Leeds Flour Mill, and the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. Of this last association, the most successful of all, the history has been written in a very interesting manner by Mr. Holyoake ;* and the notoriety which by this and other means has been given to facts so encouraging, is causing a rapid extension of associations with similar objects in Lancashire, Yorkshire, London, and elsewhere.

The original capital of the Rochdale Society consisted of 281., brought together by the unassisted economy of about forty labourers, through the slow process of a subscription of twopence (afterwards raised to threepence) per week. With this sum they established in 1844 a small shop, or store, for the supply of a few common articles for the consumption of their own families. As their carefulness and honesty brought them an increase of customers and of subscribers, they extended their operations to a greater number of articles of consumption, and in a few years were able to make a large investment in shares of a Co-operative Corn Mill. Mr. Holyoake thus relates the stages of their progress up to 1857 :—

"The Equitable Pioneers' Society is divided into seven departments: Grocery, Drapery, Butchering, Shoemaking, Clogging, Tailoring, Wholesale.

"A separate account is kept of each business, and a general account is given each quarter, showing the position of the whole.

The grocery business was commenced, as we have related, in December 1844, with only four articles to sell. It now includes whatever a grocer's shop should include.

The drapery business was started in 1847, with an humble array of attractions. In 1854 it was erected into a separate depart

ment.

A year earlier, 1846, the Store began to sell butcher's meat, buying eighty or one hundred pounds of a tradesman in the town. After a while the sales were discontinued until 1850, when the Society had a warehouse of its own. Mr. John Moorhouse, who has now two assistants, buys and kills for the Society three oxen, eight sheep, sundry porkers and calves, which are on the average converted into 130l. of cash per week.

"Shoemaking commenced in 1852. Three men and an apprentice make, and a stock is kept on sale.

* Self-help by the People-History of Co-operation in Rochdale. An instructive account of this and other co-operative associations has also been written in the Companion to the Almanack for 1862, by Mr. John Plummer, of Kettering; himself one of the most inspiring examples of mental cultivation and high principle in a self-instructed working man.

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Clogging and tailoring commenced also in this year.

“The wholesale department commenced in 1852, and marks an important development of the Pioneers' proceedings. This department has been created for supplying any members requiring large quantities, and with a view to supply the co-operative stores of Lancashire and Yorkshire, whose small capitals do not enable them to buy in the best markets, nor command the services of what is otherwise indispensable to every stor—a good buyer, who knows the markets and his business, who knows what, how, and where to buy. The wholesale department guarantees purity, quality, fair prices, standard weight and measure, but all on the never-failing principle, cash payment."

In consequence of the number of members who now reside at a distance, and the difficulty of serving the great increase of customers, Branch Stores have been opened. In 1856 the first Branch was opened in the Oldham Road, about a mile from the centre of Rochdale. In 1857 the Castleton Branch, and another in the Whitworth Road, were established, and a fourth Branch in Pinfold."

The warehouse, of which their original Store was a single apartment, was taken on lease by the Society, very much out of repair, in 1849. "Every part has undergone neat refitting and modest decoration, and now wears the air of a thoroughly respectable place of business. One room is now handsomely fitted up as a news room. Another is neatly fitted up as a library. . . . . Their news room is as well supplied as that of a London club." It is now "free to members, and supported from the Education Fund," a fund consisting of 21 per cent of all the profits divided, which is set apart for educational purposes. "The Library contains 2200 volumes of the best, and among them, many of the most expensive books published. The Library is free. From 1850 to 1855, a school for young persons was conducted at a charge of twopence per month. Since 1855, a room has been granted by the Board for the use of from twenty to thirty persons, from the ages of fourteen to forty, for mutual instruction on Sundays and Tuesdays.

The corn-mill was of course rented, and stood at Small Bridge, some distance from the town-one mile and a half. The Society have since built in the town an entirely new mill for themselves. The engine and the machinery are of the most substantial and improved kind. The capital invested in the corn-mill is 8450l., of which 37317. 15s. 2d. is subscribed by the Equitable Pioneers' Society. The corn-mill employs eleven men.'

At a later period they extended their operations to the staple manufacture itself. From the success of the Pioneers' Society grew not only the co-operative corn-mill, but a co-operative association for cotton and woollen manufacturing. "The capital in this department is 4000l., of which sum 20421. has been subscribed by the Equitable Pioneers' Society. This Manufacturing Society has ninety-six power-looms at work, and employs twenty-six men, seven women, four boys, and five girls-in all forty-two persons. . . .

"In 1853 the Store purchased for 7457., a warehouse (freehold) on the opposite side of the street, where they keep and retail their stores of flour, butcher's meat, potatoes, and kindred articles. Their committee-rooms and offices are fitted up in the same building. They rent other houses adjoining for calico and hosiery and shoe stores. In their wilderness of rooms, the visitor stumbles upon shoemakers and tailors at work under healthy conditions, and in perfect peace of mind as to the result on Saturday night. Their warehouses are everywhere as bountifully stocked as Noah's Ark, and cheerful customers literally crowd Toad Lane at night, swarming like bees to every counter. The industrial districts of England have not such another sight as the Rochdale Co-operative Store on Saturday night."* Since the disgraceful failure of the Rochdale

