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 proportion to the earnings of the men.  But the capitalist was stronger than the cooperative brother.  Dividends on capital were advanced in a few years to seventeen and one-half percent, then to twenty-five, and finally the distribution of any part of the profits in proportion to wages was discontinued.  Money was made every year and dividends paid, which in 1884 amounted to forty percent on the capital.  At that time about one-fifth of the employes were stockholders.  Also in this case cooperation did not prevent the usual conflict between employer and employe, as is shown in a strike of three and a half months’ duration.  It is interesting to notice that one of the strikers, a member of the Molders’ Union, owned stock to the amount of $7000.