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Self-help by the People.
HISTORY
OF
CO-OPERATION IN ROCHDALE.
By George Jacob Holyoake.
[third
edition.]
��The chapters of this little ‘ History ’ were commenced to be in
serted in the Daily News (in 1857), as the reader may infer from
notes to Chapter I.
The breaking out of the Mutinies in India
absorbed all space in that quarter, and prevented the completion of
the publication in those columns; otherwise, the subsequent chapters
might have been enriched by notes of the Editor of the Daily News,
whose great knowledge of, and interest in, Co-operative Associations,
abroad and at home, are well known.
�CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST EFFORTS, AND THE KIND OF PEOPLE WHO MADE THEM...
1
CHAPTER II.
APPOINTMENT OF A DEPUTATION TO THE MASTERS.--- GREAT DEBATE
IN THE FLANNEL WEAVERS’ PARLIAMENT ........................................................
6
CHAPTER III.
THE DOFFERS APPEAR AT THE OPENING DAT.--- MORAL BUYING AS
WELL AS MORAL SELLING ...........................
10
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOCIETY TRIED BY TWO WELL-KNOWN DIFFICULTIES--- PREJUDICE
AND SECTARIANISM ..........................................................................
15
CHAPTER V.
ENEMIES WITHIN AND ENEMIES WITHOUT, AND HOW THEY AT.T, WERE
CONQUERED......................................................
20
CHAPTER VI.
THE GREAT FLOUR MILL PANIC ..
........... . ................................................................. 27
CHAPTER vn.
SUCCESSIVE STEPS OF SUCCESS.—THE ROCHDALE STORE ON A SATURDAY
NIGHT .........................
„............................
32
CHAPTER VIH.
ANECDOTES OF THE MEMBERS.—THE WORKING-CLASS STAND BY THE
STORE, AND THEY ‘KNOW THE REASON WHY’ ............................................. 41
CHAPTER IX.
RULES AND AIMS OF TflE SOCIETY ..........
46
CHAPTER X.
THE OLD CO-OPERATORS--- WHY THEY FAILED.
THE NEW CO-OPE
RATORS—WHY THEY SUCCEED ..............................................
54
CHAPTER XI.
A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER OF ILLUSTRATIVE PAPERS AND NOTES... 64
�HISTORY
OF THE
ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
*
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST EFFORTS, AND THE KIND OF PEOPLE WHO MADE THEM.
L
L ,
/
J
i
Human nature must be different in Rochdale from what it is elsewhere. There must have been a special creation of mechanics in this
inexplicable district of Lancashire—in no other way can you Account
for the fact that they have mastered the art of acting together, and
holding together, as no other set of workmen in Great Britain have
done. They have acted upon Sir Robert Peel’s memorable advice;
they have ‘ taken their own affairs into their own hands and what
is more to the purpose, they have kept them in their own hands.
The working class are not considered to be very rich in the quality
of self-trust, or mutual trust. The business habit is not thought to
be their forte. The art of creating a large concern, and governing all
its complications, is not usually supposed to belong to them. The
problem of association has many times been tried among the people,
and as many times it has virtually failed. Mr. Robert Owen has not
accomplished half he intended. The ‘ Christian Socialists,’ inspired
by eloquent rectors, and directed by transcendent professors, aided by
the lawyer mind and the merchant mind, and what was of no small
importance, the very purse of Fortunatus himself, have made but
*
poor work of association. They have hardly drawn a single tooth
from the dragon of competition. So far from having scotched that
ponderous snake, they appear to have added to its vitality, and to
have convinced parliamentary political economists that competitive
strife is the eternal and only self-acting principle of society. True,
reports come to us ever and anon that in America something has been
accomplished in the way of association. Far away in the backwoods
a tribe of bipeds—some mysterious cross between the German and the
Yankee—have been heard of, known to men as Shakers, who are sup
posed to have killed the fatted calf of co-operation, and to be rich in
corn, and oil, and wine, and—to their honour be it said—in foundlings
and orphans, whom their sympathy collects, and their benevolence
rears. But then the Shakers have a narrow creed and no wives.
They abhor matrimony and free inquiry. But in the constituency till
lately represented by Mr. Edward Miall, there is liberality of opinion
—Susannahs who might tempt the elders again—and rosy-cheeked
children, wild as heather and plentiful as buttercups. Under all the
(agreeable) disadvantages of matrimony and independent thought,
certain workingunen in Rochdale have practised the art of self-help,
* Here we must express our dissent. They failed precisely because they were aided by
the purse of Fortunatus. In France, we are assured all those ‘Associations Ouvribres’
which refused to accept money from government in 1848 are prospering; while those
which accepted it have either ceased to exist, or are on the eve of ceasing to exist. Sacrifice
and self-reliance are the secret of success in these as in all other enterprises.—Ed. Daily News.
A
�HISTORY OF THE
Rochdale human nature—special and peculiar.
and of keeping the ‘ wolf from the door.’ That animal, supposed to
have been extirpated in the days of Ethelbert, is still found showing
himself in our crowded towns, and may be see^ any day prowling on
the outskirts of civilisation.
At the close of the year 1843, on one of those damp, dark, dense,
dismal, disagreeable days, which no Frenchman can be got to admire
—such days as occur towards November, when the daylight is all
used up, and the sun has given up all attempt at shining, either in
disgust or despair—a few poor weavers out of employ, and nearly out
of food, and quite out of heart with the social state, met together to
discover what they could do to better their industrial condition.
Manufacturers had capital, and shopkeepers the advantage of stock;
how could they succeed without either? Should they avail them
selves of the poor-law ? that were dependence; of emigration ? that
seemed like transportation for the crime of having been born poor.
What should they do? They would commence the battle of life
on their own account. They would, as far as they were concerned,
supersede tradesmen, millowners, and capitalists: without experience,
or knowledge, or funds, they would turn merchants and manu
facturers. The subscription list was handed round—the Stock
Exchange would not think much of the result. A dozen of these
Lilliputian capitalists put down a weekly subscription of twopence
each—a sum which these Rochdale Rothschilds did not know how to
pay. After fifty-two ‘ calls ’ had been made upon these magnificent
shareholders, they would not have enough in their bank to buy a sack
of oatmeal with; yet these poor men now own mills, and warehouses,
and keep a grocer’s shop, where they take £76,000 a-year over the
*
* ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS’ SOCIETY, CASH ACCOUNT,
Receipts.
To Cash, balance September quarter
„ Repaid by the Corn Mill Society ------„ Propositions
----„ Contributions
----------„ Received for Goods
--------„ Discounts
---------
DEC., 1857.
£
s. d.
3311 14 1
1000 0 0
750
510 4 3.|
19389 0 0
225 8 2
£24,443 11 6J
Disbursements.
By Cash paid for Goods
---„
„
Wages ------„
„
Rents
---„
„
Carriage
--»
,,
General Expenses and Repairs
„
,,'S ^Treasurer’s salary --„
I Petty Cash
--»
Rates
---»»
„ g I Insurance
--„
„w '■Building Fund
---
„
„
-343 6 8$
34 10 3
152 78
62 16 8j
2 10 0
100
18 16 8
115 0
600
Withdrawn by Members ---Balance
-----------
£ s. d.
19483 0 3
623 3 0
2027 13 7
2309 14 8J
£24,443 11 6J
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
3
The origin of the Society of Equitable Pioneers.
counter in ready money. Their ‘ cash sales ’ of £19,389, recorded in
their last quarterly report, which we subjoin, show their ready money
receipts to reach £l,4p0 a-week.
The origin of the Rochdale Store, which has transcended all co
operative stores ever established in Great Britain, is to be traced to
the unsuccessful efforts of certain weavers to improve their wages.
Near the close of the year 1843, the flannel trade—one of the principal
manufactures of Rochdale—was brisk. At this auspicious juncture
the weavers, who were, and are still, a badly paid class of labourers,
took it into their heads to ask for an advance of wages. If their
masters could afford it at all, they could probably afford it then.
Their workpeople thought so, and the employers of Rochdale, who
are certainly among the best of their class, seemed to be of the same
opinion. Nearly each employer to whom the important question
was put, at once expressed his willingness to concede an advance, pro
vided his neighbouring employers did the same. But how was the con
sent of the others to be induced—and the collective agreement of all
to be guaranteed to each ? The thing seemed simple in theory, but
was anything but simple in practice. Masters are not always
courteous, and workpeople are not proverbially tacticians. Weavers
do not negotiate with their superiors by letter; a personal interview
is commonly the warlike expedient hit upon—an interview which the
servant obtrudes and the master suffers. An employer has no a priori
fondness for these kind of deputations, as a demand for an advance of
wages he cannot afford, may ruin him as quickly and completely as a
fall may distress the workmen. However, to set the thing going in a
practical and a kind way, one or two firms, with a generosity the men
still remember with gratitude, offered an advance of wages to their
own workpeople, upon trial, to see whether example would induce the
employers generally to imitate it. In case general compliance could
not be obtained, this special and experimental advance was to be taken
off again. Hereupon the Trades’ Union Committee, who had asked
the advance on behalf of the flannel weavers, held, in their humble
way, a grand consultation of ‘ ways and means.’ English mechanics
are not conspirators, and the working class have never been dis- ,
tinguished for their diplomatic successes. The plan of action adopted
by our committee in this case did not involve many subtleties. After
speech-making enough to save the nation, it was agreed that one em
ployer at a time should be asked for the advance of wages, and if he
did not comply, the weavers in his employ were ‘ to strike ’ or ‘ turn
out,’ and the said ‘ strikers ’ and ‘ turn outs ’ were to be supported by
a subscription of twopence per week from each weaver who had the
good fortune to remain at work. This plan, if it lacked grace, had
the merit of being a neat and summary way of proceeding; and if it
presented no great attraction to the masters, it certainly presented
fewer to the men. At least Mrs. Jones with six children, and Mrs.
Smith with ten, could not be much in love with the twopenny pros
pect held out to them, especially as they had experienced something
�4
HISTORY OS' THE
The history of a Trades’ Deputation in the olden time.
of the kind before, and had never been heard to very much commend
it.
The next thing was to carry out the plan. Qf course, a deputation
of the masters waiting upon their colleagues would be the courteous
and proper thing, but obviously quite out of the question. A
deputation of employers could accomplish more in one day with em
ployers than a deputation of all the men could accomplish.in a month.
This, however, was not to be expected ; and a deputation of workmen
on this embassy was a rather uninteresting affair.
A trades’ deputation, in the old time, was a sort of forlorn hope of
industry—worse than the forlorn hope of war; for if the volunteers
of war succeed they commonly win renown, or save themselves;
but the men who volunteered on trades’ deputations were often
sacrificed in the act, or were marked men ever after. In war both
armies respect the ‘forlorn hope,’ but in industrial conflicts the
pioneer deputy was exposed to subsequent retaliation on the part of
mill-owners, who did not admire him; and—let it be said in impar
tiality, sad as the fact is—the said deputy was exposed often to the
wanton distrust of those who employed him. A trades’ deputation
was commonly composed of intelligent and active workmen; or, as
employers naturally thought them, ‘ dissatisfied, troublesome fellows.’’
While on deputation duty, of course they must be absent from work.
During this time they must be supported by their fellow-workmen.
They were then open to the reproach of living on the wages of their
fellows, of loving deputation employment better than their own pro
per work, which indeed was sometimes the case. Alas ! poor trade
deputy—he had a hard lot! He had for a time given up the service of
one master for the service of a thousand. He was now in the employ
of his fellows, half of whom criticised his conduct quite as severely as
his employer, and begrudged him his wages more. And when he re
turned to his work he often found there was no work for him. In his
absence his overlooker had contrived (by orders) to supply his place,
and betrayed no anxiety to accommodate him with a new one. He then
tried other mills, but he found no one in want of his services. The
poor devil set off to surrounding districts, but his character had gone
before him. He might get an old fellow-workman (now an over
looker) to set him on, at a distance from his residence, and he had
perhaps to walk five or six miles home to his supper, and be back at
his mill by six o’clock next morning. At last he removed his family
near his new employ. By this time it had reached his new employer’s
ears that he had a ‘ leader of the Trades’ Union ’ in his mill. His emJ
ployer calculated that the new advance of wages had cost him altogether
a thousand pounds last year. He considered the weaver, smuggled into
his mill, the cause of that. He walked round and ‘ took stock ’ of him.
The next week the man was on the move again. After a while he
would fall into the state of being ‘ always out of work.’ No wonder
if the wife, who generally has the worst of it, with her increasing
family and decreasing means, began to reproach her husband with
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
5
The fate of Tom Spindle and his colleagues.
having ruined himself and beggared his family by his ‘trade unioning.’
As he was daily out looking for work he would be sometimes ‘ treated’
by old comrades, and he naturally fell in with the only sympathy he
got. A ‘ row ’ perhaps occurred at the public-house, and somehow or
other he would be mixed up with it. In ordinary circumstances the
case would be dismissed—but the bench was partly composed of em
ployers. The unlucky prisoner at the bar had been known to at least
one of the magistrates before as a ‘ troublesome ’ fellow, under other
circumstances. It is not quite clear that he was the guilty person in
this case; but as in the opinion of the master-magistrate he was quite
likely to have been guilty, he gave him the benefit of the doubt, and
the poor fellow stood ‘ remanded ’ or ‘ committed.’ The chief share
holder of the Milldam Chronicle was commonly a mill-owner. The
reporter had a cue in that direction, and next day a significant para
graph, with a heading to this effect, ‘ The notorious Tom Spindle in
trouble,’ carried consternation through the ranks of his old associates.
The next week the editor had a short article upon the ‘kind of leader
ship to which misguided working men submit themselves.’ The case
was dead against poor Spindle. Tom’s character was gone. And if
he were detained long in prison, his family was gone too. Mrs.'Spindle
had been turned out of her house, no rent being forthcoming. She
would apply to the parish for support for her children, where she
soon found that the relieving officers had no very exalted opinion of
the virtues of her husband. Tom at length returned, and now he
would be looked upon by all who had the power to help him, as a
‘ worthless character,’ as well as a ‘ troublesome fellow.’ His fate was
for the future precarious. By odd helps and occasional employment
when hands were short, he eked out his existence. The present writer
has shared the humble hospitality of many such, and has listened half
the night away with them, as they have recounted the old story.
Beaten, consumptive, and poor, they had lost none of their old
courage, though all their strength was over, and a dull despair of
better days drew them nearer and nearer to the grave. Some of these
ruined deputationists have emigrated, and these lines will recall in
distant lands, in the swamps of the Mississippi, in the huts of a
Bendigo digging, and in the ‘ claims ’ of California, old times and
fruitless struggles, which sent them penniless and heart-broken from
the mills and mines of the old country. In the new land where they
now dwell—a strange dream land to them—their thoughts turn from
pine forests, night fires, and revolvers, to the old villages, the smokechoked towns, and soot-begrimed monotony in which their early life
was spent. Others of the abolished deputationists of whom we speak
turned news vendors or small shopkeepers. Assisted with a few shillings by their neighbours—in some cases self-helped by their own
previous thrift—they have set up for themselves, have been fortunate,
grown independent, and trace all their good fortune to that day which
cost them their loss of employment.
�6
HISTORY OF THE
The Trades’ Unionists attempt to bell the cat.
CHAPTER IL
APPOINTMENT OF A DEPUTATION TO MASTERS.---- GREAT DEBATE IN
THE FLANNEL WEAVERS’ PARLIAMENT.
So much will enable the reader to understand the hopes and fears
which agitated the Rochdale Flannel Weavers’ Committee, when they
appointed their deputation to wait upon the masters. ‘Who shall
go ? ’ Ho sooner was this question put than the loudest orators were
hushed. Cries of ‘ We will never submit ’—‘ We will see whether the
masters are to have it their own way for ever,’ etc., etc., etc.—were
at once silenced. Five minutes ago everybody was forward—nobody
was forward now. As in the old fable, all the mice agreed that the
cat ought to be belled, but who was to bell the cat ? The collective
wisdom of the Parliament of mice found that a perplexing question.
Has the reader seen a popular political meeting when some grand
question of party power had to be discussed ? How defiant ran the
speechesI how militant was the enthusiasm ! Patriotism seemed to
be turning up its sleeves, and the country about to be saved that
night. Of a sudden some practical fellow, who has seen that kind of
thing before, suggests that the deliverance of the country will involve
some little affair of subscriptions—and proposes at once to circulate a
list. The sudden descent of the police, nor a discharge of arms from
the Chelsea Pensioners, would not produce so decorous a silence, nor
so miraculous a satisfaction with things as they are, as this little step.
An effect something like this is produced in a Trades’ Committee,
when the test question is put, ‘ Who will go on the deputation ?’ The
men knew that they should not be directly dismissed from their
employ, but indirectly their fate would probably be sealed. The first
fault—the first accidental neglect of duty—would be the pretext of
dismissal. Like the archbishop in ‘ Gil Blas,’ who dismissed his critie
—not on account of his candour; his grace esteemed him for that—
but he preferred a young man with a little more judgment. So the
employer has no abstract objection to the workman seeking to better
his condition—he rather applauds that kind of thing—he merely dis
putes the special method taken to accomplish it.
The reader,
*
therefore, understands why our Committee suddenly paused when a
mouse was wanted to bell the cat. Some masters—indeed many
masters—are as considerate, as self-sacrificing, as any workmen are,
and they often incur risks and losses to keep their people in employ,
which their people never know, and, in many cases, would not
appreciate if they did. Many Trades’ Unionists are ignorant, incon
siderate, and perversely antagonistic. It would be equally false to
condemn all masters as to praise all men. But after all allowances
are made, the men have the worst of it. They make things bad for
themselves and for their masters by their want of knowledge. If they
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
7
The industrial and political influence of Socialism.
do not form some kind of Trades’ Union they cannot save their wages,
and if they do form Unions they cannot save themselves. Industry
in England is a chopping machine, and if the poor man does not take
care he is always under the knife.
We will now tell how the Flannel Weavers of Rochdale, whose
historians we are, have contrived to extricate themselves somewhat.
Our Trades’ Committee numbered, as all these committees do, a few
plucky fellows, and a deputation was eventually appointed, and set
off on their mission. Many employers made the required advance,
but others, rather than do so, would let their works stop. This
resistance proved fatal to the scheme, seconded as it was by the im
petuosity of the weavers themselves, who did not understand that you
cannot fight capital without capital. The only chance you have is
to use your brains, and unless your brains are good for something,
are well informed and well-disciplined, the chance is a very poor one.
Our flannel weavers did not use their brains but their passions. It is
easier to hate than to think, and the men did what they could do best
—they determined to retaliate, and turned out in greater numbers
than their comrades at work were able or willing to support. The
cooler and wiser heads advised more caution. But among the working
class a majority are found who vote moderation to be treachery. The
weavers failed at this, time to raise their wages, and their employers
succeeded, not so much because they were right, as because their
opponents were impetuous.
At this period the views of Mr. Robert Owen, which had been often
advocated in Rochdale, were recurred to by the weavers. Socialist
advocates, whatever faults they else might have, had at least done one
service to employers—they had taught workmen to reason upon
their condition—they had shown them that commerce was a system,
and that masters were slaves of it as well as men. The masters’
chains were perhaps of silver, while the workmen’s were of copper,
but masters could not always do quite as they would any more than
their servants. And if the men became masters to-morrow, they
would be found doing pretty much as masters now do. Circumstances
alter cases, and the social reformers sought to alter the circum
stances in order to improve the cases. The merit of their own scheme
of improvement might be questionable, but the Socialism of this
period marked the time when industrial agitation first took to
*
reasoning. Ebenezer Elliott’s epigram, which he once repeated as an
* Chartists have always complained that their most active men were won from them by
the new logic of the Social Reformers. Indeed, some Social reformers conceived a dis
trust of political reform as absurd as that professed by many Chartists for social reform;
but the ‘ Doctrine of Circumstances’ had one moralising effect upon the multitude—it taught
them to regard with pity many opponents whose throats they otherwise would have cut
with pleasure. Coleridge has owned (2'Ae Friend, p. 263, vol. ii.) to the pacific influence
of this doctrine on his own spirit when excited by a sense of injury received. When the
Bishop of Exeter called attention to the evil he discovered in the ‘ Doctrine of Circum
stances,’ he omitted to notice that if it sometimes weakened moral effort, it always dimin
ished hatred, a fact of great political importance in a country where class rivalry is
intense, and where the poor grow poorer as the rich grow richer, except where private
benevolence steps in to bridge over the inequality.