* But it is not," adds Mr. Holyoake," the brilliancy of commercial activity in which either writer or reader will take the deepest interest; it is in the new and improved spirit animating this intercourse of trade. Buyer and seller meet as friends; there is no overreaching on one side, and no suspicion on the other. These crowds of humble working men, who never knew before when they put good food in their mouths, whose every dinner was adulterated, whose shoes let in the water a month too soon, whose waistcoats shone with devil's dust, and whose wives wore calico that would not wash, now buy in the markets like millionaires, and as far as pureness of food goes, live like lords." Far better, probably, in that particular; for assuredly lords are not the customers least cheated in the present race of dishonest competition. They are weaving their own stuffs, making their own shoes, sewing their own garments, and grinding their own corn. They buy the purest sugar and the best tea, and grind their own coffee. They slaughter their own cattle, and the finest beasts of the land waddle down the streets of Rochdale for the consumption of flannel weavers and cobblers. (Last year the Society advertised for a Provision Agent to make purchases in Ireland, and to devote his whole time to that duty.) When did competition give poor men these advantages ? And will any man say that the moral character of these people is not improved under these influences ? The teetotallers of Rochdale acknowledge that the Store has made more sober men since it commenced than all their efforts have been able to make in the same time. Husbands who never knew what it was to be out of debt, and poor wives who during forty years never had sixpence uncondemned in their pockets, now possess little stores of money sufficient to build them cottages, and go every week into their own market with money jingling in their pockets; and in that market there is no distrust and no deception; there is no adulteration, and no second prices. The whole

Savings Bank in 1849, the Society's Store has become the virtual Savings Bank of the place.

The following Table, completed to 1860 from the Almanack published by the Society, shows the pecuniary result of its operations from the commencement.

atmosphere is honest. Those who serve neither hurry, finesse, nor flatter. They have no interest in chicanery. They have but one duty to perform that of giving fair measure, full weight, and a pure article. In other parts of the town, where competition is the principle of trade, all the preaching in Rochdale cannot produce moral effects like these.

.

As the Store has made no debts, it has incurred no losses; and during thirteen years' transactions, and receipts amounting to 303,8527., it has had no law-suits. The Arbitrators of the Societies, during all their years of office, have never had a case to decide, and are discontented that nobody quarrels."

* [1865] The latest report to which I have access is that for the quarter ending September 20, 1864, of which I take the following abstract from the November number of that valuable periodical the Co-operator, conducted by Mr. Henry Pitman, one of the most active and judicious apostles of the Cooperative cause :- "The number of members is 4580, being an increase of 132 for the three months. The capital or assets of the society is 59,536l. 10s. 1d., or more than last quarter by 36871. 13s. 7d. The cash received for sale of goods is 45,8067. Os. 103d., being an increase of 2283l. 12s. 51d. as compared with the previous three months. The profit realized is 57137. 2s. 7 d., which, after depreciating fixed stock account 1821. 2s. 44d., paying interest on share capital 5987. 17s. 6d., applying 24 per cent to an educational fund, viz. 122l. 178. 9jd., leaves a dividend to members on their purchases of 2s. 4d. in the pound. Non-members have received 2617. 18s. 4d., at ls. 8d. in the pound on their purchases, leaving 8d. in the pound profit to the society, which increases

I need not enter into similar particulars respecting the Corn-Mill Society, and will merely state that in 1860 its capital is set down, on the same authority, at 26,6187. 14s. 6d., and the profit for that single year at 10,1647. 12s. 5d. For the manufacturing establishment I have no certified information later than that of Mr. Holyoake, who states the capital of the concern, in 1857, to be 55001. But a letter in the Rochdale Observer of May 26, 1860, editorially announced as by a person of good information, says that the capital had at that time reached 50,000l. and the same letter gives highly satisfactory statements respecting other similar associations; the Rosendale Industrial Company, capital 40,000l.; the Walsden Co-operative Company, capital 8000l.; the Bacup and Wardle Commercial Company, with a capital of 40,000l., "of which more than one-third is borrowed at 5 per cent, and this circumstance, during the last two years of unexampled commercial prosperity, has caused the rate of dividend to shareholders to rise to an almost fabulous height."

1It is not necessary to enter into any details respecting the subsequent history of English Co-operation; the less so, as it is now one of the recognised elements in the progressive movement of the age, and, as such, has latterly been the subject of elaborate articles in most of our leading periodicals, one of the most recent and best of which was in the Edinburgh Review for October 1864: and the progress of Co-operation from month to month is regularly chronicled in the Co-operator. I must not, however, omit to mention the last great step in advance in reference to the Cooperative Stores, the formation in the North of England (and another is in course of formation in London) of a Wholesale Society, to dispense with the services of the wholesale merchant as well as of the retail dealer, and extend to the Societies the advantage which each society gives to its own members, by an agency for co-operative purchases, of foreign as well as domestic commodities, direct from the producers.

2 It is hardly possible to take any but a hopeful view of the

the reserve fund 104l. 15s. 4d. This fund now stands at 13521. 7s. 11 d., the accumulation of profits from the trade of the public with the store since September 1862, over and above the 1s. 8d. in the pound allowed to such purchasers.' 1 [This paragraph added in 6th ed. (1865).]

2 [This paragraph is from the 5th ed. (1862), and so is the explanation, in the next paragraph but one, of the increase in the productiveness of industry. The argument as to the limitation of the number of distributors was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]