Its motto was
"Cooperation of the Order, by the Order, and for the Order." Not
scattered local initiative, but the Order as a whole was to carry on the
work. The plan resembled the Rochdale system of England in that it
proposed to start with an organization of consumers--the large and
ever-growing membership of the Order. But it departed radically from the
English prototype in that instead of setting out to save money for the
consumer, it primarily aimed to create a market for the productive
establishments which were to follow. Consumers' cooperation was to be
but a stepping stone to producers' self-employment. Eventually when the
Order had grown to include nearly all useful members of society--so the
plan contemplated--it would control practically the whole market and
cooperative production would become the rule rather than the exception.
So far, therefore, as "First Principles" went, the Order was not an
instrument of the "class struggle," but an association of idealistic
cooperators. It was this pure idealism which drew to the Order of the
Knights of Labor the sympathetic interest of writers on social subjects
and university teachers, then unfortunately too few in number, like Dr.
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