’
�8
HISTORY OF THE
The Communistic epigram of Ebenezer Elliott.
argument to the present writer, pointed to doctrines that certainly
never existed in England:—
‘ What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings;
Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny, and pocket your shilling,’
The English working class have no weakness in the way of idle
ness ; they never become dangerous until they have nothing to do.
Their revolutionary cry is always ‘ more work I ’ They never ask for
bread half so eagerly as they ask for employment. Communists in
England were never either ‘ idlers or bunglers.’ When the Bishop of
Exeter, to whom we have referred, troubled Parliament, in 1840,
with a motion for the suppression of Socialism, an inquiry was sent to
the police authorities of the principal towns as to the character of the
persons holding those opinions (the same who built in Manchester the
Hall of Science, now the Free Library, at an expense of £6000 or
£7000). The answer was that these persons consisted of the most
skilled, well-conducted, and intelligent of the working class. Sir
Charles Shaw sent to the Manchester Social Institution for some
one to call upon him, that he might make inquiries relative to
special proceedings. Mr. Lloyd Jones went to him, and Sir Charles
Shaw said, that when he took office as the superintendent of the
police of that district, he gave orders that the religious profession of
every individual taken to the station-house should be noted; and he
had had prisoners of all religious denominations, but never one
Socialist. Sir C. Shaw said, also, that he was in the habit of pur
chasing all the publications of the Society, and he was convinced,
that if they had not influenced the public mind very materially, the
outbreaks at the time, when they wanted to introduce the ‘ general
holiday,’ would have been much worse than they were, and he was
quite willing to state that before the government, if he should be
called upon to give an opinion.
The followers of Mr. Owen were never the ‘ idlers,’ but the phi
lanthropic. They might be dreamers, but they were not knaves.
They protested against competition as leading to immorality. Their
objections to it were theoretically acquired. They were none of
them afraid of competition, for out of the Socialists of 1840 have pro
ceeded the most enterprising emigrants, and the most spirited men of
business who have risen from the working classes. The world is
dotted with them at the present hour, and the history of the Rochdale
Pioneers is another proof that they were not ‘ bunglers.’ No popular
movement in England ever produced so many persons able to take
care of themselves as the agitation of Social Reform. Moreover, the
pages of the New Moral World and the Northern Star of this period
amply testify that the Social Reformers were opposed to ‘ strikes,’ as
an untutored and often frantic method of industrial rectification; as
wanting foresight, calculation, and fitness; as an irritation, a waste of
money and temper. And when a strike led, as they often have done,
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
9
The Teetotal and Chartist proposals for saving the world.
to workmen coercing their comrades, and forcibly preventing those
who were willing to work at'the objectionable rate, from doing so, the
strike became an injustice and a tyranny, vexatious, disreputable, and
indefensible.
As there was a general feeling that the masters who had refused
their demands had not done them justice, they resolved to attain it in
some other way. They were, as Emerson expresses it, ‘English
enough never to think of giving up.’ Hereupon they fell back upon
that talismanic and inevitable twopence, with which Rochdale mani
festly thinks the world can be saved. It was resolved to continue the
old subscription of twopence a week, with a view to commence
manufacturing, and becoming their own employers. As they were
few in number, they found that their banking account of twopences was likely to be a long time in accumulating, and some of
the committee began to despair; and, as nothing is too small for
poverty to covet, some of them proposed to divide the small sum
collected.
At this period a Sunday afternoon discussion used to be held in the
Temperance or Chartist Reading Room. Into this arena some mem
bers of the weavers’ committee carried their anxieties and projects,
and the question was formally proposed, ‘ What are the best means
of improving the condition of the people ?’ It would be too long to
report the anxious and Babel disputation. Each orator, as in more
illustrious assemblies, had his own infallible specific for the deliverance
of mankind. The Teetotallers argued that the right thing to do was to
go in for total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, and to apply the
wages they earned exclusively to the support of their families. This was
all very well, but it implied that everything was right in the industrial
world, and that the mechanic had nothing to do but to keep sober in
order to grow rich; it implied that work was sufficiently plentiful
and sufficiently paid for; and that masters, on the whole, were
sufficiently considerate of the workman’s interests. As all these points
were unhappily contradicted by the experience of every one concerned,
the Teetotal project did not take effect.
Next, the Chartists pleaded that agitation, until they got the
People’s Charter, was the only honest thing to attempt, and the only
likely thing to succeed. Universal Suffrage once obtained, people
would be their own law makers, and, therefore, could remove any
grievance at will. This was another desirable project somewhat over
rated. It implies that all other agitations should be suspended while
this proceeds. It implies that public felicity can be voted at dis
cretion, and assumes that acts of parliament are omnipotent over
human happiness. Social progress, however, is no invention of the
House of Commons, nor would a Chartist parliament be able to
abolish all our grievances at will; but Chartists having to suffer as
well as other classes, ought to be allowed an equal opportunity of
trying their hand at parliamentary salvation. The Universal Suffrage
agitation scheme was looked upon very favourably by the comB
�10
HISTORY OF THE
Professor Newman on the abolition of shop debts.
mittee, and would probably have 'been adopted, had not the Socialists
argued that the day of redemption would prove to be considerably
adjourned if they waited till all the people took the Pledge, and the
government went in for the Charter. They, therefore, suggested that
the weavers should co-operate and use such means as they had at
command to improve their condition, without ceasing to be either
Teetotallers or Chartists.
In the end it came about that the Flannel Weavers’ Committee
took the advice of the advocates of co-operation. James Daly, Charles
Howarth, James Smithies, John Hill, and John Bent, appear to be
the names of those who in this way assisted the committee. Meetings
were held, and plans for a Co-operative Provision Store were deter
mined upon. So far from there being any desire to evade responsi
bility, as working class commentators in Parliament usually assume,
these communistic-teetotal-political co-operators coveted from the
first, a legal position; they determined that the society should be
enrolled, under Acts of Parliament, 10th Geo. IV., c. 56, and 4th
and 5th William IV., c. 40.
CHAPTER IH.
THE DOFFERS APPEAR AT THE OPENING DAY.---- MORAL BUYING AS
WELL AS MORAL SELLING.
Next, our weavers determined that the society should transact its
business upon what they denominated the ‘ ready money principle.’
It might be suspected that the weekly accumulation of twopences
would not enable them to give much credit; but the determination
arose chiefly from moral considerations. It was a part of their
socialistic education to regard credit as a social evil—as a sign of the
anxiety, excitement, and fraud of competition. As Social Reformers,
they had been taught to believe that it would be better for society,
and that commercial transactions would be simpler and honester,
if credit were abolished. This was a radical objection to credit.
*
However advantageous and indispensable credit is in general com
merce, it would have been a fatal instrument in their hands.
Some of them would object to take an oath, and the magistrate would
object to administer it, thus they would be at the mercy of the dis* A valued book, now in their Library, did not then exist, to teach them to distinguish be
tween prejudice and a moral political economy. In the book referred to, the author says:—
‘ Heartily do I wish that shop debts were pronounced after a certain day irrecoverable at law.
The effect would be, that no one would be able to ask credit at a shop except where he was
well known, and for trifling sums. All prices would sink to the scale of cash prices. The
dishonourable system of fashionable debtors, who always pay too late, if at all, and cast their
deficiencies on other customers in the form of increased charges, would be at once
annihilated. Shopkeepers would be rid of a great deal of care which ruins the happiness
of thousands.’—Lectures on Political Economy, by Professor Newman, p. 255
�,
ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
11
The stupendous proposals of our Equitable Pioneers.
■honest who would come in and plunder them, as happens daily now
where the claim turns upon the oath. Besides, some of them had a
*
tenderness with respect to suing, and would rather lose money than
go to law to get it; they, therefore, prudently fortified themselves by
setting their faces against all credit, and from this resolution they
have never departed.
From the Rational Sick and Burial Society’s laws, a Manchester
communistic production, they borrowed all the features applicable to
their project, and with alterations and additions their society was
registered, October 24th, 1844, under the title of the ‘Rochdale Society
of Equitable Pioneers.’ Marvellous as has been their subsequent suc
cess, their early dream was much more stupendous—in fact, it
amounted to world making. Our pioneers set forth their designs in
the following amusing language, to which designs the society has
steadily adhered, and has reiterated the same terms much nearer the
day of their accomplishment (in the Society’s Almanack for 1854).
These Pioneers, in 1844, declared the views of their Association thus:—
‘ The objects and plans of this Society are to form arrangements for
the pecuniary benefit and the improvement of the social and domestic
condition of its members, by raising a sufficient amount of capital in
shares of one pound each, to bring into operation the following plans
and arrangements:—
‘ The establishment of a Store for the sale of provisions, clothing,
etc.
‘ The building, purchasing, or erecting a number of houses, in
which those members, desiring to assist each other in improving their
domestic and social condition, may reside.
‘ To commence the manufacture of such articles as the society may
determine upon, for the employment of such members as may be
without employment, or who may be suffering in consequence of
repeated reductions in their wages.
‘ As a further benefit and security to the members of this society,
the society shall purchase or rent an estate or estates of land, which
shall be cultivated by the members who may be out of employment,
or whose labour may be badly remunerated.’
Then follows a project which no nation has ever attempted, and no
enthusiasts yet carried out:—
‘That, as soon as practicable, this society shall proceed to arrange
the powers of production, distribution, education, and government; or, in
other words, to establish a self-supporting home-colony of united
interests, or assist other societies in establishing such colonies.’
Here was a grand paper constitution for re-arranging the powers of
* In those days the working class were justified in their jealousy of those set ‘in
authority over them,’ to an extent happily less credible now. So late as February, 1849,
our co-operators stipulated that a clause should be inserted in a lease of premises they were
about to take, to the effect that it should not be invalid upon a conviction of nuisance
against them. Their pacific objects might be sworn as a ‘ nuisance ’ by enemies, and ma
gistrates on the bench, finding them legally defenceless, might listen to prejudice against
them. Such cases have occurred elsewhere.
�12
HISTORY OF THE
The difficulty of collecting working class subscriptions.
production and distribution, which it has taken fifteen years of dreary
and patient labour to advance half way.
Then follows a minor but characteristic proposition:—
‘ That, for the promotion of sobriety, a Temperance Hotel be opened
in one of the society’s houses as soon as convenient.’
If these grand projects were to take effect any sooner than universal
Teetotalism or universal Chartism, it was quite clear that some activity
must take place in the collection of the twopences. The difficulty in
all working class movements is the collection of means. At this time
the members of the ‘Equitable Pioneer Society’ numbered about
forty subscribers, living in various parts of the town, and many of
them in the suburbs. The collector of the forty subscriptions would
probably have to travel twenty miles ; only a man with the devotion
of a missionary could be expected to undertake this task. This is
always the impediment in the way of working class subscriptions. If a
man’s time were worth anything at all, he had better subscribe the whole
money than collect it. But there was no other way open to them;
and, irksome as it was, some undertook it, and, to their honour, per
formed what they undertook.
*
Three collectors were appointed, who
visited the members at their residences every Sunday ; the town being
divided into three districts. To accelerate proceedings an innovation
was made, which must at the time have created considerable excite
ment. The ancient twopence was departed from, and the subscription
raised to threepence.
The co-operators were evidently growing
ambitious. At length the formidable sum of £28 was accumulated,
and, with this capital, the new world, that was to be, was commenced.
Fifteen years ago, Toad Lane, Rochdale, was not a very inviting
street. Its name did it no injustice. The groundfloor of a ware
house in Toad Lane was the place selected in which to commence
operations. Lancashire warehouses were not then the grand things
they have since become, and the groundfloor of ‘ Mr. Dunlop’s
premises,’ here employed, was obtained upon a lease of three years at
£10 per annum. Mr. William Cooper was appointed ‘cashier;’ his
duties were very light at first. Samuel Ashworth was dignified with
* The executive policy of democracies is in a very crude state among the people. Time
and zeal are wasted wofully. A committee of thirteen working men sometimes debate half
an evening away as to whether ninepence or thirteenpence shall be expended upon a
broom. Money ought not to be wasted upon brooms, nor ought hard-reared zeal to be ex
pended in the study of the petty cash book. Illustrations occur in the minutes of the
Rochdale Society. ‘ Resolved, that the two parties attending the Bank on business receive
the sum of sixpence each, and the third party twopence.’ (June 10, 1850.) Judging by
the remuneration, the transactions could not have been very responsible. ‘ Resolved, that
the shopmen be presented with an apron and sleeves each, in consideration of having to
make up some bad money.’ (Feb. 28, 1850.) This is a very amusing instance of economical
compensation. ‘ Resolved, that we have two cisterns for treacle, two patent taps from
Bradford, a shovel for sugar, and one for currants, and that the step-ladder be repaired.’
(May 9, 1850.) ‘ Resolved, that the grate at the back of the wholesale warehouse be opened
for air.’ (March 6, 1851.) ‘ Resolved, that there be a watering-can provided for the store.’
(March 28, 1852.) No doubt a protracted debate, five speeches each all round, seven or eight
explanations, and heavy replies by the mover and seconder, preceded these momentous
resolutions.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
13
Toad Lane in 1844. The opening day of the Co-operative Store.
the nomination of ‘ salesman; ’ his commodities consisted of infinitesimal quantities of ‘ flour, butter, sugar, and oatmeal.’* The entire
quantity would hardly stock a homoeopathic grocer’s shop, for after
purchasing and consistently paying for the necessary fixtures, £14 or
£15 was all they had to invest in stock. And on one desperate
evening—it was the longest evening of the year—the 21st of December,
1844, the ‘Equitable Pioneers’ commenced business; and the few who
remember the commencement, look back upon their present opulence
and success with a smile at their extraordinary opening day. It had
got wind among the tradesmen of the town that their competitors
were in the field, and many a curious eye was that day turned up
Toad Lane, looking for the appearance of the enemy; but, like other
enemies of more historic renown, they were rather shy of appearing.
A few of the co-operators had clandestinely assembled to witness their
own denouement; and there they stood, in that dismal lower room of
the warehouse, like the conspirators under Guy Fawkes in the Par
liamentary cellars, debating on whom should devolve the temerity of
taking down the shutters, and displaying their humble preparations.
One did not like to do it, and another did not like to be seen in the
shop when it was done: however, having gone so far there was no
choice but to go further, and at length one bold fellow, utterly reck
less of consequences, rushed at the shutters, and in a few minutes
Toad Lane was in a titter. Lancashire has its gamins as well as
Paris—in fact, all towns have their characteristic urchins, who display
a precocious sense of the ridiculous. The ‘ doffers ’ are the gamins of
Rochdale. The ‘doffers ’ are lads from ten to fifteen, who take off full
bobbins from the spindles, and put them on empty ones.f Like steam
to the engine, they are the indispensable accessories to the mills.
When they are absent the men have to play, and often when the men
want a holiday, the ‘ doffers ’ get to understand it by some of those
signs very well understood in the freemasonry of the factory craft,
and the young rascals run away in a body, and, of course, the men
have to play until the rebellious urchins return to their allegiance.
On the night when our store was opened, the ‘ doffers ’ came out
strong in Toad Lane—peeping with ridiculous impertinence, round
the corners, ventilating their opinion at the top of their voices, or
standing before the door, inspecting, with pertinacious insolence, the
scanty arrangement of butter and oatmeal; at length, they exclaimed
in a chorus, ‘ Aye ! the owd weaver’s shop is opened at last.’
Since that time two generations of ‘ doffers ’ have bought their
butter and oatmeal at the ‘ owd weaver’s shop,’ and many a bountiful
and wholesome meal, and many a warm jacket have they had from
that store, which articles would never have reached their stomachs or
their shoulders, had it not been for the provident temerity of the co
operative weavers.
* These are the articles specified in the minutes of Dec. 12,1844.
t To pull off a hobbin is, in the language of mills, to ‘ doff ithence the phrase ‘ doffers.’
�14
HISTORY OF THE
The self-made difficulties of the early co-operators.
Very speedily, however, our embryo co-operators discovered that
they had more serious obstacles to contend with than derision of the
‘ doffers.’ The smallness of their capital compelled them to purchase
their commodities in small quantities, and at disadvantage both of
quality and price. In addition to this, some of their own members
were in debt to their own shopkeepers, and they neither could, nor
dare, trade with the store. And, as always happens in these humble
movements, many of the members did not see the wisdom of pro
moting their own interests, or were diverted from doing it, if it cost
them a little trouble, or involved some temporary sacrifice. Of course
the quality of the goods was sometimes inferior, and sometimes the
price was a trifle higher. These considerations, temporary and trifling
compared with the object sought, would often deter some from be
coming purchasers, for whose exclusive benefit the store was projected.
If the husband saw what his duty was, he could not always bring his
wife to see it; and unless the wife is thoroughly sensible, and
thoroughly interested in the welfare of such a movement, its success
must be very limited. If the wife will take a little trouble, and bear
with the temporary sacrifice of buying now and then an article she
does not quite like, and will send a little farther for her purchases
than perhaps suits her convenience, and will sometimes agree to pay
a little more for them than the shop next door would charge, the co
operative stores might always become successful. Pure quality, good
weight, honest measure, and fair dealing within the establishment,
buying without higgling, and selling without fraud, are sources of
moral and physical satisfaction of far more consequence to a welltrained person than a farthing in the pound cheaper, which the same
goods might elsewhere cost. How heavily are we taxed to put down
vice when it has grown up—yet how reluctant are we to tax ourselves
ever so lightly to prevent it arising. If there are to be moral sellers,
there must be moral buyers. It is idle to distinguish the seller as an
indirect cheat, so long as the customer is but an ambiguous knave.
Those dealers who make it a point always to sell cheaper than any
one else, must make up their minds to the risk of dishonesty, to the
driving of hard bargains, or of stooping to adulterations. Our little
store thought more of improving the moral character of trade than of
making large profits. In this respect they have educated their
associates and customers to a higher point of character. The first
members of the store were not all sensible of this, and their support
was consequently slender, like their knowledge. But a staunch section
of them were true co-operators, and would come far or near to make
their purchases, and, whether the price was high or low, the quality good
or bad, they bought, because it was their duty to buy. The men were
determined, and the women no less enthusiastic, willing, and content.
Those members of the store who were true to their own duty, were
naturally impatient that all the other members should do the same;
they expected that every other member should buy at the store what
ever the store sold, that the said member purchased elsewhere. Not con-
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
15
Promises ‘ to find.’ Appearance of a millionaire and a martyr.
tent with wishing this, they sought to compel all members to become
traders with the store; and James Daly, the then secretary, brought
forward a resolution to the effect that those members who did not
•trade with the store should be paid out. Charles Howarth opposed
this motion, on the very proper ground that it would destroy the free
action of the members. He desired co-operation to advance, he said
he would do all he could to promote it; that freedom was a principle
which he liked absolutely, and, rather than give it up, he would
forego the advantages of co-operation. It will be seen, as our little
history progresses, that this love of principle has never died out, nor,
indeed, been impaired amid these resolute co-operators. James
Daly’s motion was withdrawn.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOCIETY TRIED BY TWO WELL-KNOWN DIFFICULTIES—PREJUDICE
AND SECTARIANISM.
In March, 1845, it was resolved that a license for the sale of tea and
tobacco be taken out for the next quarter, in the name of Charles
Howarth. This step evidently involved the employment of more
capital; for though the members had increased, funds had not in
creased sufficiently for this purpose. The members, in public meeting
assembled, were made aware of this fact; then, for the second time in
the history of the Rochdale Store, do we hear of any member being
in possession of more than twopence. One member ‘ promised to find’
half-a-crown. ‘ Promised to find ’ is the phrase employed on the
occasion—it was not ‘promised to pay, or subscribe, or advance.’
‘ Promised to find ’ probably alluded to some mysterious effort re
quired to produce a larger sum than twopence in those parts. Another
member ‘ promised to find ’ five shillings, and another ‘ promised to
find’ a pound. This last announcement was received with con
sternation, and the rich and reckless man who made the promise was
regarded with double veneration, as being at once a millionaire and a
*
martyr. Other members ‘ promised to find ’ various sums in propor
tion to their means, and in due time the husbands could get from the
store the solace of tobacco, and wives the solace of tea. At the close
of 1845 the store numbered upwards of eighty members, and possessed
* I have rescued and shall preserve the name of this pecuniary hero—it was William
Mallalieu, a trusted servant of John Feilden, M.P., now of Todmorden, who joined
the Society at its fifth meeting, September 12th, 1844. It does seem like poking
fun at the thing to make this note, but those concerned know it to be ludicrously
true.
