A Box Factory Where Every Worker Gets One Share and the Same Pay
Articles filed in Seattle create a cooperative woodworking company whose profits belong to the corporation, not its stockholders, and whose members all earn the same wage.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The articles of incorporation of the box manufacturing company, filed on Monday by Philip Stul, James Fetterly, George J. Klindt, W. J. Potacett, Peter Johnson, and Thomas Regan, show the concern to be a cooperative enterprise and contain some curious provisions. The object is to carry on a general woodworking business and to own and operate stores. The articles say that the aims, interests, and purposes of the corporation are for the benefit of the corporation as a body and not for the individual stockholder. It is the intention to accumulate property and money that will inure to the corporate benefit and remain common and community property until the expiration of its legal life or until it is dissolved by the incorporators. Each member is to labor for the benefit of the corporation, and each must receive the same compensation for his services no matter what the character of the service may be. No member can own, control, or vote more than one share of the stock. It also undertakes to arbitrate differences between members, to promote peace and harmony, to provide for social, moral, and educational advantages for the children and families of stockholders, and to provide for the maintenance of the wives and children or other helpless members of the family of a deceased member. In case of expulsion, his share of stock, valued at $100, shall be divided as follows: $95 shall be turned into the company’s treasury and $5 shall be given to the expelled member. Certificates of stock are not transferable in any wise. Any person becoming a stockholder binds himself to waive all rights and privileges under the laws relating to corporations and to submit and agree to the abridgment of any such rights.
“Each must receive the same compensation for his services no matter what the character of the service may be. No member can own, control or vote any more than one share of the stock.”
Worker cooperatives remain a small but persistent alternative in Seattle’s economy, from food co-ops to employee-owned manufacturers. This 1895 experiment tried to hard-wire equality into a corporate charter—one share, one vote, equal pay—long before modern employee-ownership plans.
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