in salary, just as under more auspicious circumstances they divide their profits. There is no capitalist to back the venture and absorb occasional losses during short, dull periods, in the hope that prices will rise and wipe out the deficit. The workers, therefore, when applying the co-operative principle, will face a constantly fluctuating income; after all, the men are their own employers, and have no alternative but to adjust their incomes to current circumstances.

If all the members of this co-operative enterprise fully understand this, 7and realize the risk involved, and are willing to share losses as well as profits, their venture will be successful--and we wish them all the luck in the world.