The present writer well remembers the feeling of exultation with which
the important accession of £1 was accomplished; and there was only Mr. JHallalieu in all
Rochdale at that time, willing and able to help the humble movement to that extent. They
little expected, ten years later, to be able to put this minute upon their books—* Resolved,
that A. Hill and T. Smithies wait upon the Board of the Rochdale Corn Mill Society, and
give them notice that £1,500 lying in the Bank, belonging to this Society, is now at their
command.’—Minutes, Marell Sth, 185.5.
�16
HISTORY OF THE
First social effects of the experiment. Early rules of the Society.
a capital of £181 12s. 3d.
*
At first the store paid 2| per cent,
interest on money borrowed, then 4 per cent. After paying this
interest, and the small expenses of management, all profits made were
divided among the purchasers at the store, in proportion to the"
amount expended; and the members soon began to appreciate this
very palpable and desirable addition to their income. Instead of their
getting into debt at the grocer’s, the store was becoming a savings’
bank to the members, and saved money for them without trouble to
themselves. The weekly receipt for goods sold during the quarter
ending December, 1845, averaged upwards of £30.
‘ The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, held in Toad Lane,
in the Parish of Rochdale, in the County of Lancaster,’ made up its
mind that a capital of £1,000 must be raised for the establishment of
the store. This sum was to be raised by £1 shares, of which each
member should be required to hold four and no more. In case more
than £1,000 was required, it was to be lawful for a member to hold five
shares. At the commencement of the store, it was allowed a member to
have any number of shares under fifty-one. The chances of any member
availing himself of this opportunity were very dreary. But the.
officers were ordered, and empowered, and commanded to buy down
all fifty-pound shares with all convenient speed; and any member
holding more than four shares was compelled to sell the surplus at
their original cost of £1, when applied to by the officers of the
Society. But should a member be thrown out of employment, he
was then allowed to sell his shares to the board of directors, or other
member, by arrangement, which would enable him to obtain a higher
value. Each member of the Society, on his admission night, had to
appear personally in the meeting room and state his willingness to
take out four shares of £1 each, and to pay a deposit of not less than
threepence per share, or one shilling, and to pay not less than three
pence per week after, and to allow all interests and profits that might
be due to him to remain in the funds until the amount was equal to
four shares in the capital.
Any member neglecting his payments was to be liable to a fine,
except the neglect arose from distress, sickness, or want of em
ployment.
When overtaken by distress, a member was allowed to sell all his
shares, save one.
The earliest rules of the Society, printed in 1844, have, of course,
undergone successive amendments; but the germs of all their existing
rules were there. Every member was to be formally proposed, his
name, trade, and residence made known to every one concerned, and
a general meeting effected his election.
The officers of, the Society included a President, Treasurer, and
* The Society paid no interest upon its shares the first year, and all profits were allowed
to accumulate with a view to increasing capital.—Vide Minute of Committee Meeting, Aug.
29. 1844.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
17
Five Directors valued at half-a-crown.
Secretary, elected half-yearly, with three Trustees and five Directors.
^Auditors as usual.
The officers and Directors were to meet every Thursday evening,
at eight o’clock, in the committee room of the Weavers’ Arms,
Yorkshire Street. Then followed all the heavy regulations, common
to enrolled societies, for taking care of money before they had it.
The only hearty thing in the whole rules, and which does not give
you the tic doloreux in reading it, is an appointment that an an
nual general meeting shall be holden on the 4 first market Tuesday,
*
at which a dinner shall be provided at one shilling each, to celebrate
the anniversary of the grand opening of the Store. At which
occasion, no doubt, though the present historian has not the report
before him, the first sentiment given was 4 Th’ owd Weyvurs’ Shop,’
followed by a chorus from the 4 Doffers.’
The gustativeness of the members appears not to have sustained an
annual dinner, for in'1847 we find records of the annual celebration
*
assuming the form of a 4 tea party,’ to which, in right propagandist
spirit, certain Bacup co-operators were invited.
The Store itself was ordered to be opened to the public (who never
came in those days at all) on the evenings of Mondays and Saturdays
only—from seven to nine on Mondays, from six to eleven on Saturdays.
It would appear from this arrangement, that the poor flannel weavers
only bought twice a week in those times. A dreadful string of fines is
attached to the laws of 1844. The value of a Trustee or Director
may be estimated by the fact, that his fine for non-attendance was
sixpence. It is plain that the Society expected to lose only half-acrown if the whole five ran away. However, they proved to be worth
more than the very humble price they put upon themselves. Under
their management members rapidly increased, and the Store was
opened (March 3, 1845) on additional days, and for a greater number
of hours:—
Monday
from 4 to 9 p.m.
Wednesday „ 7 to 9 „
Thursday
„ 8 to 10 „
Friday
„ 7 to 9 „
Saturday „ ‘ 1
to 11 „
On February 2nd, 1846, it was resolved that the Store be opened
on Saturday afternoons for the meeting of members; an indication
that the business of the Store was becoming interesting, and required
more attention than the weavers were able to give it after their long
day’s labour was over. In the October of this year, the Store com
menced selling butcher’s meat. For the three years 1846-8, the
Store was tried by dulness, apathy, and public distress. It made
slow, but it made certain progress under them all., Very few new
members were added during 1846 ; but the capital of the Society in* An early minute, Oct. 6,1845,1 find appoints an Anniversary Tea. It was ‘ resolved,
Oct. 7, 1850, that neither tea nor dinner be provided to celebrate the anniversary’ of that
year. This festival must have been a modest one.
C
�18
HISTORY OF THE
Even a bad trade season adds members to the Store.
creased to £252 7s. ljd., with weekly receipts for goods averaging
£34 for the December quarter.
In case of distress occurring to a member, we have seen that he was
permitted to dispose of his shares, retaining only one. During 1847
trade was bad, and many of the members withdrew part of their shares.
Nothing can better show the soundness of the advantages created by
the society, than the fact that the first time trade became bad, and pro
visions dear, the members rapidly increased. The people felt the
pinch, and it made them look out for the best means of making a little
go far; and finding that the payment of a shilling entrance money, and
threepence a week afterwards—which sum being paid on account of
their shares, was really money saved—would enable them to join the
Store; they saw that doing so was quite within their means', and
much to their advantage. Accordingly, many availed themselves of
the opportunity of buying their goods at the Store. The Store
thereby encouraged habits of providence, and saved the funds of the
parish. At the close of 1847, 110 members were on the books, and
the capital had increased to £286 15s. 3|d., and the weekly receipts
for goods during the December quarter were £36. An increase of
£34 of capital, and £2 a week in receipts during twelve months, was
no great thing to boast of; but this was accomplished during a year
of bad trade and dear food, which might have been expected to ruin
the society: it was plain that the co-operative waggon was surely, if
slowly, toiling up the hill. The next minute of the Society’s history
is unexpected and cheering.
. The year 1848 commenced with great ‘distress ’ cases, and an acces
sion of new members. Contributions were now no longer collected
from the members at their homes. There was one place now where
every member met, at least once a week, and that was at the Store,
and the cashier made the appointed collection from each when he
appeared at the desk. Neither revolutions abroad, nor excitement nor
distress at home, disturbed the progress of this wise and peaceful
experiment. The members increased to 140, the capital increased to
£397, and the weekly receipts for goods sold in the December
quarter rose to £80; being an increase of £44 a week over the previous
year in the amount of sales.
The lower room of the old warehouse was now too small for the
business, so the whole building, consisting of three stories and an attic,
was taken by these enterprising co-operators, on lease for twenty-one
years.
More new members were added to the Society in 1849. The second
floor became the meeting room of the members, and also a sort of news
room, for on August 20th, it was resolved—‘That Messrs. James
Nuttall, Henry Green, Abraham Greenwood, George Adcroft, James
Hill, and Robert Taylor, be a committee to open a stall for the sale of
books, periodicals, newspapers, etc.; the profits to be applied to the
furnishing the members’ room with newspapers and books.’ At the
close of 1849 the number of members had reached three hundred and
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
19
The Store nearly ■wrecked by the religious element.
ninety. The capital now amounted to £1193 19s. Id., and the
weekly receipts for goods had risen to £179.
In the next year a very old enemy of social peace appeared in
Rochdale. The religious element began to contend for exclusiveness..
The rapid increase of the members had brought together numbers
holding evangelical views, and who had not been reared in a school
of practical toleration. These had no idea of allowing to their col
leagues the freedom their colleagues allowed to them, and they pro
posed to close the meeting room on Sundays, and forbid religious
controversy. The liberal and sturdy co-operators, whose good sense
and devotion had created the secular advantages of which the religious
accession had chosen to avail itself, were wholly averse to this
restriction. They valued mental freedom more than any personal
gain, and they could not help regarding with dismay the introduction
of this fatal source of discord, which had broken up so many Friendly
Societies, and often frustrated the fairest prospects of mutual im
provement. The matter was brought before a general meeting, on
February 4th, 1850. We give the dates of the leading incidents we
record, for they are historic days in the career of our Store. On the
date here quoted, it was resolved, for the welfare of the Society:—
‘ That every member shall have full liberty to speak his sentiments
on all subjects when brought before the meetings at a proper time, and
in a proper manner; and all subjects shall be legitimate when properly
proposed.' The tautology of this memorable resolution shows the
emphasis of alarm under which it was passed, and the endeavour to
secure by reiteration of terms, a liberty so essential to conscience and
to progress. The founders of the Society were justly apprehensive
that its principles would be overthrown by an indiscriminate influx of
members, who knew nothing of the toleration upon which all co
operation must be founded, and they moved and carried:—‘ That no
propositions be taken for new members after next general meeting for
six months ensuing.’ From this time peace has prevailed on this'
subject.
Very early in the history of co-operation—as far back as 1832—the
Co-operative Congress, held in London in that year, wisely agreed to
this resolution:—‘ Whereas, the co-operative world contains persons
of all religious sects, and of all political parties, it is unanimously re
solved, that Co-operators, as such, are not identified with any religious,
irreligious, or political tenets whatever; neither those of Mr. Owen,
nor of any other individual.’*
Sectarianism is at all times the bane of public unity. Without
toleration of all opinion, popular co-operation is impossible.
These theological storms over, the Society continued its success.
The members increasedin 1850 to six hundred; the capital of the
Society, in cash and stock, rose to £2299 10s. 5d., and the cash
received during the December quarter amounted to £4397 17s., or
£338 per week.
• Resolution of the third London Co-operative Congress. 1832.
�20
HISTORY OF THE
The porcupines of progress.
In April, 1851, seven years after its commencement, the Store was
open, for the first time, all day. Mr. William Cooper was appointed
superintendent; John Rudman and James Standring shopmen.
This year the members of the Store were six hundred and thirty;
its capital £2785; its weekly sales <£308. Somewhat less than in
1850.
The next, year, 1852, the increase of members’ capital and receipts
was marked, and they have gone on since increasing at a rate beyond
all expectation. To what extent we shall show in Tables of Results
in another chapter.
CHAPTER V.
ENEMIES WITHIN AND ENEMIES WITHOUT, AND HOW THEY ALE WERE
CONQUERED.
The moral miracle performed by our co-operatives of Rochdale is,
that they have had the good sense to differ without disagreeing; to
dissent from each other without separating; to hate at times, and yet
always hold together. In most working class, and, indeed, in most
public societies of all classes, a number of curious persons are found,
who appear born under a disagreeable star; who breathe hostility,'
distrust, and dissension; whose tones are always harsh : it is no fault
of theirs, they never mean it, but they cannot help it; their organs of
speech are cracked, and no melodious sound can come out of them;
their native note is a moral squeak; they are never cordial, and never
satisfied ; the restless convolutions of their skin denote ‘ a difference
of opiniontheir very lips hang in the form of a ‘ carpthe muscles
of their face are ‘ drawn up ’ in the shape of an amendment, and their
wrinkled brows frown with an ‘ entirely new principle of action they
are a species of social porcupines, whose quills eternally stick out;
whose vision is inverted; who see everything upside down; who place
every subject in water to inspect it, where the straightest rod appears
hopelessly bent; who know that every word has two meanings, and
who take always the one you do not intend; who know that no state
ment can include everything, and who always fix upon whatever you
omit, and ignore whatever you assert; who join a society ostensibly to
co-operate with it, but really to do nothing but criticise it, without
attempting patiently to improve that of which they complain; who,
instead of seeking strength to use it in mutual defence, look for weak
ness to expose it to the common enemy; who make every associate
sensible of perpetual dissatisfaction, until membership with them
becomes a penal infliction, and you feel that you are sure of more
peace and more respect among your opponents than among your friends;
who predict to everybody that the thing must fail, until they make it
impossible that it can succeed, and then take credit for their treacher-
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS,
21
Members of the opposition.
ous foresight, and ask your gratitude and respect for the very help
which hampered you; they are friends who act as the fire brigade of
the party, they always carry a water engine with them, and under the
suspicion that your cause is in a constant conflagration, splash and
drench you from morning till night, until every member is in an ever
lasting state of drip; who believe that co-operation is another word
for organised irritation, and who, instead of showing the blind the
way, and helping the lame along, and giving the weak a lift, and
imparting courage to the timid, and confidence to the despairing, spend
their time in sticking pins into the tender, treading on the toes of the
gouty, pushing the lame down stairs, leaving those in the dark behind,
telling the fearful that they may well be afraid, and assuring the
despairing that it is ‘ all up.’ A sprinkling of these ‘ damned good
natured friends ’ belong to most societies; they are few in number,
but indestructible; they are the highwaymen of progress, who alarm
every traveller, and make you stand and deliver your hopes; they
are the Iagoes and Turpins of democracy, and only wise men and
strong men can evade them or defy them. The Rochdale co-operators
understand them very well—they met them—bore with them—
worked with them—worked in spite of them—looked upon them as
the accidents of progress, gave them a pleasant word and a merry
smile, and passed on before them ; they answered them not by word
but by act, as Diogenes refuted Zeno. When Zeno said there was
no motion, Diogenes answered him by moving. When adverse critics,
with Briarian hands, pointed to failure, the Rochdale co-operators
quietly replied by succeeding.
*
Whoever joins a popular society, ought to be made aware of this
curious species of colleagues whom we have described. You can get
on with them very well if they do not take you by surprise. Indeed,
they are useful in their way; they are the dead weights with which
the social architect tries the strength of his new building. We men
tion them because they existed in Rochdale, and that fact serves to
show that our co-operators enjoyed no favour from nature or accident.
They were tried like other men, and had to combat the ordinary
human difficulties. Take two examples.
Of course the members’ meetings are little parliaments of working
men—not very little parliaments now, for they include thrice the
number of members composing the House of Commons. All the
mutual criticisms in which Englishmen proverbially indulge, and the
grumblings said to be our national characteristic, and the petty
jealousies of democracies, are reproduced on these occasions, though
not upon the fatal scale so common among the working class. Here,
in the parliament of our Store, the leader of the opposition sometimes
shows no mercy to the leader in power; and Rochdale Gladstones
and Disraelies very freely criticise the quarterly budget of the Sir
George Cornewall Lewis of the day. At one time there was our friend
Ben, a member of the Store so known, who was never satisfied with
anything—and yet he never complained of anything. He looked his
A
' .
�22
HISTORY OF THE
The effects of success upon the suspicious.
disapproval, but never spoke it. He was suspicious of everybody in
a degree, it would seem, too great for utterance. He went about
everywhere, he inspected everything, and doubted everything. He
shook his dissent, not from his tongue, but his head. It was at one
time thought that the management must sink under his portentous
disapprobation. With more wisdom than usually falls to critics, he
refrained from speaking until he knew what he had to say. After
two years of this weighty travail the clouds dispersed, and Ben found
speech and confidence together. He found that his profits had in
creased notwithstanding his distrust, and he could no longer find in
his heart to frown upon the Store which was making him rich.
At last he went up to the cashier to draw his profits, and he came
down, like Moses from the mount, with his face shining.
Another guardian of the democratic weal fulminated heroically.
The very opposite of Ben, he almost astounded the Store by his
ceaseless and stentorian speeches. The Times newspaper would not
contain a report of his quarterly orations. He could not prove that
anything was wrong, but he could not believe that all was right. He
was invited to attend the meeting of the Board; indeed, if we have
studied the chronicles of the Store correctly, he was appointed a
member of the Board, that he might not only see the right thing done,
but do it; but he was too indignant to do his duty, and he was so
committed to dissatisfaction that above all things he was afraid of
being undeceived; and, during his whole period of office, he sat with his
back to the Board, and in that somewhat unfriendly and inconvenient
attitude he delivered his respective opinions. Whether, like the hare,
he had ears behind has not been certified; but, unless he had eyes
behind, he never could have seen what took place. A more perfect
member of an opposition has rarely appeared. He was made by
nature to conduct an antagonism. At length he was bribed into con
tent—bribed by the only legitimate bribery—the bribery of success.
When the dividends came in behind him, he turned round to look at
them, and he pocketed his ‘brass’ and his wrath together; and, though
he has never been brought to confess that things are going right, he
has long ceased to say that they are going wrong.
The Store very early began to exercise educational functions.
Besides supplying the members with provisions, the Store became a
meeting place, where almost every member met each other every
evening after working hours. Here there was harmony because there
was equality. Every member was equal in right, and was allowed to
express his opinions on whatever topic he took an interest in.
Religion and politics, the terrors of Mechanics’ Institutions, were
here common subjects of discussion, and harmless because they were
open. In other respects the co-operators acquired business confidence
as well as business habits. The Board was open to everybody, and, in
fact, everybody went everywhere. Distrust dies out where nothing
is concealed. Confidence and honest pride sprung up, for every member
was a master—he was at once purchaser and proprietor. But all did
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
23
The difficulty of serving the poor.
not go smoothly on. Besides the natural obstacles which exist,
ignorance and inexperience created others.
Poverty is a greater impediment to social success than even pre
judice. With a small capital you cannot buy good articles nor cheap
ones. What is bought at a small Store will probably be worse and
dearer than the same articles elsewhere. This discourages the poor.
With them every penny must tell, and every penny extra they pay
for goods seems to them a tax, and they will not often incur it. It
is of no use that you show them that it and more will come back again
as profit at the end of the quarter. They do not believe in the end of
the quarter—they distrust the promise of profits. The loss of the
penny to-day is near—the gain of sixpence three months hence is
remote. Thus you have to educate the very poor before you can
serve them. The humbler your means the greater your difficulties—
you have to teach as well as to save the very poor. One would think
that a customer ought to be content when he is his own shopkeeper;
on the contrary, he is not satisfied with the price he charges himself.
Intelligent contentment is the slowest plant that grows upon the soil
of ignorance.
Some of the male members, and no wonder that many of the
women also, thought meanly of the Store. They had been accustomed
to fine shops, and the Toad Lane warehouse was repulsive to them;
but after a time the women became conscious of the pride of pay
ing ready money for their goods, and of feeling that the store was
their own, and they began to take equal interest with their husbands.
As usually happens in these cases, the members who rendered no sup
port to the new undertaking when it most wanted support, made up
by rendering more complaints than anybody else, thus rendering no
help themselves and discouraging those who did. It has been a
triumph of penetration and good sense to inspire these contributors
with a habit of supporting that, which, in its turn, supports them so
well. There are times still when a cheaper article has its attraction
for the store purchaser, when he forgets the supreme advantage of
knowing that his food is good, or his garment as stout as it can be
made. He will sometimes forget the moral satisfaction derived fsom
knowing that the article he can buy from the Store has, as far as the
store can influence it, been produced by some workman, who, in his
turn, was paid at some living rate for his labour. Now and then, the
higgler will appear at the little co-operative stores around, and the
store dealers will believe them, and prefer their goods to the supplies
to be had from the store, because they are some fraction cheaper;
without their being able to know what adulteration, or hard bar
gaining elsewhere, has been practised to effect the reduction.
Any person passing through the manufacturing districts of Lan
cashire will be struck with the great number of small provision shops;
many of them dealing in drapery goods as well as food. From these
shops the operatives, to a great extent, spread their tables and cover
their backs. Unfortunately, with them the credit system is the rule,
�24
HISTORY OF THE
Feargus O’Connor’s Land Scheme retards the Store.
and ready money the exception. The majority of the people trading
at these shops have what is called a ‘ Strap Book,’ which of course is
always taken when anything is fetched, and balanced as often as the
operatives receive their wages, which is generally weekly, but in
many places fortnightly. A balance is generally left due to the shop
keeper, thus the great number of operatives are always less or more
in debt. When trade becomes slack, he goes deeper and deeper, until
he is irretrievably involved. When his work fails altogether, he is
obliged to remove to another district, and of course to trade with
another shop, unless at great inconvenience he sends all the distance
to the old shop.
It sometimes happens that an honest weaver will prefer all this
trouble to forsaking a house that has trusted him. One instance has
been mentioned to the present writer, in which a family that had re
moved from a village on one side of the town to one on the opposite
side, continued for years to send a distance of two miles and a half to
the old shop for their provisions, although in doing so they had to
pass through the town of Rochdale, where they could have obtained
the same things cheaper. This is in every way a grateful and
honourable fact, and the history of the working class includes crowds
of them.
We are bound to relate that the capital of the Store would have
increased somewhat more rapidly, had it not at that time been ab
sorbed by the land company of Feargus O’Connor. Many members
of the Store were also shareholders in that concern, and as that
company was considered by them to be more feasible, and calculated
sooner to place its members in a state of permanent independence,
much of the zeal and enthusiasm necessary to the prospect of a new
society were lost to the co-operative cause.
The practise of keeping up a national debt in this country, on the
interest of which so many are enabled to live at the expense of
industrious taxpayers, and the often immoral speculations of the
Stock Exchange, have produced an absurd and injurious reaction on
the part of many honest people. Many co-operative experiments
have failed through want of capital, because the members thought it
imiporal to take interest, and yet they had not sufficient zeal to lend
their money without interest. Others have had a moral objection to
paying interest, and as money was not to be had without, of course
these virtuous people did nothing—they were too moral to be useful.
All this showed frightful ignorance of political economy. If nobody
practised thrift and self-denial in order to create capital, society must
remain in perpetual barbarism; and if capital is refused interest as
compensation for its risk, it would never be available for the use of
others. It would be simply hoarded in uselessness, instead of being
the great instrument of civilisation and national power. The class of
reformers who made these mistakes were first reclaimed to intelligent
appreciation of industrial science by Mr. Stuart Mill’s ‘ Principles of
Political Economy, with some of their applications to Social Philosophy
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
1
25
No necessity for the State to join in the coercion of progressive opinion.
Most of these ‘applications’ were new to them, and though made with
the just austerity of science, they manifested so deep a consideration
for the progress of the people, and a human element so fresh and
sincere, that prejudice was first dispelled by sympathy, and error
afterwards by argument.
The principle of co-operation—so moralising to the individual as a
discipline, and so advantageous to the state in its results—with what
difficulty has it made its way in the world 1 Regarded by the states
man as some terrible form of political combination, and by the rich as
a scheme of spoliation; denounced in parliament, written against by
political economists, preached against by the clergy; the co-operative
idea, as opposed to the competitive, has had to struggle, and has yet to
struggle its way into industry and commerce. Statesmen might spare
themselves the gratuitous anxiety they have often manifested for the
suppression of new opinion. Experience ought to have shown them
that wherever one man endeavours to set up a new idea, ten men at
once rise up to put it down; not always because they think it bad,
but because, whether good or bad, they do not want the existing
order of things altered. They will hate truth itself, even if they
know it to be truth, if truth gives them trouble. The statesman
ought to have higher taste, even if he has not higher employment,
than to join the vulgar and officious crowd in hampering or hunting
honest innovation. There is, of course, a prejudice felt at first on
the part of shopkeepers against co-operative societies. That sort of
feeling exists which we find among mechanics against the intro
duction of machinery, which, for want of better arrangements, is sure
to injure them first, however it may benefit the general public after
wards. But, owing to the good sense of the co-operators, and not
less to the good sense of the shopkeepers of Rochdale, no unfriendli
ness worth mentioning has ever existed between them. The co
operators. were humbly bent on improving their own condition, and
at first their success in that way was so trivial as not to be worth the
trouble of jealousy. For the first three or four years after the com
mencement of the Store, its operations produced no appreciable effect
upon the retail trade of the town. The receipts of the Store in 1847,
four years after its commencement, were only £36 a week; about the
receipt of a single average shop, and five or ten times less than the
receipts of some shops. But of late years, no doubt, the shopkeepers,
especially smaller ones, have felt its effects. In some instances shops
may have been closed in consequence. The members of the Store
extend out into the suburbs, a distance of one or two miles from the
town. It has happened in the case of at least one suburban shop
keeper, that half the people for a mile round nim had become Store
purchasers. This, of course, would be likely to affect his business.
The good feeling prevailing among the tradesmen of the town has
been owing somewhat to a display of unexpected good sense and
moderation on the part of the co-operators, who have kept themselves
free from the greed of mere trade and the vices of rivalry. If the
D
�26
HIST0EY OF THE
The co-operators, and their wise policy toward shopkeepers.
prices of grocery in the town rose, the Store raised its charges to the
same level. It never would, even in appearance, nor even in selfdefence, 'Use its machinery to undersell others; and when tradesmen
lowered, as instances often occurred, their prices in order to undersell
the Store, and show to the town that they could sell cheaper than any
society of weavers, and when they made a boast of doing so, and invi
ted the customers of the Store to deal with them in preference, or
taunted the dealers at the Store with the higher prices they had to
pay, the Store never at any time, neither in its days of weakness nor
of strength, would reduce any of its prices. It passed by, would not
recognise, would in no way imitate this ruinous and vexatious, but
perfectly legitimate, resource of competition. The Store conducted an
honest trade—it charged an honest average price—it sought no
rivalry, nor would it be drawn into any, although the means of
winning were quite as much in its hands as in the hands of its oppo
nents. The prudent maxims of the members were, ‘ To be safe we
must sell at a profit.’ ‘ To be honest we must sell at a profit.’ ‘ If
we sell sugar without profit, we must take advantage covertly in the
sale of some other articles to cover that loss.’ ‘ We will not act
covertly ; we will not trade without profit whatever others may do;
we will not profess to sell cheaper than others; we profess to sell
honestly ’—and this policy has conquered.
,
Some manufacturers were as much opposed to the co-operators’ Store
as the shopkeepers—not knowing exactly what to make of it. Some
were influenced by reports made to them by prejudiced persons—
some had vague notions of their men acquiring a troublesome inde
pendence. But this apprehension was of short duration, and was set at
rest by the good sense of others. One employer was advised to dis
charge some of his men for dealing at the Store, who serviceably
answered ‘He did not see why he should. So long as his men did
their duty, it was no business of his to dictate where they should deal.
They had as much right as he had to spend their money in that mar
ket where they thought it would go farthest, and if they learned
thrift he did not see what harm it would do them, and if they could
save money they had a right to do so. Indeed, he thought it was
their turn.’
The co-operators have long enjoyed the good opinion of the
majority of the manufacturers, and the higher classes of the town.
The members of the Store are so numerous, that the masters come in
contact with them at almost every turn. The co-operators work for
nearly every employer in the town, and many hold the most trusty
and responsible situations. The working class in general hold the
co-operative society in high esteem, and what is more natural, since
it aims at bettering their condition ? Indeed, the society exercises
considerable influence in the town. As its members are spread over
every part, every local or public movement is known to one or the
other, and is communicated rapidly as they meet with their fellow
members at the Store. Facts circulate—opinion is elicited—criticism
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
27
The ‘ exploded fallacy ’ becomes a ‘ paying ’ fallacy.
follows—a general conviction upon particular points springs up—and
thus many learn what is the right view to support, and support it
with more confidence from the knowledge that numbers, upon whom
they can rely, share it.
The slowness of the Rochdale movement for two or three years
may be attributed to the want of confidence in any scheme originating
among the working classes for the amelioration of their condition.
The loss, trouble, and anxiety entailed upon the leading men of the
previous co-operative societies in Rochdale, were still within the
recollection of many. These reminiscences would naturally intimidate
the cautious. There were others who were not aware that the
former societies had been wrecked by the credit system. The ‘ Equitable
Pioneers ’ had most studiously avoided that shoal. In fact, so many
co-operative experiments had been stranded by credit, that an almost
universal opinion was prevalent, not only in Rochdale, but through
out the country and in Parliament, that co-operation was an exploded
fallacy, and the poor co-operators, whose enterprise we report, were
looked upon as dangerous emissaries of some revolutionary plot, and
at the same time as fanatics deluded beyond all hope of enlightenment,
who were bent on ruining themselves, and too ignorant to com
prehend their folly or their danger. It was not until the small but
unfailing stream of profits began to meander into all out of the way
cottages and yards—it was not until the town had been repeatedly
astonished by the discovery of weavers with money in their pockets,
who had never before been known to be out of debt, that the working
class began to perceive that the ‘ exploded fallacy ’ was a paying
fallacy; and then crowds of people who had all their life been
saying and proving that nothing of the kind could happen, now
declared that they had never denied it, and that everybody knew
co-operation would succeed, and that anybody could do what the
Store did.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GREAT FLOUR MILL PANIC.
Towards the close of 1850, a new society takes its place in our
narrative—namely, the ‘ Rochdale District Corn Mill Society.’ A
similar one had long flourished in Leeds, a history of which would be
a very instructive addition to co-operative literature.
*
The Rochdale
imitation commenced its active operations about the close of 1850.
* An account appeared in the local newspapers of 1849, of the success of the Leeds
and Halifax Corn Mill Societies, which had effected a general reduction in the price of flour
in those towns, thus serving the whole public, besides supplying to their own members pure
flour cheaper than the public price, with added profits. These facts, circulated by the
newspapers, led Mr. Smithies, Mr. Greenwood, and Mr. Charles Howarth to initiate the
discussion of a corn mill movement in Rochdale, at the Equitable Pioneers’ meetings.
�23
HISTORY OF THE
Co-operative affairs take a turn for the worse.
This Corn Mill Society, meeting at the Elephant and Castle, Man
chester Road, received encouragement from the Store. It, however,
soon appeared that the mill had too little money to enable it to carry
on the corn business; it had to get its grain from such persons as
would supply it on credit. The directors being unacquainted with the
business, had, of course, to entrust it to other hands than their own,
very much to its disadvantage. Our ‘ Equitable Pioneers ’ invested,
in the shape of shares in the corn mill, from £400 to £600.
In 1851 they began to lend to the Corn Mill Society, on account of
goods to come in. Unfortunately, the goods sent in—namely, the
flour, was of an inferior quality. This was owing to two causes.
First, the corn mill, being short of capital, was obliged to buy where
it could get credit, instead of where it could get the best corn ; being
in the power of him who gave credit, they were often compelled to
accept an inferior article at a high price. Second, there was a want
of skill in the head miller—in the grinding department. The
‘Equitable Pioneer Society’ decided to sell no flour but the ‘Rochdale
Corn Mill Society’s,’ and that being inferior, of course the sale fell
*
off. This is another of those little crevices in the walls of a popular
experiment, through which the selfishness of human nature peeps
out. Of course a man who pays a dearer rate than his neighbour for
any article, taxes himself to that amount; but, in a public movement,
this is one of those liabilities which every man who would advance it
must be prepared to encounter. When the support of the purchasers
at the Store began to drop off by this refusal to take the flour, it
brought on a crisis in the co-operative society. By the end of the
third quarter of 1851, the corn mill had lost £450.f This produced
a panic in the Store, which was considered, by its investments, to be
implicated in the fall of the corn mill. It was soon rumoured that
the Store would fail, and some of the members proposed that the corn
mill business be abandoned. Others suggested that each member of
the Store should subscribe a pound to cover the loss, and clear out of
it. But as the corn mill held its meetings at the Pioneers’ Store, and its
leading members belonged to the Store, Mr. Smithies considered that
their honour was compromised if they were defeated; and insisted,
with much energy, that the name of ‘ Pioneers ’ must be given up,
unless they went on altogether. Had the mill been brought to the
hammer at this time, there would not have been realised ten shillings
in the pound. This was the point to try their faith in co-operation.
The members did not fail. Some brought all the money they could
collect together to enable the difficulties to be conquered; a few, as
usual in these cases, fell back. In the first place, amid those who
distinguished themselves to avert the disaster of failure, all agree to
* The deficiency of capital is always aggravated by miscalculation. After contracting
for the machinery of £750, the millwright sent in a hill of extras of £140—a dressing
machine at £44 was overlooked; the result was that when the mill was ready no money
existed with which to purchase grain.
t The joy with which the directors hailed the production of their first sack of flour was
turned into dismay at this result.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
29
Cheap bookkeeping. The bailiff appears.
name Abraham Greenwood, whose long and protracted devotion to
this work cost him his health, and nearly his life. How much has
depended, in the fate of the Store, on the honesty of its officers, may
be seen from the disasters of the corn mill, arising from defects of
character in some of its servants. One miller systematically went to
Manchester, instead of to Wakefield, to buy his flour. By acting in
concert with some seller, he got a commission in Manchester, and the
Store suffered for it. The first great loss of the mill was probably
occasioned in this way. The next miller had a weakness for ‘ toddy,’
and his successor was liable to faint perceptions of truth; so between
the man who would not know what he was doing, and the man who
did not know what he was doing, and the man who did not know
what he was saying, the affairs of the corn mill got somewhat
confused.
Another very usual error among the working class muddled every
thing further. Thinking it economical to accept volunteer book
keepers, they had their books kept by those who offered—who
officiated in turns—and the books were duly bungled for nothing.
The confusion was cheap but inextricable, and the perplexity of
everything grew worse confounded. The directors acted with good
sense and vigour as soon as they comprehended their position. The
defective manager for the time being was dismissed, Mr. A. Green
wood, the president of the society, acting in his place. A paid book
keeper was appointed—debts were commenced liquidation by small
instalments, when an unexpected disaster overtook them. One
morning news was brought to town that the bailiffs were in possession,
to the dismay of the struggling co-operators, and secret satisfaction of
the prophets of failure, who could not help felicitating themselves on
so portentous a sign. The landlord, of whom the Corn Mill was
rented, had neglected to pay the ground landlord his rent, and for
three years’ ground rent, amounting to £100, he had put in a distraint
upon the property of the co-operators, who were not morally re
sponsible. This enemy was in due time routed—perseverance
triumphed, and successive dividends, from fourpence to one shilling in
the pound, cleared off the loss of £450, and the day of substantial
profits at length dawned.
When the Store was first opened, one shopkeeper boasted that he
could come with a wheelbarrow and wheel the whole stock away,
which was quite true. He had the command of ten times more
capital. He threatened that he would sell cheaper, and break up the
Store. It was quite true that he could sell cheaper, but the weavers
held together, and he did not break up the Store. There were many
unfriendly traders of this way of thinking. It often happens that
men who do not exactly mean ill towards you, become your enemies
artificially. They begin by predicting that you will fail, and without
exactly wishing you should fail, are sorry when you do not. As an
abstract matter, they would perhaps be glad of your success; but
having committed themselves to a prediction, they are disgusted when
�30
HISTORY OF THE
A ran upon the Store. The stocking-foot comes into requisition.
you falsify it, and they will sometimes help to bring about your ruin
for no other reason than that of fulfilling their own prediction. In
1849, when the savings’ bank in Rochdale so disgracefully broke,
and many thousands of pounds of the hard earnings of the poor were
swept away, the poor and ruined people turned to the Store for
*
protection. Since 1849 there has been no savings’ bank in Rochdale.
Many of the weavers who, up to this time, had preferred investing
their money in the bank, had now to look out for another place in
which to deposit their savings. They felt that they had misplaced
their confidence in the savings’ bank, which was an institution without
an adequate responsible security, or in which they had no controlling
influence over the application of the money. As the Store offered
both these advantages, and a higher rate of interest, many of their
bank dividends^ found their way to the Store, and future savings
also.
They had more confidence in the ‘ Equitable Pioneers ’ than in the
pseudo government bank. The failure of the savings’ bank led to an
accession of members and capital to the Store. This growth of con
fidence brought great discredit on the prophets to whom we have been
referring. No sooner, however, did the Corn Mill panic get rumoured
about, than they recurred with sinister emphasis to their old pre
dictions, and their rumours brought about a run upon the Store. The
humble directors said nothing, but quietly placed their cashier behind
the counter with orders to pay every demand. One man, who had
twenty-four pounds in the Store, the whole of which he had made
from the profits, began with a demand for sixteen pounds. He had
some sort of sympathy for his benefactors, and thought he would
leave a little in their hands.
‘ Are you about to commence some sort of business ? ’ asked the
cashier.
‘ No,’ said the man, ‘ but I want my money.’
‘ Well, you are aware that notice is required ? ’
‘ Oh, yes, and I am come to give notice.’ He ‘ would have his
money.’
‘ Well,’ said the cashier, ‘ we avail ourselves of the notice when we
are likely to be short ; but we can dispense with notice now. You’d
better “ tak brass now.” ’
And they made the man ‘ tak brass ’ then, and much to his astonish
ment, he was obliged to carry his money away in his pocket, and he
went away, half suspecting he had been playing the fool.
Eighteen months after, this man brought his money back: he had
kept it in some stocking foot all that time (that celebrated ‘ patent
safe ’ of the poor), losing the interest. He himself then told the
cashier the story of his taking it out; in consequence of being assured
* Out of £100,403 deposits, an officer had appropriated to his own use £71,717. The amount
still due to the depositors (1857) is £38,287. Sir A. Ramsay has lately presented a petition
to the House of Commons on the subject.
t 12s. 6d. in the pound is all yet paid.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
31
The panic subsides.
that the Store would break. He now tells the story to his comrades,
far and near, and nobody has more confidence in the Store than he.
Next a woman appeared : she would have her money out then. It
was at once offered to her—then she would not have it. She de
manded her money because she had been told she could not get it;
and when she found that she could have it, she did not want it. More
sensible and quickwitted than the dullard who carried his sixteen
pounds home to his stocking foot, when she found there was no risk,
she left her money. Another instance occurred, in which a woman
generously refused to draw her money out whether it was in danger or
not. A shopkeeper said to her:—‘ You say you have £40 in the Store;
well, it will be sure to break, and you had better draw it out.’ The
woman answered:—‘ Well, if it does break, it will break with its own;
it has all been saved out of my profits—all I have it has given me.’
From the depositors the panic extended to traders; but the panic
among them did not last long. At that time, corn was bought for
the mill one week, and paid for the next. The payments, at this
time, were made at Wakefield, one week under the other. One week
the buyer-in missed the paying. The old gentleman who was, in this
case, the creditor, was told by millers about him that the Store had
broken—he might depend upon it. He took an express train to
Rochdale and a cab from the railway station, rushed down to the
Store, and demanded his money. He was quietly asked for his invoice,
and his money was at once paid him; and he was told if he knew any
others wanting money on account of goods supplied to the Corn Mill,
to be kind enough to send them in. The old gentleman went away
very much astonished; he felt that he should never have another
order; and he afterwards stated to the superintendent at the railway
station, he had ever since regretted the unfortunate journey he was
induced to make.
About this time, the bank in Rochdale, with whom our ‘ Equit
able Pioneers’ did business, did them a frank piece of service, which
they have always remembered with appreciation. Some tradesmen
being at the counter of the bank, a person remarked that he thought
the Store was running down, evidently fishing from the bankers some
confirmation of his suspicions. The answer given by one of the firm
was, that he did not see why it should, as the Board had left £2000 in
their hands for a long time, which they had never touched. This obser
vation established confidence in influential quarters; and as the
depositors who applied for their money at the Store invariably car
ried it back with them in their pockets, it soon restored confidence
among their own order. The humble directors of the Store, like all
other honest men, had more pride and pleasure in paying money than
in receiving it, and their firm and judicious conduct re-established the
credit of the ‘ Equitable Pioneers.’
Here are from one to two thousand weavers, who have done what
Sir John Dean Paul failed to do—kept an honest banking house. In
point of morality, how infinitely superior are these Rochdale Co-
�32
HISTORY OF THE
Objections to genuine food.
operators to that Lord of the Treasury who finally poisoned himself
on Hampstead Heath I Surely these men are as fit for the franchise
as Paul and Sadleir, as Hugh Innes Cameron and Humphrey Brown,
What . standard of electional fitness does the Government take,
who gives the franchise to fraudulent bankers and knavish lords of
the treasury, and withholds it from honest weavers ?
The September quarter of 1852 showed a clear balance of gain for
that quarter of £100 upon the Corn Mill. The energy of Mr.
Greenwood and his colleagues had turned upwards the fortunes of the
Corn Mill.
In the origin of their flour operations a curious circumstance
occurred. Determined to supply all things genuine, they supplied
the flour so. It might be inferior, as we have related it was, but it
was pure; but being pure, it was browner than the usual flour in the
market. It was rejected for its difference of colour. A friend of the
present writer, disgusted with the spurious coffee of London, made
arrangements to supply the common people with a genuine cup. To
this end he opened a house in Lambeth, and ground up the real
berries pure. But no one would drink his coffee, and he had to shut
up his house. Accustomed to adulterated coffee, until their taste was
formed upon depraved compounds, the people rejected the pure
beverage. So it happened to our Corn Mill. The unadulterated
flour would not sell. The customers of the Store knew neither the
colour nor taste of pure flour. Then there was a cry against the co
operators. It was said they could not compete with the usual millers;
and if they adulterated, the only way open of rendering their flour
popular, there would be another cry out against them for adultera
ting it, and being as bad as other traders. For a short time they made
their flour white in the usual way, but it was so much against their
principles to do so, that they discussed the folly of the preference
with their purchasers at the Store, and the pure flour, of whatever
colour, was taken into favour, and from that day to this it has
been sold genuine.
CHAPTER VH.
SUCCESSIVE STEPS OF SUCCESS. THE ROCHDALE STORE ON A
SATURDAY NIGHT.
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 what
ever a grocer’s shop should include.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
33
History of the wholesale department.
The drapery business was started in 1847, with an humble array of
attractions. In 1854 it was erected into a separate department.
A year earlier, 1846, the Store began to sell butchers’ meat,
buying eighty or one hundred pounds of a tradesman in the town.
After awhile, 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
.£130 of cash per week.
Shoemaking commenced in 1852. Three men and an apprentice
make, and a stock is kept on sale.
Clogging and tailoring commenced also in this year.
The wholesale department commenced in 1855, and marks an
important development of the Pioneers’ proceedings. This depart
ment has been created for supplying any member requiring large
quantities, and with a view to supply the co-operative stores of Lan
cashire 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 Store—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.
After registering the Society under the 13 and 14 Viet., chap. 115,
*
the Society turned its attention to a wholesale department, an opera
tion which would have been impossible but for the legal protection of
this Act, an Act which has called forth more expressions of gratitude to
Parliament than any Act. I ‘have ever heard commented upon by
working men. The Pioneers’ laws say (we quote three of their
rules):—
14.—The wholesale department shall be for the purpose of supply
ing those members who desire to have their goods in large quantities.
16. —The said department shall be charged with interest, after the
rate of five per cent, per annum, for such capital as may be advanced
to it by the Board of Directors.
17. —The profits arising from this department, after paying for the
cost of management and other expenses, including the interest afore
said, shall be divided quarterly into three parts, one of which shall be
reserved to meet any loss that may arise in the course of trade until
it shall equal the fixed stock required, and the remaining two thirds
shall be divided amongst the members, in proportion to the amount of
their purchases in the said department.
In 1854, a Conference was held in Leeds, to consider how the
co-operative societies of Lancashire and Yorkshire could unite their
* An act whieh is itself an answer to those who would apply the maxim of Laisser faire
(Let things alone) to politics, a maxim which, however advantageous in political economy,
cannot, observes Professor Newman, be applied to politics without blundering or disin genuousness.—Political Economy, p. 188.
E
•
�34
HISTORY OF THE
Distribution of profits, and the discussions thereon.
purchases of produce and manufactures among themselves. Mr. Lloyd
Jones lent his valuable counsel on this occasion, and at Rochdale, where
a second Conference with this object was held in August, 1855. Of course
the cardinal question was, who should find capital to carry out the idea
of a wholesale department. Some stores were willing to contribute a
proportional share, others had hardly cash to carry on their own
operations; other stores, with a prudence very old in the world, pro
posed to see how the plan was going to succeed before joining in it.
This is a cautiousness commendable in some cases, but were all to act
upon it no advance would ever be made. The Equitable Pioneers
accepted the initiative with their usual pluck. As many of the stores
had the notion in their heads that all the Rochdale Pioneers took up
• succeeded, several stores joined, and put in a little money; but the
principal capital was supplied by our enterprising friends, the
Rochdale Equitables. As the law we have quoted shows, they stipu
lated for five per cent, on their advances. Differences, though not
dissensions, arose. The Equitable Pioneers’ Society felt dissatisfaction
that stores, not contributing a fair share of capital to work the whole
sale trade, should yet receive an equal dividend of profits in propor
tion to their trade with the department. As the Equitable Pioneers
found nearly all the capital, they were by many thought entitled to
nearly all the profit. On the other hand, it was urged that the five
per cent, on their capital was all they had a right to, and they had no
claim to the profits made by the trade of other stores. The Store of
the Pioneers dealt with the wholesale department, and had, in common
with other stores, their profits upon the amount of their own trade. It
was true that many stores only bought articles that yielded little profit,
while the Rochdale Store bought so generally and largely as to create
the chief profits itself, besides risking its capital, which seemed at first
to be in danger. For in the March quarter of 1856, £495 10s. 4d.
were lost through purchasing sugars, syrups, treacle, soaps, etc., when
prices were high, which prices came down before the goods could be
sold. A committee of inquiry at a later date reported that several
stores had increased their purchases from the wholesale department of
goods, which yielded even more profit than the purchases of the
Pioneers’ Store. Mr. William Cooper, the Secretary, defended the
proceedings and position of the department, and it was ultimately
agreed that the District Stores had dealt fairly by the wholesale
department on the whole, although they had not supported it by capital
to the extent the promoters could have wished. Still many remained
dissatisfied, although they were unable to show what was wrong, and
at an adjourned quarterly meeting, so late as October, 1856, it was
‘Resolved, that the wholesale stock be dispensed with.’ Owing to the
energy of Mr. Samuel Stott and others, this resolution never took
- effect. The department being founded by an enrolled rule, it could
not be dispensed with without an alteration of the rules, and before an
alteration in the rules can take place the three-fourths of the whole
members specially convened must consent to it. The opponents of the
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
35
The wholesale department saved by an Aet of Parliament.
department despaired of getting this wide ratification of their partial dis
satisfaction, and the department continued. The loss of £495 10s. 4d.
has, by the end of the March quarter of 1857, in one year’s operation,
been reduced to £141 14s. Id. In half a year more, the loss
will be cancelled, and profits beyond the interest on capital accrue.
The stores, to their credit, continue to trade with the department,
just as though they were receiving a dividend in addition to the interest
on the capital, which they will shortly do; were they to receive no
dividend, it would be to their advantage to trade with the depart
ment. The most important officer of a store is the purchaser. He
must be acquainted with his business and the markets. No honesty,
if he has not tact and knowledge, will prevent him from damaging the
prosperity of a store by bad purchases. Small stores cannot always
find such a man, nor support him when they do. But a wholesale
department, by keeping a few such, can serve all stores, can enable
the smallest to command genuine articles equally with the greatest,
and to command them even cheaper, as well as better, as large, united,
wholesale purchases can be made more advantageously, of course,
than small ones. It is clear, however, that this admirable and welldevised department must have fallen but for the wise provision of the
Act of Parliament, upon which Mr. Stott and his colleagues fell back.
This useful law gives stability to a society, it prevents short-sighted
sections from destroying general purposes, and enables the errors of a
few to be revised and rectified by the decision of a veritable majority
of all concerned.
The members of the Store attracted from a distance, make their
purchases—some once a fortnight, and have their goods sent home;
others unite together and employ a carter to deliver them. The
desire to obviate this inconvenience, and the difficulty of serving the
great increase of members at Toad Lane (the Central Store), Branch
Stores have been lately opened. A members’ meeting can no longer beheld at the Store Rooms. 1,600 members make a public meeting, and the
business meetings of the Society are held in the public hall of the town.
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 at Pinfold.
An idea of the appearance of a Branch Store may be gathered from
the next page. On each side the door a narrow upright sign, the
height of the entrance, gives the following information:—
�36
HISTORY OF THE
External appearance of the front of a Branch Store.
EQUITABLE PIONEERS
*
CO-OPERATIVE STORES.
Enrolled
in proportion
according
to the money
to Law.
expended.
No second
Objects.
prices.
To improve the
social and
domestic
its members.
[Copied from
All purchases
the Doors of
paid for
the School Lane
condition of
on delivery.
Branch.']
Five per cent,
interest paid
on shares.
Dividends
declared
quarterly.
Remaining
profits
divided
amongst
purchasers
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
87
The Store sets up an Almanack.
The ‘owd weyvurs’ shop,’ or rather the entire building, was (in 1849),
as we have related, taken on lease by the Store, in a state sadly out of
repair. One room is now handsomely fitted up as a news-room.
Another is neatly fitted up as a library. Every part has undergone
*
neat refitting and modest decoration, and now wears the air of a
thoroughly respectable place of business.
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 forthemselves. The engine
and the machinery are of the most substantial and improved kind.
It is now spoken of as ‘ the Society’s New Mill in Weir Street, near
the Commissioners’ Rooms.’ The capital invested in the corn mill is
£8,450, of which £3,731 15s. 2d. is subscribed by the Equitable
Pioneers’ Society. The corn mill employs eleven men.
The Almanack of 1855 announced the formation of a ‘ Manufacturing
Society,’ enrolled pursuant to the 15 and 16 Vic., chap. 31. Every
Branch of the (we are entitled to say now) Great Store’s proceedings
are enrolled pursuant to some Act or other. This was their first for
mal realisation of the design announced eleven years before, of
attempting the organisation of labour. Now they avail themselves of
the Industrial and Provident Societies’ Act for carrying on in common
the trades of cotton and woollen manufacturing. The capital in this
department is £4,000, of which sum £2,042 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 1854, the Store commenced to issue an Almanack, in which
their announcements to members were made, and from which the
reader might gather the historic sympathies of the co-operators from
the memorable men and dates selected. Now a considerable portion
of dates is occupied with their Store, and Corn Mill, and other
meetings. Advertisements of the different operations of the society
are given; a little history of its origin is crowded into one corner;
the ancient objects of the society are repeated in another place; such
principles and extracts from the laws as are suitable for the information
of strangers find due place upon the same broad sheet. In 1855 they
announce their Central London Agents:—‘ The Central Co-operative
Agency, No. 356, Oxford Street.’ In 1856 they add, ‘and the
Universal Purveyor (William Islip and Co.), No. 33, Charing Cross.’
In 1853 the Store purchased, for £745, 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
* Vide Almanack, 1854.
t In 1855 the drapery stock was ordered to be insured in the Globe for £1000.
�38
HISTORY OF THE
Toad Lane on Saturday night.
the result on Saturday night. Their warehouses are everywhere as
bountifully stocked as Noah’s Ark, and crowds of 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.
At seven o’clock there are five persons serving busily at the
counter, others are weighing up goods ready for delivery. A boy is
drawing treacle. Two youths are weighing up minor articles and
refilling the shelves. There are two sides of counters in the grocer’s
shop twelve yards long. Members’ wives, children of members, as
many as the shop will hold, are being served; others are waiting at
the door, in social conversation, waiting to go in. On the opposite
side of the street, three men are serving in the drapery department, and
nine or ten customers, mostly females, are selecting articles. In the
large shop, on the same side of the street, three men are chopping and
serving in the butchers’ department, with from twelve to fifteen cus
tomers waiting. Two other officers are weighing flour, potatoes,
preparing butter, etc., for other groups of claimants. In other
premises adjoining, shoemakers, doggers, and tailors are at work, or
attending customers in their respective departments. The clerk is in
his office, attending to members’ individual accounts, or to general
business of the society. The news-room over the grocery has twenty
or more men and youths perusing the newspapers and periodicals.
Adjoining, the watch club, which has fifty-eight members, is collecting
its weekly payments, and drawing lots as to who shall have the
repeaters (manufactured by Charles Freeman, of Coventry), which the
night’s subscription will pay for. The library is open, and the
librarian has his hands full in exchanging, renewing, and delivering
books to about fifty members, among whom are sons, wives, and
daughters of members. The premises are closed at ten o’clock, when
there has been received during the day for goods £420, and the
librarian has let out two hundred books. In opposite districts of the
town, the Society has now open four Branch Stores for the convenience
of outlying members, where, on a lesser scale, the same features of
sales are being repeated.
But it is not the brilliance 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; and Toad Lane on Saturday night, while
as gay as the Lowther Arcade in London, is ten times more moral.
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. They are weaving their own stuffs, making
their own shoes, sewing their own garments, and grinding their own
�BOCHBALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
39
The agency of the pulpit and the Store. Moral effects of co-operation.
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.
*
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 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 fan
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.f
As the Store has made no debts, it has incurred no losses; and,
during thirteen years’ transactions, and receipts amounting to £303,852,
it has had no law suits.
Children are not generally sent to shops when adults can be spared
for the errand, as it is very well known children are put off with any
thing. The number of children who are sent to the Store to make
purchases, is a proof of the honourable family confidence it has
inspired. A child is not sent to the Store with a message to go to a
particular man with grey whiskers and black hair, and get him to
serve, and to be sure and ask him for the ‘ best butter.’ Everybody
has grey whiskers and black hair at the Store; the child cannot go to
the wrong man, and the best butter is given to every one, old and
young, without its being asked for, for the best of all reasons—they
keep no bad.
The meetings of the Store wore quite a family feature during the
first few years. Afterwards, when the members much increased, the
meetings assumed a more commercial character. Of course the Store
will not now hold its eighteen hundred members. They are numerous
enough to make a large public meeting; and the Public Hall, at
Rochdale, has to be engaged when a general meeting is held. The
perfect freedom of intercourse maintained, the equality of all, which
has ever been undisturbed, both in the board room and on every
occasion of intercourse, have imparted an air of independence cf
* Last year, the Society advertised for a Provision Agent to make purchases in Ireland,
and to devote his whole time to that duty.
t The Arbitrators of the Societies, during all then- years of office, have never had a case
to decide, and are discontented that nobody quarrels. The peaceableness of the Co
operators amounts to what elsewhere would be termed ‘ contempt of court.’
�40
HISTORY OF THE
Progress of the Store.
feeling and manner to the whole. Eighteen hundred workmen are
brought into weekly intercourse with each other, under circumstances
which have raised the tone of society among them all.
The Directors of this important and encouraging movement are the
same modest and unassuming men they were thirteen years ago;
shining in oil, or dusted with flour, in flannel jackets and caps, they
in no way answer the expectations of strangers in appearance, how
ever they surpass expectation in moral and commercial capacity.
The following Table shows the progress of the Store from 1844 to
1857—a period of thirteen years.
Year.
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
No. of
Mem
bers,
Amount
of
Capital.
Amount of cash Receipts per
week in
sales in Store.
December quar.
Annual.
£ s.
£ s, d.
28 0 O
28
710 6
74
181 12 5
1,146 17
252 7 1|
80
1,924 13
110
286 5 3j
2,276 6
397 0 0
140
6,611 18
1,193 19 1
390
2,299 10 5
13,179 17
600
17,638 4
2,785 0 14
630
16,352 5
3,471 0 6
680
22,760 0
5,848 3 11
720
33,364 0
7,172 15 7
900
44,902 12
11,032 12 104
1400
63,197 10
12,920 13 14
1600
79,788 ' 0
15,142 1 2
1850
Total sales in thirteen years, £303,852.
d.
Amount of
Profit.
Annual.
£ s. d.
£ s. d.
30 0 0
32 17
5
80 16
34 0 0
7
72 2
36 0 0
10
80 0 0
117 16
54
179 0 0
561 3
0
338 0 0
889 12
0
990 19
308 0 0
0
0
1,206 15
371 0 0
524 0 0
1,674 18
0
1,763 11
0
661 0 O
1,204 0 0
3,106 8
0
3,921 13
1,353 0 0
0
1,491 0 0
5,470 6
0
Total profits, £19,888 16s. ll£d.
The Capitals of Three Departments.
6
34
10
104
9
5
84
24
114
24
44
14
84
1856-7.
Store.
Com MUI.
Manufactures.
Total of
Capitals.
1856— £12,920
1857— 15,142
£8,450
8,450
£4,000
5,500
£25,370
29,092
Weekly Receipts of the same, 1856-7.
1856— £1,353
1857— 1,491
£850
1,184
£360
300
Total Annual
Returns.
£133,276
153,088
These Returns will be much higher for 1858, as the Balance Sheet
for the first quarter shows an increase of more than £10,000 for the
year, for the Store alone.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
41
Two classes exist in all societies who are never to be viewed separately.
CHAPTER VHI.
ANECDOTES OE THE MEMBERS.
THE WORKING CLASS STAND BY THE
STORE, AND THEY ‘ KNOW THE REASON WHY.’
It is as instructive as it is gratifying to notice the kind of replies fre
quently made by persons who have been served by the Store. One
woman who had about £50 in the Store to her credit, was told the ‘ Store
would break,’ by persons who wished it would do so. She answered,
‘ Well, let it break; I have only paid one shilling in, andlhavefifty pounds
in it. It ’ll break with its own if it do break.’ These anecdotes
are very common. Many poor people, whose confidence was sought to
be tampered with, have answered alarmists, who have tried to
shake their trust—‘Well, if it do smash it may smash, with all
it has of mine, for it has paid me out more than ever I paid
in,’ These answers not only show good sense, but gratitude and
generosity of sentiment. In all service of the people there will be
ingratitude displayed. Every man finds it so, sometimes among his private
and chosen friends; no doubt, it will be so with the public, whom you
serve at random. In publicism, in all human relations, a man who
will not be cast down needlessly must learn to look on both sides. He
will in every crowd find many whom he cannot respect, and who do not
deserve respect; and numbers of poor, yet devoted, trusting, toiling,
manly, impassable, grateful men and women, whom you might
worship in the fulness of the sentiment of admiration with which
they inspire you.
‘ Another fact ought not to escape notice, which none but those
having considerable experience are aware of—viz., it is seldom that
the people whom you expect to help forward a movement do it.
Exactly those on whom you most rely—commonly those whom you
select for appeal—deceive you, or fail to help when you expect, and
when the crisis requires it.
The effects of the Store in improving the finances of its
members was seen in the instance of one known as Dick, who has
lived in a cellar thirty years, and was never out of debt. He
one morning astonished his milkman by asking him to change him
a £5 note. The sly dog never had one before, and he felt a
pardonable pride in displaying his first possession. Dick has now
twenty pounds of ‘ brass ’ in Store. And most of those who have the
largest balances standing to their credit, are persons who have never
paid, many shillings in. The whole is the accumulation of their
profits.
The following cases, designated by the numbers belonging to the
particular member, were taken by the present writer from the books
of the Store in 1853, and communicated to the Leader newspaper
�42
HISTORY OF THE
Examples of the advantages derived by members of the Store.
‘No. 12 joined the Society in 1844. He had never been out of a shop
keeper’s books for forty years. He spent at the shop from twenty shillings
to thirty shillings per week, and has been indebted as much as £30 at
a time. Since he has joined the Pioneers’ Society he has paid in con
tributions £2 18s.; he has drawn from the Society as profits £17 10s. 7d.;
and he has still left in the funds of the Society £5. Thus he has
had better food and gained £20. Had such a society been open to him
in the early part of his life, he would now be worth a considerable,
sum.
‘No. 22 joined the Society at its commencement. He was never
out of a shopkeeper’s debt for twenty-five years. His average expen
diture with the shopkeeper was about ten shillings per week, and was
indebted to him forty shillings or fifty shillings generally. He has
paid into the Society £2 10s.; he has drawn from the Society £6 17s. 5d.;
he has still left in the funds of the Society £8 Os. 3d. He thinks
the credit system made him careless about saving anything, and pre
vented his family from being as economical as they would have been
had they been compelled to pay ready money for their commodities.
In this he agrees with No. 12. Since he (No. 22) has joined the
Society, he has enjoyed other advantages, having a place accessible,
where he can resort to, instead of going to the public-house or
beer-shop for information and conversation.
‘ No. 114 joined the Society in 1848. Paid in fifteen shillings, has
drawn out £11 14s. 1 Id., has still in the funds of the Society £7 2s. lid.
Gained in two years £18.
•
‘ No. 131 joined the Society at its commencement in 1844. He says
he was never out of debt with a shopkeeper for fourteen years. He
spent on an average about nine shillings per week with the shopkeeper,
and generally owed him from twenty to thirty shillings. He has paid into
the Stere as contributions at different times £1 18s. 4d.; and has
drawn from it £1 12s. Id.; and has still in the funds of the Society
£3 Is. lOd. He thinks the credit system one reason why he was always
poor, and that since he joined the Society his domestic comfort has
been greatly increased; and had he not belonged to the Society in
1847, he would have been obliged to apply to the parish officers for
relief.
‘ Thus the members derive all the advantage of a sick as well as a
benefit society. It is thus that the Society give to its members the
money which they save.’*
A mother, who had always sent her child to the neighbouring slfbp,
at length began to send her child to the Store, which was more than
a mile away from her house. The child asked the mother why she
should be sent so far away for things instead of going into the shop
next door. The mother explained to the child that the profits made
at the Store would come to them. The child understood the lesson,
and would come down in a morning to fetch the food for breakfast,
* These instances were quoted by Chambers's Journal at the time of their appearance. -
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
43
Four cows and a half killed weekly.
and the family at home would wait till she returned; and, as Sir
James Graham would express it, both mother and child knew the
reason why. A butcher’s wife expressed her new experience thus :—
‘ Instead of having to take her “ strap ” book with her, she now had
money in her pocket and money in the Store.’ One member has .£50
in the Store, all of which he has made by profits, he having drawn
out for his own use all that he ever paid in. In one case a woman
withdrew £5. from her savings in the Store, not so much because she
had special occasion for the money, as for the pleasure of having £5
in her possession. She had traded at shops for nearly half a century,
and she declared it was the first time she had ever had £5 of her own
in her hands in her life.
A husband who dealt at the Store, and had accumulated money in
it, had a wife who did not believe in co-operation, and was easily
persuaded that the Store was unsafe, and she took the opportunity of
drawing his savings from the Store and placed them, for more
safety, in the savings’ bank. Before long the savings’ bank broke.
The poor woman’s faith was made whole by the mishap. She gathered
up the tardy dividends of the bank and replaced the residue in the
Store, where since they have remained.
George Morton, an old man above sixty, says that had there been
no Store, he does not know how he must have lived without going to
the poor-house. The profits he has received from the Store on goods
purchased has nearly kept him in food for the last eleven years—that
is, from 1845 to 1856. He has, during that time, received in dividends
£77 3s. 6d., and has remaining in the Society £11. He has never
paid into the Society more than £5 16s. 7|d. altogether.
Of the confidence in the dealings of the Store, Mrs. Mills, a widow,
gives this testimony. She came to the Store for a steak, but as the
Store butchers had none, and she wantedit for a sick person, she went
into the public market and bought a pound and a half. On reaching
home she weighed her purchase, and found that the pound weighed
fourteen ounces, and the half-pound only seven ounces. She now
says that when there is no steak at the Store, ‘ they lump itmeaning
that they make shift until the Store is replenished. This anecdote,
which is perfectly genuine, gives no bad idea of a Rochdale sickness,
to which a pound and a half of steak seem congenial. The vege
tarians might take a turn there.
Speaking of beef—the other day I was standing at the upper
window of the Store, when the Store butchers, who had just come
from the Society’s abbatoirs, drove up with an immense waggon full
of ‘ prime joints.’ Upon looking over the chief butcher’s bill, I found
he reported himself as having ‘ killed four cows and a half,’ which led me
to inquire by what co-operative process he was enabled to kill half a cow
at a time. The explanation was this. Some butcher in the town
wanted half a cow for that day’s market, the Store wanted four cows
and a half only, so the fifth cow was divided and both parties served,
which the butcher called ‘ killing half a cow.’
�44
HISTORY OF THE
The beneficial influence of the Store upon marriages.
‘ The Tillycoultry Co-operative Society ’ admits no member who
is immoral in his conduct. A female householder is admitted a mem
ber, but is refused a vote. The Baking Company of the same place
has a similar ungallant and uncivil rule.
*
The Rochdale Store renders incidental but valuable aid towards
realising the civil independence of women. Women may be members
of this Store, and vote in its proceedings. Single and married women
join. Many married women become members because their husbands
will not take the trouble, and others join it in self-defence, to prevent
the husband from spending their money in drink. The husband
cannot withdraw the savings at the Store standing in the wife’s name
unless she signs the order. Of course, as the law still stands, the
husband could by legal process get possession of the money. But a
process takes time, and the husband gets sober and thinks better of it
before the law can move.
Many single women have accumulated property in the Store, which
thus becomes a certificate of their conjugal worth. And young men,
in want of prudent companions, consider that to consult the books of
the Store would be the best means of directing their selection. The
habits of honourable thrift acquired by young men, members of this
Store, renders it unlikely that they would select industrious girls in
marriage for the purpose of living in idleness upon their earnings or
savings, as happens elsewhere.f
What quality is it that makes a poor woman pay her way ? Ladies
do not always do it; many bankruptcies in London are occasioned by
their neglect; the poor woman who has been born with that faculty,
or who has acquired it, is a treasure and a triumph of good sense and
social cultivation. The difficulty of bringing about this result many
working class husbands can tell. The art of living within your
income is a gift. The woman who has it, will do it with £1 a week;
she who has it not, will be poor with £20. Peter Noakes, tired of
finding himself always in debt, wants to get his wife one week in
advance with the world. He wants to stand clear on the shopkeepers
*
books. He knows that the small tradesman cannot pay his way un
less his customers pay theirs. He therefore saves, by carefulness and
secret thrift, a little money, and one week delights his wife by giving
her double wages, that she may pay in advance for her things. What
is the result? Next week he finds her running into debt as usual.
He complains, and then she tells him the everlasting story of a
thousand working class homes, ‘What could she do? Mr. Last’s
bill for Tommy’s boots had never been paid, the account for Billy’s
jacket had stood over till she was ashamed of it, little Jane’s shoes
were out at the toes, and poor Polly, she was the disgrace of the
* Vide rules 1845-6 of the above societies.
t Vide letter of S. H. Musgrave, read by Sir Erskine Perry at the public meeting to con
sider the laws relating to the property of married women, held at 21, Regent Street, Lon
don, 31st May, 1856.—Law Amendment Journal, No. 14, p. 94.
�BOCHPALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
45
Peter Noakes and family.
family for want of a new frock, and as for Mrs. Noakes herself, her
own bonnet was not fit to be seen, she would rather stop in the house
for ever than go out in that old fashioned thing any longer.’ Poor
Peter is overwhelmed—he had never thought of these things. In
fact, Mrs. Noakes tells him, ‘he never does think of anything. He
gets up and goes to work, and comes home and goes to bed, and never
thinks of anything in the house.’ What can Peter do ? He does the
only thing he ought—he allows that his wife ought to know best,
confesses that he is very stupid, kisses her in confirmation of his re
pentance, and promises to save her another week’s wages, and she
shall try what can be done the next time. In the course of a few
weeks, Peter, by over-work and. going without customary half-pints
of beer, saves up another week’s wages, when, alas! he finds that the
shoemaker has sent in another bill, and the tailor another account—
that Master Tommy’s trousers have grown too short for him, young
Billy’s jacket is out at the elbows, Jane’s shoes let in water, Miss
Polly (bless her sweet soul!) is still the disgrace of the family, and
Mrs. Noakes, although Peter thought she never looked so young nor
so pretty as she did last Sunday, declares her bonnet ‘perfectly hate
ful ; indeed, there is not such another fright as herself in the whole
neighbourhood, and if Peter was like anybody else, he would be
ashamed to see his wife go out in such a condition.’ And the little
book still goes to the shop, Peter eats cheese tough as gutta percha,
she buys tea that has been used to boiling before it was sold to her,
the coffee tastes grievously of burnt corn, Tommy’s boots are a long
time being mended, Mrs. Noakes never has sixpence to bless herself
with, her money is all condemned before it comes in; Peter, degraded
and despairing, thinks he may as well drink a pint as a half-pint—•
things can’t be worse at home. He soon ceases to take interest in
public affairs. How can he consistently help the public who can
not help himself? How can he talk of independence, who is the
slave of the shoemaker and the tailor ? How can he subscribe to a
political or social society, who cannot look his grocer in the face ?
Thus he is doubly destroyed. He is good neither for home nor
parish. So ends many domestic experiments for paying in advance.
When children are sick, or the husband is out of work, a wife will
submit to any amount of privation. If she would submit to half
as much from pride of independence as she will from affection,
thousands of families, now always poor, would be in possession of
moderate competence. But to starve your household when you can
help it, to prevent them being starved one day when you cannot help
it, implies good sense, strength of will, and courageous foresight,
which many women certainly display, but which is yet so rare a
quality that one cannot but marvel and applaud the Rochdale Co
operators, who have taught so many families the art of getting out of
debt, and inspired them with the pride of keeping out.
Let the enemies of co-operation ponder on this fact, and learn wis
dom ; let the friends of co-operation ponder on this fact and take
�46
HISTORY OF THE
The partition of profits.
courage ; the fact that the members in a short period learn provident
habits by connection with these societies—habits which, in some cases,
forty years of competition have failed to teach.
CHAPTER IX.
BULES AND AIMS OF THE SOCIETY.
The founders of the society were opposed to capital absorbing all
urofit arising from trade, and to hit upon a plan that should give
proportionally the gain to the persons who make it, was a problem
they had to solve. After meeting several times for the purpose of
agreeing to laws, Mr. Charles Howarth proposed the plan of dividing
profits on purchase—that is, after paying expenses of management,
interest on capital invested, at a rate per cent., the remaining profits
to be divided quarterly among the members in proportion to their
purchases or dealings with the society. This plan continues the feature
of the Rochdale Store.
The division of profits is made quarterly from the net proceeds of
all retail sales in every department, after paying:—
1. —Expenses of management.
2.—Interest on loans.
3. —Reduction in value of fixed stock.
4. —Dividends on subscribed capital.
5. —Increase of capital for the extension of business.
6. —Two and a half per cent, (of the remainder after the above are
provided for) applied to educational purposes.
The residue thus accruing is divided among the members of the
Store in proportion to the amount of their respective purchases during
the quarter.
The Pioneers prudently established early in their career a ‘ Re
demption Fund,’ which consists of the accumulation of entrance fees
of one shilling from each member. The last two pounds drawn from
the society by a retiring member are liable to a forfeit of one shilling
each pound. The trade of non-members of the society affords some
profit. These sums go to the Redemption Fund, which is a reserve to
meet the depreciation of the fixed stock. In all financial reports of
the Society a broad allowance is always made for depreciation of
stock, and the fixed capital at stock-taking is always estimated be
low its real value, so that if the Society broke up, it is calculated that
every subscriber of £1 invested in the Society would receive twentyfive shillings as his dividend.
A new member must now hold five £1 shares in the capital. He
pays one shilling deposit on these on entrance, and threepence a week
afterwards, or three and threepence a quarter, until the £5 are paid
up; but these payments are assisted by all the profits he makes by
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
47
Assistance of members in distress.
dealing at the Store, and any interest, which is fixed at 5 per cent.,
accruing to him as successive pounds are made up. All profits and
interest are not paid to the member, but carried to the credit of his
shares, until the £5 are paid.
The board of directors may suspend any member whose conduct is
considered to be injurious to the Society, and a general meeting may
expel him, after which he has great difficulty in obtaining re-admission,
if he desires it.
The Store supplied the capital for opening the Wholesale depart
ment, for which it charges that department 5 per cent, interest. The
profits, after paying cost of management and interest on capital, are
divided quarterly into three parts, one part as a reserve against
losses, the remaining two parts among the purchasers, in proportion
to the amount of their respective transactions.
Any Co-operative Society can buy to any extent through one of its
members, who, however, must become a member of the ‘ Equitable
Pioneers’ Society.’
A member, being in distress, may withdraw any sum he may have
in the funds of the Society above £2, at the discretion of the Board of
Directors. In the great distress period of 1849, many applications
were made to be allowed to draw all out except £1. Though it is
rarely that any Director puts a question as to the personal affairs of
an applicant, yet narratives were volunteered of so painful and remark
able a character, that the Directors learned to esteem that co-operation
which had placed in their hands a wholesome power of relief. To
this day these Directors recur to the experience of that year when
defending the Society. Members may withdraw any sum above £5
according to the following scale of notice:—
£2
10s. at once on application to the Board.
2
10
to
5 at
2 weeks’ notice.
5
0
„
10 —
3
10
0
„
20 —
4
20
0
„
30 —
5
30
0
„
40 —
6
40
0
„
50 —
7
50
0
„
60 —
8
60
0
„
70 —
9
70
0
„
80 — 10
80
0
„
90 — 11
90
0
„
100 — 12
No member can hold more than £100 of shares in the society
*
except by way of annuity, nor, under any circumstances, shall his
interest in the funds exceed £30. The Directors can obtain loans,
but not exceeding four times the amount of the paid up subscriptions
of the members for the time being.
* A recent Act of Parliament has increased this amount to £200.
�48
HISTORY OF THE
The liability of the Store to income tax settled.
All disputes are settled—
1. —By the Directors, or
2.—By appeal at a general meeting.
3. —By arbitration.
Complaints and suggestions relative to the qualities or prices of
goods, or conduct of servants or the Society, are required to be made
in writing to the Directors, who record their decision thereupon; if
this be not satisfactory, the question is referred to a special general
meeting, whose decision is final.
The question of liability to income tax occupied the attention of
the Store for several years. Its apparently final solution may be use
ful information to other Stores. In August, 1850, the Board applied
to editors of newspapers, who are the popular lawyers of the poor, to
learn whether Co-operative Societies were liable when the individual
members have not the requisite amount of income. Answers so
obtained could not have the force of law, but they had the quality of
direction. The Society paid Income Tax regularly, but as the separate
income of each member was far below the amount at which the
government commences its assessment, the Society appealed against it.
Still the local Commissioners forced its payment. They were told,
indeed, that each member might demand a form of Exemption, and
claim the amount of his assessment back again. But this, on the part
of a thousand members, involved too much trouble, as the Exemption
claims must have been filled up for them in most cases. One year the
members went to the Appeal office in a body, but the Commissioners
refused to admit them, and required one representative to be appointed.
It ended in the old order to pay being enforced. Opinions of Members
of .Parliament were obtained, who said the Society was liable, and the
opinions of lawyers, who said they were not liable. As their num
bers and importance increased, their confidence grew, and, in 1856,
they resolved to make a stand against the exaction, and, if need be,
carry it to trial. An adjourned meeting of the Board, held in
October, appointed Messrs. Smithies and EUis ‘ to appeal against the
Income Tax.’ These officers, who were trustees of the Society, pre
sented themselves on Appeal day, and argued that the Society was
exempt, being enrolled under the Industrial and Provident Societies’
Act, which forbid any member receiving more than £30 annually in
any or all forms from the Society. The case was adjourned to another
day, when it was to be heard first. The day came, but Messrs.
Smithies and Ellis were edified by the opportunity ’ of hearing
numerous cases disposed of without their case being called on. They
were told to come the following day. On the ‘ following day ’ they
were told they should receive notice when required to appear, as the
Commissioners were in correspondence with London. Messrs. Smithies
and Ellis had the happiness never to be sent for. However, the In
come Tax Collector could not refrain from making his accustomed
demand, and insisted that it must be paid, giving the Society the
gratifying assurance that, if illegal, they could get it back again. The
�49
ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
Example of an English resolution passed by the Pioneers.
Society, however, were not to be gratified in this way. They thought
it audacity on the part of the collector to make the demand, so long
as the case was undecided, and an attempt to use his legal position to
intimidate uneducated men. Mr. William Cooper reported the case to
the Pioneers’ Board, who put on their minutes, December 4th, 1856, this
very English resolution :—‘ Resolved, that we do not pay the Income
Tax until we are made.’ The next Saturday, the collector again
called and demanded the money. He was told the decision of the
Board. He replied, in professional terms, that ‘ he wanted no un
pleasantness, but the Society had no alternative but to pay, and that,
if his demand was not paid in a few days, he should seize the goods of
the Store.’ On the Board being informed of that, they resolved, Dec.
18th, 1856, ‘ That the Income Tax Collector take his own course.’ He
has not taken his course to this day, nor have the Commissioners made
any sign of having a course to take.
One most honourable feature of the Society, which proves the earnest
desire of the members for self-improvement, is the reservation of a
portion of their funds for educational purposes. The 2| per cent, of
their quarterly profits assigned for division among the members,
together with the fines accruing from the infraction of rules, con
stitute a separate and distinct fund, called the ‘ Educational Fund,’ for
the intellectual improvement of the members of the Store, the main
tenance and extension of the Library, and such other means of
*
instruction as may be considered desirable.
GENERAL FINANCIAL ACCOUNT OF THE EDUCATIONAL FUND.
Receipts.
£ s. d.
Donations -' - 12 6
2| per cent, from Edu
cational Fund - 424 18 11|
Catalogues and Fines 17 19 11
Sale of Newspapers- 2 14 3
Sundry receipts - - 3 7 9
£450 3
4|
Disbursements.
£
Paid for Books - - 308
Bookbinding - 20
55
Book Case- - 25
55
Wages - - - 28
55
Catalogues, etc. 6
55
Newspapers - fl7
55
Sundry Dis55
bursements - - 2
Cash on hand - - 41
£450
s.
11
12
9
5
0
5
d.
9
3|
11
8
9
8
8
41
6
2|
3 41
Their News-room is as well supplied as that of a London club,
and the Library contains 2,200 volumes of the best, and among
them, many of the most expensive books published. The Library is
* A minute of Sept. 20th, 1853, orders a motion tQ be made at the quarterly meeting, for
awarding £40 to the Library.
f 1 he News-room has become chargeable on the Education Fund only within the last
six months. The quarterly meeting passed a resolution that the News-room should be free
to members, and supported from the Education Fund.
�50
HISTORY OF THE
Co-operative colonizers wanted.
free. In their News-room, conveniently and well fitted up, a member
may read, if he has the time, twelve hours a day, also 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 and other instruction on
Sundays and Tuesdays.
Any readers of these pages, who may contemplate forming Stores
in their own neighbourhood, will, on application to the Secretary of
the Equitable Pioneers’ Society, Toad Lane, Rochdale, obtain the
laws at present in force, and other printed documents from which
executive details may be learned, not necessary to be included in
this history; but a personal visit to the Store ought to be made by
all who would initiate similar establishments. Many Members of
Parliament, political economists, and some distinguished publicists,
have made journeys of late years to the Rochdale Store. The officers
receive with courtesy, and give information with enthusiasm to, all
inquirers. Indeed, they are often found travelling thirty miles from
their homes to give evening explanations to some workmen’s meeting
desirous of information in practical co-operation, and of forming societies
themselves. It will greatly promote the extension of Co-operative
Societies if the Rochdale Pioneers will train officers who may be
transplanted to the towns commencing' Stores, to organise and con
duct them. This co-operative colonisation will save both waste and
failure in many places.
Though an element of self-sacrifice for the good of others—a feeling
that justice rather than selfishness should pervade industrial inter
course, if it is to be healthy—animates these co-operators, they are
neither dreamers nor sentimentalists. This may best be shown by a
quotation from a letter by one of their leaders, to whom we elsewhere
refer—Mr. Smithies. ‘The improved condition of our members is
apparent in their dress, bearing, and freedom of speech. You would
scarcely believe the alteration made in them by their being connected
with a co-operative society. Many well-wishers to the cause think
that we rely too much upon making ourselves capitalists; but my
experience among the working classes for the last sixteen years has
brought me to the conclusion, that to make them act in union for
any given object, they must be bound together by chains of gold, and
those of their own forging.’
In 1855, a co-operative conference was held at Rochdale. A Com
mittee was appointed to carry out certain resolutions agreed to.
Abraham Greenwood, President, James Smithies, Secretary, published
a declaration of the principles on which the proceedings of the said
Committee would be regulated. We shall quote them to the credit of
co-operation. They were these :—
I.
That human society is a body consisting of many members,
the real interests of which are identical.
II. That true workmen should be fellow-workers.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
51
The moral principles of Co-operation.
HI. That a principle of justice, not of selfishness, must govern our
exchanges.
We think these three sentences honourably illustrate how much
higher is the morality of co-operation than that of competition.
When did any commercial firm ever issue, and, what is more, act up
to, a manifesto like this ?
The co-operative conference of 1855, held in Rochdale, was called
by the Equitable Pioneers ; the delegate from London was Mr. Lloyd
*
Jones, who has as continually aided, as he has serviceably defended,
these associations.
On this occasion, the Rochdale Society, in
addition to the manifesto of its own principles and public aims, which
entitled it to distinction above all other societies, took the opportunity
of paying a just tribute to the labours of others, to which they had
themselves been indebted, as well as the public
‘ They were convinced that the Society for Promoting Working
Men’s Associations had, during the period of its active existence, con
ferred great benefits on the Co-operative cause, by gathering all sorts
of valuable information, and spreading it throughout the country
amongst the various Co-operative bodies; by urging on the attention
of Parliament, through members favourable to the cause, the legal
hindrances to the movement; and by helping to procure such alter
ations of the laws relating to Friendly Societies as to give freer action
and greater security to the men who have embarked in the Co
operative undertaking. Not only have they done these things, but
they have likewise drawn up model laws suitable for either distribu
tive or productive associations, so as to facilitate the safe enrolment of
all Co-operative bodies, and to secure the highest degree of legal
accuracy with the smallest possible cost; in addition to which, they
have at all times given legal advice freely to such of the Societies as
stood in need of it—a matter, it must be acknowledged, of great value
to bodies of working men. There was one object, however, which the
gentlemen belonging to this Society did not accomplish, although
they aimed to do so with much perseverance and great patience, and
that was to beget amongst those engaged in the movement a recog
nition of the duties that spring from the principle upon which these
Societies are founded, a recognition without which co-operation can
never acquire unity and force sufficient to carry it triumphantly over
the obstacles which competition, united with ignorance and selfishness,
oppose to its progress.
‘ The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers feel deeply the value of the
services rendered to Co-operation by the Council of the Society for
* Mr. Lloyd Jones, being the manager of the Manchester branch of the Co-operative
Central Agency of London, and subsequent traveller for that firm, has frequently visited
the working and co-operative societies of the North of England, and addressed the mem
bers at their anniversary meetings. On these occasions, and at the several co-operative
conferences held in London, Manchester, Rochdale, Leeds, and Bury, he has exercised an im
portant influence in the development of the co-operative idea. The ‘ wholesale depart
ment ’ of the Rochdale Store, so important a step in organisation, was carried out under his
advice.
�52
HISTOR
OF THE
Acknowledgments to the Society for promoting Working Men’s Associations.
Promoting Working Men’s Associations; and, as the fullest and most
acceptable acknowledgment, they considered that the best thing they
could do would be to attempt to continue the work which the Society
for Promoting Working Men’s Associations had begun, and perfect,
if possible, the design which they unfortunately failed to complete.’
Never was testimony more nobly deserved than this thus borne to
the services rendered to working men by the gentlemen known in
London as ‘ Christian Socialists.’ Professor Maurice, Mr. Vansittart
Neale, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, Mr. Fur nival, Mr. Ludlow, and
others, guided by their wisdom and sustained by their wealth, efforts
for ‘ Promoting Working Men’s Associations,’ for which the people will
be more grateful as they acquire more knowledge to appreciate their
sympathy, their generosity, their patient and costly services. The
Working Men’s College of London is the crowning tribute of their
catholic love of the people.
The Rochdale Store has done business for several years with ‘ The
Universal Purveyor,’ instituted by J. L. St. Andre, author of the
*
‘Prospects of Co-operative Associations in England,’ a volume re
markable for comprehensive views of industrial organisation. In the
words of one whose approval is praise, ‘ M. St. Andre, whatever may
be his enthusiasm, or his over-estimate of what can be done with men
as they are, appears to have the merit of a sincere desire to draw
associations together in a spirit of unselfish co-operation, and at the
same time to place them in a healthy connection with the external world.'^
We record, and rightly, the names of inventors and discoverers—
we record the names of those who signalise themselves on the field of
battle—it is no less useful to record the names of those who have dis
covered, or perfected, or, at least, improved the art of self-help among
the people, and conquered in the field of industry, providence, and
good sense, where so many fail and perish. Every name represents
the continuity of small duties well fulfilled—a quality more valuable
to society than the emulation of sublime virtues. Every member of
this Store has been a co-worker equally with the officers, but we can
only enumerate those who have taken the lead in the greatest
and most successful experiment ever conducted by the people.
Their perseverance must give a new idea of the capacity of the
working class.
The first general meeting of the founders of the Store was held in
the Social Institution, Rochdale, on Sunday, August 11th, 1844. The
first resolutions upon their minutes are as follows:—
Resolved, 1st—That the following persons be appointed to conduct
the business of the Society now established—Mr. John Holt,
Treasurer, Mr. James Daly, Secretary, Mr. Miles Ashworth, Presi* And sustained by the Rev. Charles Marriott, Fellow of Oriel, one of those great
Churchmen who commend the priestly character by uniting a clear faith to works of wide
human interest.
f ‘ The Co-operative Principle not opposed to a True Political Economy,’ by the Rev.
Charles Marriott, B.D., Fellow of Oriel—pp. 35-6.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
53
The Founders and Directors of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers’ Society.
dent, Messrs. Charles Howarth, George Ashworth, and William
Mallalieu, be appointed Trustees.
2nd. That Messrs. James Tweedale, James Smithies, James Holt,
James Bamford, and William Taylor be appointed Directors.
3rd. That John Bent and Joseph Smith be appointed Auditors.
(Signed)
Miles Ashworth, Chairman.
ARBITRATORS OF 1844.
Mr. James Wilkinson, shoemaker, High Street; Mr. Charles
Barnish, weaver, Spotland; Mr. George Healey, hatter, Suddenbrow; Mr. John Garside, cabinet maker, High Street; Mr. John
Lord, Weaver, Cronkey Shaw.
The present arbitrators (1858) are—* homas Livsey, Esq., Aider
T
man, Rochdale, late Chief Constable; f John Garside, cabinet
maker; Rev. James Wilkinson, Unitarian Minister; John Lord,
publican; Samuel Tweedale, foreman.
First among the arbitrators of the Co-operative Manufacturing
Society, and of the Corn Mill Society, of which we have yet to speak,
stands the name universally esteemed among the working classes of
Lancashire, of Jacob Bright, Esq., Mayor of Rochdale.
officers’ names from official publications of the store, etc.
John Holt (Treasurer), Benjamin Rudman, James Standring—
names appended to the Laws of 1844.
John Cockcroft, Henry Green, John Kershaw—names attached to
the Laws of 1848.
William Cooper and Abraham Greenwood—from Laws of 1855.
George Adcroft (President), James Hill, Robert Taylor, John
Whitehead, Robert Hoyle, Thomas Hollows, James Joyce Hill,
George Morton, James Mittall, John Clegg—names attached to Corn
Mill Rules.
Abraham Hill, Treasurer; John Tweedale, Robert Woolfenden,
Trustees; Robert Law, Thomas Hill, James Whittaker, Directors;
Samuel Ashworth, Superintendent. Store officers from the Almanack
of 1854.
Samuel Fielding, David Hill, John Hollows, Trustees; Peter
McKenzie, Robert Whitehead, William Ellis, Adam Grindrod,
Directors. Store officers from the Almanack of 1855.
James Manock, Trustees; John Smith, Secretary; Thomas Clegg,
Isaac . Tweedale, John Worsnip, Directors; Emeryk Roberski,t
Superintendent. Store officers from Almanack of 1856.
Edward Farrand, Clerk. Corn Mill advertisement. Vide Alma
nack, 1856.
* The most radical and popular chief constable of the day.
t Known among old Social reformers as ‘ Father Garside.’
t An intelligent young Polish exile, exiled through the Hungarian struggle, to whom
employment was given in the Store, and who rose to be superintendent. He has lately
emigrated to Australia.
*
�64
HISTORY OF THE
Words that fall on stony ground.
William Whitehead, Secretary. Vide Manufacturers’ advertise
*
ment, 1856.
John Aspden, Librarian; William Holt, Samuel Newton, Robert
Clegg, Samuel Clegg, Robert Howarth, Thomas Halliwell, Com
mittee of Library. Vide Almanack, 1856.
John T. W. Mitchell, Secretary; John Kenworthy, Trustee;
Jonathan Crabtree, Thomas Fielding, Thomas Cheetham, Samuel
Stott, Directors. Store officers from the Almanack of 1857.
James Clegg, George Watson, Matthew Ormerod, William Briggs,
William Hoyle, Abraham Howard, Edmund Kelly, Thomas Whittaker.
Library Committee from Almanack of 1857.
These names are given here in the order of time in which they
appear in the public documents cited, and with the office annexed the
person happened to hold in the list quoted. Each name is given but
once, though most of them occur again and again, some in connection
with every office. For instance, Mr. James Smithies, to whom the
members, some time ago, presented a valuable watch and chain, in
testimony of their regard, has held offices during twelve years. Mr.
Abraham Greenwood, who has been specially mentioned in connection
with the Corn Mill, has been an officer nine years. Mr. William
Cooper has been an officer in the Store from the commencement. To
the last-named persons I have been mainly indebted, and especially
to Mr, W. Cooper, the present Secretary, for the sources of the leading
facts of these pages.
CHAPTER X.
THE
OLD CO-OPERATORS---- WHY THEY FAILED.
THE NEW
CO
OPERATORS---- WHY THEY SUCCEED.
‘ That were a noble achievement which should originate a system of
more wages and less work, that the labour of the handicraftsman might
be lighter on his hands, and his earthly blessings and little comforts
be increased; and that were a still more worthy achievement which
should teach him to fill his intervals of time with the study of phi
losophy, and the pursuit of literature and science.’ Thus wrote
Dr. Chalmers.
‘ This that they call organisation of labour, is, if well understood,
the problem of the whole future, for all who would in future govern
man.’ Thus wrote Thomas Carlyle.
‘ It appears from actual experiment, that a thousand subscribers of
from one penny upwards will yield a weekly revenue of £5. In
Great Britain there are 6,000,000 adult males. Take of these, in
cluding such females as choose to subscribe. 4,000,000; these will yield
�BOCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEEBS.
55
Numbers, Union, and Knowledge, the conditions of Power.
£20,000 weekly, or £1,040,000 a-year.' Now, £1,040,000 a-year, with
compound interest, would amount,
£
s. d.
In 10 years, to
- 18,232,413 14 11
In 20 years, to
• 65,522,599 8 3
In 30 years, to
■ 188,181,161 18 8
In 40 years, to
■ 506,325,883 12 8
In 50 years, to
1331,511,365 15 1
In 60 years, to
3471,129,995 18 4
Now this sum would buy all the property of the kingdom. Do noc
suppose for a moment that 4,000,000 of working men will soon be
found steadily subscribing their penny or twopence a-week for this
object; but these figures show what a fund there lies in the smallest
co-operation of the millions, and which the devotion of the sums ex
pended merely on spirits and tobacco might accomplish for mankind.’
So calculates the Leeds Redemption Society, and seeks to win by
figures those whom rhetoric fails to reach.
‘Wait no longer on the banks of the great and ever-growing river
of poverty, for the golden boat of the capitalists to carry you over,
till you perish. Awake to the fact you may become capitalists your
selves—that you can and must help yourselves.’ Thus exhorts the
People's Journal, in its genuine sympathy for the working classes.
Upon how many thousands of our countrymen have these words of
wise direction fallen, as upon ‘ stony ground,’ The more, therefore,
the esteem with which the public will regard the men of Rochdale,
upon whom they have not fallen in vain.
That co-operation was the secret whereby the poor could make
money was known to old co-operators, though the Rochdale Society
has been the most skilful in turning it to progressive account; for as
early as 1831, one William Shelmerdine, storekeeper of a society,
meeting at 7, Rodger’s Row, Deansgate, Manchester, reported that
their members, with a stock of only £46 12s., and subscriptions of
£26 10s., had made, in twelve months, £20 2s. of profits. Eight
members founded the society, and thirty-six had joined it by the end
of the year.
The second Co-operative Congress was held in Birmingham, in
October, 1831. The first appears to have been held in Manchester,
in May, in the same year. In this year, the Lancashire and York
shire Co-operator appeared—a small fortnightly penny paper, calling
itself the advocate of the useful classes, and bearing this sensible
motto:—
‘ Numbers without Union are powerless—
And Union without Knowledge is useless.’
The true warning is here, though twenty-six years of experience has
not supplied the necessary wisdom to profit by it.
At the third London Co-operative Congress, 1832, there was re
ported the existence of a ‘ Rochdale Friendly Co-operative Society,’
�56
HISTORY OF THE
The Pioneers’ terror of credit.
which sent, as a delegate to London, one William Harrison. It had a
secretary of the gentle name of T. Ladyman, whose address was 70,
Cheetham Street, Rochdale. The Society was formed October, 1830.
In 1832 it had fifty-two members. It employed ten members and
families. It manufactured flannel. It had thirty-two volumes in its
library. It had never discussed the ‘ principles of exchange;’ and
there were two societies in its neighbourhood.
In 1832, there existed in Birkacre a society, whose secretary was
Ellis Piggot, Printer’s Arms, Salford, which had 3,000 members and
<£4,000 of funds. This society were silk and calico printers.
At the third London Co-operative Congress there were sixty-five
societies represented, of which nine were in London. Of the dele
gates or secretaries, the following names are still known:—W. Lovett,
B. Cousins, T. Whitaker.
Why have so many stores one after the other disappeared ? Some
have not known how to turn their prosperity to a progressive account,
and have grown tired of a monotonous success. There have been of
late years failures around Rochdale; the leading cause assigned is the
system of credit.
The Oldham Mechanics’ Store, and the Bolton Store, were broken
up through the strike of the amalgamated ironworkers; but it was said
they paid twenty shillings in the pound. The Brighton Store did not
acquit itself so well on its failure, which was attributed to its giving
credit to its members. Mr. Smithies, who is certainly the most com
petent and practical authority we can follow, said, writing in 1855:—
‘Nearly all the Stores, there is hardly one exception, are now on the
ready-money principle. We find that those Co-operative Societies
which commenced by giving credit, but have since adopted the ready
money plan, have all improved since doing so. I look upon the strap
book,’ says he, ‘ as one of the greatest evils that can befal a working
man. He gets into debt with the shopkeeper, and is, for ever after,
a week behind; and, as we express it here, eats the calf in the cow’s
belly.’
Hence arose that just terror of credit which the Store from the
first betrayed. In their first book of laws—the laws of 1844—the
grand fine, the lion fine of the list there given, was to be inflicted
on any officer, who, on any pretence, should either purchase or sell
any article except for ready money; which prohibition, as usual
when they are emphatic, is given twice over.
The Liverpool Co-operative Store, rising every year in importance
and usefulness, gives credit to the amount of two-thirds of the paid
up shares of the members. The Store connected with Price’s Patent
Candle Manufactory acts upon a similar rule. This, of course, is a
perfectly safe form of credit, but it involves a great additional amount
of book-keeping, and stops short of that moral discipline which ready
money payments exercise upon the poor and naturally improvident.
In Rochdale, each workman in the manufacturing department is
required to become a capitalist Either by weekly subscription or
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
57
Mr. Coningham, M.P.
other payments he is required to hold five shares in the Society. Each
of these artizan shareholders receives 5 per cent, upon the amount he
has invested. After the payment of this interest, and the wages of the
workmen at the usual average of the district, and all trade expenses,
the surplus of profit is divided according to the wages received by
each workman. The amount of profit over 5 per cent, interest, which
is first paid to the shareholders, is divided equally between the share
holders and the workmen. One half goes to the shareholder
according to the number of his shares; the other half goes to the
workman or workwoman according to the wages paid to him or her.
The dividend in the Rochdale Co-operative workshops, paid January,
1857, was one shilling and sixpence upon every pound of wages
received by workman or workwoman.
An important difference in the division of co-operative profits in
Padiham and in Rochdale must be noticed. In Padiham, workmen
who had made small savings, and other minor capitalists, subscribed a
fund among them, bought machinery, and employed workmen. The chief
profits were reserved by the subscribers of the capital for themselves.
The workmen they employed had better situations and somewhat
higher wages than at other mills. This arose from most of the pro
prietors being workmen, and having a sympathy with the persons they
employed. In other respects, the Padiham Cotton League Company,
under the Joint Stock Companies’ Act, paid their profits wholly to the
capitalists or shareholders. All the Societies enrolled under this act
are understood to pursue this rule. It is no part of their plan to
acknowledge the labourer’s right to a share of the profits his labour
creates, which is the Rochdale principle.
By precautions and good sense, the Rochdale Co-operators have
succeeded, notwithstanding the impediments the prejudices of their
class put in their way. During the period known among them as ‘ the
Corn Mill Panic,’ Mr. Coningham, M.P., to whom the country is
indebted for valuable personal reports of the Working Men’s Asso
ciations of Paris, consented to make an advance of capital to assist in
the exigence of the Corn Mill, but on being very naturally required
to submit their securities to the examination of his solicitor, the
Board objected to ‘having anything to do with a lawyer,’ yet
their securities were ample and good, and they knew it.
Confidence among the members was sought the first year of the
existence of the Store by establishing and showing plainly that checks
upon the honesty of the officers existed. Drawers conveniently con
*
structed are now used by each salesman, provided with brass or tin coins
according to the nature of his sales, of which he hands to each purchaser
an amount exactly representing the cash expended.
The treasurer and secretary of the Store, the Corn Mill, and Manu
facturing departments, balance their cash accounts weekly. This rule,
* Vide Board Minute, Oct. 20, 1845.
H
�58
HISTORY OF THE
How co-operative Stores originate,
which enables errors to he corrected as they may arise, has operated
very beneficially.
Security is now taken from £200 to £10 from each officer employed,
according to his measure of responsibility. Each officer in charge of
a shop till gives £10 security. Where other guarantee is not pro
vided, the Society holds the deposits of the officer in the Society, and
if he has not a sufficient amount paid in, he is required to make up such
amount by periodical payments. For sums so lying in the hands of
the Society, interest is paid as in the case of shares. This is a very
efficient regulation of securities, for no man will find it answer his
purpose to rob himself. The early Boards of Directors assisted the
shopmen in their duties. Economical in all their improvements, it was
not until 1854 that they lowered the floor of their flour Store, for the
convenience ofchildren and the aged members coming to make purchases.
Numerous Stores have at times sprung up around the Rochdale
one, and in consequence of its example; but none have been con
ducted with the same ability, nor have achieved more than a tithe of
its success. This is owing to no fault in the principle, but to defi
ciency on the part of those who apply it, to want of sense, of union,
of patience, and enterprise. The reare numerous instances in which
the Stores have not only succeeded, but, in the opinion of the mem
bers, have succeeded too well. They have made more money than
they know what to do with. Not knowing how to employ their
savings advantageously, they have been returned to the members, who
have commenced again. Their Directors have lacked the talent ofexpand
ing their operations, and making their capital reproductive. The Roch
dale Weavers appear to have been bom with a special talent for
co-operation.
One cause of the striking success of these co-operators is, no doubt,
to be found in the great economy of their trade expenses. The pro
portion of the salaries they pay to their receipts is very small. It
*
would be impossible to maintain the same rate in the metropolis,
where rents and wages are higher, and the rate of poor men’s provi
sions, in leading articles, the same. In answer to a question put to
him on this point, Mr. W. Cooper writes me—‘ I see no reason why
the people of London cannot carry on a Co-operative Society as well
as people who live in the provinces. In a small town, some dozen or
twenty persons will meet, and agree that if a Co-operative Provision
Store could be commenced it would be a good. These twelve or
twenty do commence one. They work on together, determined to
make the thing do. When it has worked on awhile, people who
doubted begin to see that it can be carried out, and they join too. I
see no reason why a number of earnest men in London cannot act in
the same way.’ In answer to other questions, the same informant
• The cost of distribution at the central Ftore is 1| per cent, upon the returns, and ■with
the branch shops, about '2 A per cent.; so that for two per cent, ill working expenses of rent,
rates, wages, etc., are defrayed.—John Hot.mks’s paper, partially read before the British
Association for the Advancement of Social Science, at Birmingham, which we commend to
the reader.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
59
The appearance of the town of Rochdale.
writes-—‘At the commencement of a Co-operative Store or Manu
facturing Society, it is essential that the members be visited or
brought together often, so that contributions may be collected to
establish and carry on the Society, and that the members may become
acquainted with the objects, position, and requirements of the Society.
With this kind of management a Store easily acquires sufficient
capital to work its business with, because the members have gained
confidence, and pay in subscriptions on their own account without
being much looked after.’
To get people together in this personal and continuous manner is
the difficult problem in London. Making some allowance for higher
expenses in proportion to profits, the thing might be done if a num
ber of the working class could be got to act together, and keep together,
for this end. It requires to convert a number of them to a clear view
of their own personal interest, to be promoted in no other way, and a
deep sense of duty towards their order, whose character is elevated by
such successes. Compare Rochdale with Liverpool for instance. In
Rochdale, a little bridge, that spans, like a rocking horse, an imaginary
stream, in which there is nothing liquid but the mud, situated in an
invisible part of the town, is the only picturesque object in it. There
is, indeed, a church with a flight of steps to it, so narrow, steep, and
interminable, that you can never get to it, or if you do, it is a question
as to whether you will ever get back. The remainder of the town is
made up of roads that lead to nowhere, ornamented with factories
apparently built before the dawn of architecture. There is not a
building in Rochdale upon which it will do any one good to look. The
town is in the shape, of a tea cup, with a gutter at the bottom and a
burying ground upon the rim. In such a place, if people are disposed
to act together, there is nothing in the way of striking attraction
around them to prevent them. The people are immensely before the
town, which, like many other manufacturing towns in the north, has
grown into importance anyhow ; but will, no doubt, yet assume the
magnificence which is gradually being imported into Bradford, Leeds,
and other places, which, twenty years ago, were quite as unpromising
as Rochdale. Now pass to Liverpool, with the bright and busy
Mersey—its migratory population—its magnificent buildings—its open
halls, surpassing in variety those of London. Plainly, it requires
more devotion among the few to carry a Store to success here than it
does in Rochdale. Then if you compare the ordinary provincial
town, fixed, stolid, and tame, with London and its countless attractions,
the difficulty is greater. The people are ‘ too clever by half’ to be
useful. Will a dozen men stick to a plan of reform year after year,
never failing on the weekly night of meeting to be at their posts, amid
the charms of the metropolis ? Dickens is making a speech at Drury
Lane, or reading his ‘ Christmas Carol’ at St. Martin’s Hall—Thackeray
is lecturing on the ‘Four Georges’ at the Surrey Gardens, with
Mr. Spurgeon to succeed him—Robson is coming out in a new
character—Mr. Saunders has a new play at the Haymarket—
�60
HISTORY OF THE
Peculiarities of Co-operation in London and the provinces.
Cardinal Wiseman is preaching in the next street—Dr. Cumming
is to prove that the end of the world will occur on Saturday,
and the People’s Subscription Bands play in the Parks on Sunday—
Neal Dow is at Exeter Hall, and George Dawson at the Whittington
Club—there is Cremorne, Rosherville, and Kew—the National
Gallery and the British Museum, and the Houses of Commons and
Lords, South Kensington Museum, and public meetings, where you
may hear speakers never to be heard before, and often never again—
and countless other allurements. A man must have self-denial as
well as interest, who steadfastly grinds coffee berries and watches the
sale of tea and sugar, and sits for fourteen years upon Candle and
Treacle committees, amid this confluence of celebrities and novelties.
This is why popular movements in London, which depend upon the
working and middle classes, make such uncertain progress. Unless a
man be wise enough to choose a side and discharge its obligations as a
sacred duty, undertakes to win others to act in concert with him and
pursues his object with the fidelity of a soldier, nothing can be de
pended upon. In fine, it requires working men in London to be as
superior to the average of their class in the metropolis as the Pioneers
of Rochdale are superior to the average of their own class in Lan
cashire, and then co-operation may carry its moral discipline and
physical comfort among the poor of London by district operation.
The Leeds Corn Mill Society—the Padiham Co-operative Manu
facturers—the Galashiels Co-operators—present features of success
worthy to be placed side by side with the Rochdale Store. Whether
in being originated and conducted by purely working men—whether in
the variety and development of their operations—whether in propa
gandist spirit—they are to be compared or placed before the Rochdale
Pioneers, are matters I leave for others to determine. The public
will be glad to hear more about these experiments than these pages
can communicate.
*
Just as the farmers, some years ago, could not be prevailed upon to
make returns of their crops, lest their interests should be prejudiced
in Parliament by the fact, so the Co-operators in some districts,
having the fear of the Income Tax Commissioners before their eyes
(the Rochdale issue of this question not being known, or not being
considered settled), or distrust of government, object to make reports.
Mr. T. Barker, of Todmorden, in an unfilled return sheet before me,
assigns this reason for its incompleteness. Todmorden, Walsden,
Bridge End, Alma Works, and Commercial, are the Flour Mills,
Stores, and Works mentioned on his return. Mr. Smithies, of Roch
dale, whom I had requested to get certain forms filled up for me,
despairs on these grounds of succeeding.
Working men were once injudiciouslytreated by employers in this way.
* For the History of the People’s Flour Mill Society of Leeds, certainly the second co
operative experiment in the empire, the reader cannot do better than consult the paper
mentioned in the note on p. 58. It may, probably, be had of the author, James Holmes,
Leeds, or the printer, David Green, 38, Boar Lane, Leeds. We are not aware that it has
been published.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
61
Opinions of W. R. Greg and Professor Newman.
Where the men dressed with some taste, and maintained an appear
ance of social comfort, masters were apt to infer that they were
doing too well, and would reduce their wages. This had a disastrous
influence on the men, who came to regard careless habits and indigence
of dress means of keeping up wages. How were working men to be
raised from improvidence while those who ought to incite them to
improvement suggested to them the policy of keeping themselves
poor, in order to avoid being made poor. A master whose pride or
ignorance was put to the blush by superiority in the manners of his
men, would reduce their wages in order to lower their tone. This,
however, has greatly changed now; and where it has not changed,
working men have had the sense to perceive that the majority of
masters-are prouder of being enabled to say ‘ all my men are worth
money,’ than that ‘half of them are in debt.’ Throughout mankind
the tendency is universal to help those who can help themselves.
The poorest man that exists will, if he reflects, find himself un
consciously acting on this feeling. The very beggar will not give to
the beggar if he has reason to think that what he gives him will do
him no good. There is no benevolence, high or low, that will many
times repeat the act of pouring the water of charity into a sieve. This
fact, so common to every man’s experience, should teach the working
class that if they display the habits of thrift, others will display the
disposition to help. Moral statistics will assure the intelligent Work
man that where there is one employer who reduces the wages of his
men because of their social aspirations, there are ten who reduce
them because they see no hope of their improvement.
Writers who speak with the authority of political science, have
testified to the utility of these efforts of self-help, some of which we
have here endeavoured to illustrate. One to whom the working
classes are indebted both for instruction and defence, remarks:—‘We
think, moreover, that these Co-operative Associations may be one of
the most powerful of the many influences now at work for the
education of the lower orders of the people; that wisdom will be
gained, if not wealth, from the industry, self-control, and mutual
forbearance needed to conduct them.’*
This is the place where one may usefully cite words which one of
the sincerest friends' of the people has written, and which cannot be
too widely known among them, as this grave truth is not to be dis
puted. ‘ I must, indeed, avow it as my own strong impression, that
the deepest deficiency in the operatives of our great towns is a moral
one, consisting in an extravagant susceptibility to the opinion of their
own order, or an unreasonable suspicion of even the best masters.
‘ I lately heard the case of a letter-printer, now deceased, who used
to employ in his trade the savings of his workmen with mutual ad
vantage. At one time, he had thus in his hands as much as a thousand
pounds, the property of one of the workmen. A master manufacturer
* W. R. Greg, ‘ Investments of the Working Classes,’p. 120.
�HISTORY OF THE
Defensive words by J. S. Mill.
at Manchester assured me that he would gladly employ in his business
any sums which his men would entrust him with, but that it was out
of the question, although, personally, he was on excellent terms with
them. To invest money in their master’s business, would be binding
themselves to his interests, and separating themselves proportionably
from that of their own order. Such a step might even expose them
to resentment, and, at any rate, their party feeling was too alive.
They had an indefinable suspicion that the master would be able to
take advantage of it. Many of them, perhaps, did not like the master
to know how rich they were. If they could set up a business among
themselves, with their own capital, this would flatter their pride ; but
to combine with their master was so unpalatable a thought, that they
preferred to receive at the Savings’ Bank a smaller per centage than
he would give them, or else to contribute their money (in large mea
sure to be wasted) at Benefit Clubs, or finally to consume it in immediate enjoyment.
‘ All the information which I have been able to gather, converges to
the same conclusion : that the operatives have a decided repugnance
to the only thing which has a reasonable chance of doing them good
collectively—viz., a closer union between themselves and their master.
If this be the case, they must wait and suffer, until their mind is
changed, or until a new generation rises, with a better mind.’*
But no sentence ever written about the people is more likely to
serve them than the following words by Mr. J. S. Mill:—‘ In Europe
the time, if it ever existed, is long past, when a life of privation had
the smallest tendency to make men better workmen or more civilised
beings.’ This sentence strikes at the root of that intellectual apathy
about the condition of the people, which has checked, and still checks,
so many endeavours for their elevation. The gentlemen of England
are, as a class, probably less indolent and sensual than the poor.
Opulence, and the means of physical ease, have not robbed them of
enterprise. No spur of privation remains to stimulate them, but the
spur of intellect, of art, of high cultivation, excites them, occupies
them, interests them—a new pride possesses them, and a lofty con
sciousness of nobler powers than those which poverty simulated, now
carries them on to a destiny undreamed of, and, indeed, undesired before.
When this truth is applied to the common people, when it is no longer
an article of parish faith, that ‘ privation’ is the sole incentive of labour,
the social policy of our rulers will be changed, and the systematic ele
vation of the people begin.
When, a few years ago, Mr. Carlyle began, with his noble insight, to
write of ‘ Captains of Industry,’ he was considered to have visions of
the most hopeless class of chieftains ever pictured in romances. But
his ideas, grafted on the age, have taken root. Modern employers, if
they wished, might found chieftainships, nobler far than those of
feudal days, and will, no doubt, do it yet. The Crossleys, Akroyds,
* Professor F. W. Newman’s lectures on ‘ Political Economy,’ pp. 321-2.
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
63
The law of social progress independent and inevitable.
and Salts of the north, are already taking proud places in the indus
trial history of the people. A few years ago, the ‘ hives ’ of Lanca
shire and Yorkshire, Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, and Manchester, were
dreary as penal settlements—as Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne, Hyde,
Stockport, and crowds of smaller towns, are still. Of late years, how
ever, the warehouses of Manchester, and Bradford, and Leeds have
assumed an air of magnificence. Buckingham Palace does not look
half so imposing as does the regal structure erected by Sir John Watts,
of Manchester. Towering in variegated marble, head and shoulders
above all surrounding structures—occupying the site of sixty-three
former tenements—it stands the Monarch of Warehouses. The
factory worker grows taller by looking up at it—the most insensible
inspire pleasure in walking by it. Must not the beef built, square
headed, shrewd Bradford man, grow somewhat refined, and even
proud, if he has a spark of national spirit in him, as his way home lies
by those noble structures every day rising up on his path, and raising
the industrial glory of his native town and land ? Are we not all far
away, proud to think that trade is not all mammon worship and gross
materialism. Is it not a relief to see the careful saving merchant,
wooing the arts, and obtain from the brain of the designer glorious
structures, in which to wear his patiently earned wealth ? Let not the
pallid, often stunted, hot-air-stewed factory hands of Hyde, on pre
carious nine shillings or fourteen shillings a week, nurse a sense of
perpetual despondency. Their turn is coming. When the noble
warehouse has, for some time, been admired, public attention will be
turned to the factory, and next to the ‘ factory hand,’ and will be found
quite ready to admire both, if they will bear admiring; and then
it will never do for the proud and rich employer to say, ‘ Oh,
I keep dainty rooms to store my cottons in; but as for the
people who make them, any murky, sooty, unventilated and
dreary den will do for them.’ The day is coming when no
employer in the north will like to say this. Mr. Titus Salt has been
the first to feel this, and Saltaire, the noble factory and dwellings he
has erected, point to what will one day be done. Workmen think it a
privilege to get an engagement in Mr. Salt’s mill. The town of
Bingley has been deserted by men who prefer Saltaire. The work
men’s rooms, in which the factory operations are carried on, are nobler,
higher, healthier, pleasanter rooms, than the drawing rooms of the
gentlemen of the north fifty years ago. Any workshop in Saltaire is
pleasanter than any room in the house you pass at Bury, where the
late Sir Robert Peel was born.
A man, whose soul is affluent as well as his circumstances, will supple
ment his stately warehouse by a stately and healthy factory; from
being an artist in his premises, he will, to use Mr. Thornton Hunt’s
words, become ‘an artist in flesh.’ He will covet that his men shall, in
their way, look as well and bear themselves as gracefully as his machines,
and then that they shall dwell in homes as tasteful, as salubrious,
and as suitable as those accorded to spinning jennies: he will
�64
HISTORY OF THE
Anonymous placard opponents.
covet that the ring of his money shall echo with the contentment of
those who aided to earn it. Thus were advocates silent, and the plea
of humanity disregarded, and social rights ignored, a principle of
artistic consistency would, one day, enforce universal co-partnership in
the produce of industry and the conquests of science.
A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER
OF
ILLUSTRATIVE
PAPERS
AND
NOTES.
During the progress of this little book through the press, which has
been protracted much beyond the usual time, some new incidents in
the career of the Store and its Departments have arisen, which deserve
brief notice, to which we shall subjoin the latest Balance Sheet issued.
Lately the Store has been attacked in local newspapers, and on
placards, by anonymous writers, who appear to seek the destruction
of the Society by sowing disunion and creating distrust of its financial
security. The attacks were commenced during the panics of 1857.
In the December quarter the Board reported that although unfavour
able reports had tjeen circulated respecting ‘ the Stores,’ the number
of members on the books was greater by forty-eight than at the com
mencement of the quarter—making a total of 1848. Had the placard
writers here referred to, succeeded in their design, considerable injury
would have been done at that time, when so many firms were daily
breaking, to a large body of the working class. Had the credit of
any commercial House been attacked in the same way, a jury would
have given considerable damages, had the case been brought before
them: and we think the Board of Directors would do well to regard
themselves as entitled to the usual protection of commercial Houses,
and to make an example of the first responsible assailants to whom
they can trace similar wanton aggressions. There is fear that
enemies to the success of the Pioneers, enemies on competitive grounds,
will, now that the Pioneers have become really formidable, seek to
destroy them by disunion. It requires great good sense and mutual
powers of forbearance to sit silent, and see statements published, which
appear to the public more than half true, and which you know to be
wholly false. The temptation to go into controversy in self-defence
is very great; and the ease with which controversy slides into perso
nalities we all know—then time is wasted, temper lost, and only
scandal is gained, and the enemy triumphs. Any shrewd opponent
may naturally calculate that amid 2,000 persons, some will be found
who may, by taunts of want of courage, or want of truth, be seduced
into a disastrous newspaper or placard war. It is said of the first
Napoleon, that in the early part of his Italian campaign he was
followed by numerous letters, some criticising him, some abusing him,
and all perplexing him very much to answer. After a good deal of
time had been consumed in replies, which time might have been much
�ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
Suggestion for dealing with personal controversy.
better employed upon maps and strategy, and actual war with the
enemy, it occurred to him to throw all his letters into a capacious
basket, and let them lie there for six weeks : at the end of which
period, he found that time and events had answered then! dearly all.
We recommend some such plan as this tb the Board of Directors of
the Rochdale Store. We recommend them to “refer all. matters of
controversy to a coihmittee of three cleat-headed, dispassionate men,
whose duty it should be to give very brief explanations of any point
really misunderstood; and if any controversy seemed called for, to
enter upon it only once a year, and to lay by all placards, newspapers,
letters, and articles, until December, and 'then reply, to what time and
success may not have confuted, and what the public may not have
forgotten (which will be found to be nine-tenths of the whole), and
then let silence and peace prevail for twelve months more.
We now subjoin examples of the Quarterly Reports issued by the
Board of directors of the Equitable Pioneers, and the Committee of
Management of the R. D. C. C. M. S. (Rochdale District Co-operative
Corn Mill Society), to the Members. In matters of moral speculation,
it is said that nothing is so delusive as statistics; but in matters com
mercial nothing is more satisfactory than figures. A good tall balance
oh the right side is as intelligible as a flag on a fortress.
ISO I.—ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS
*
SOCIETY.
Fifty-third ’Quarterly Report of the Accounts of the Society, for the
Quarter ending March 23rd, 1858.
The profits this quarter are much larger than last, which may be
partly accounted for by the fact} that at the commencement of the
quarter we had a quantity of goods on hand, the market price of
which was then very low, but which advanced during the quarter.
It has been resolved upon by the members At the quarterly meeting
that the minor accounts should not be printed, but that they should
be posted in the News Room, to which all the members have free
afccess.
Your Board of Directors, have the satisfaction to inform the
members that the prospects of the Society are most cheering, consider
ing the effects of the late panic through which we have just passed,
without any serious drawback in ahy of our undertakings ; they have
also great pleasure in stating that the Library has been considerably
extended during the past quarter.
t
�66
HISTORY OF THE
The fifty-third quarterly report of the Store.
CASH ACCOUNT.
Dr.
To Cash. Balance December Quarter
“
ft
ft
ft
<«
ft
ft
ft
Received for Goods, Grocery:
Toad Lane ...........
ft
Oldham Road...........
ft
School Lane ... ...
ft
Whitworth Road ...
ft
Pinfold ..................
ft
Drapery Department
ft
Butchering ...........
ft
Shoemaking...........
ft
Clogging..................
£ ■ s. d.
2309 14 8|
... 7970 0 0
... 2057 10 0
... 1469 10 0
... 1590 0 0
... 1282 0 0
... 706 10 0
... 1375 0 0
... 191 0 0
49 10 0
16691
To Interest in the Rochdale Branch of the Manchester
and Liverpool District Bank.........................................
“ Contributions......... . .................................................
“ Propositions .................................................................
0 0
102 1 7
454 8 3
5 5 0
£19,562 9
Cr.
£
By Cash paid for Goods ... ... ... ... 14229 10 11
ft
ft Less, Discount ........... ...
200 17 8|
ft
ft
ft
ft
ft
ft
ft
ft
ft
Wages ..................
Rents ..................
General Expenses... ...
Carriage of Goods...
s.
6J
d.
14028 13 oi
334 I oj
11 19 3
67 2 3|
90 19 9
Withdrawn by Members.......... 1 ... •••
Balance, Cash..,...............
...
...
...
...
504 2 4
1772 7 4
3257 6 8
£19,562 9
6|
£
S.
d.
13138
125
76
7
5
454
161
10
1505
14
1
1
16
5
8
10
0
7
0
3
6
3J
0
3
6
0
01
GENERAL STATEMENT.
LIABILITIES.
To Members’ Claims, as per Ledger
“ Building Fund .......................... ..................... No. 739
“ Redemption do............................. .................. “ 331
“ Guarantee do.............................. .................. “ 1633
“ Propositions................................. ..................................
“ Contributions .......................... ..................................
“ Interest on £12,922 paid up £ shares ..........................
“ Owing for Goods......... . ........... ..................................
Balance, Profit...........
£15,484 3 10
�67
ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
Store profits of the fifty-third quarter, £1500.
ASSETS.
By Cash,
“
“
“
“
“
w
“
“
“
Balance .................................................................
Invested in the Rochdale District Corn Mill Society
Interest added to our Account therein..................
Dividend on £6394, purchase at Is. 6d. in the £...
Invested in the Rochdale Co-operative Manufac
turing Society .................................................
Interest added to our Account therein..................
Stock in Goods.................................. ..................
Owing by Stores and others ... t „ ...................
Fixed Stock Account .........................................
Lease on Building........... ......................... ...
£
3257
3386
54
479
s. d.
6 8
5 4
16 6
11 0
2169
52
4849
98
936
200
14
0
4
11
13
0
9
0
4
6
9
0
£15,484 3 10
PROFIT ACCOUNT.
Depreciation of Fixed Stock .................................. ...........
21 per cent, on £1481 18s. 8d. for Educational purposes
Dividend on £13,822 purchase money, at 2s. in the £...........
Balance ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
£ s. d.
23 8 4
37 0 11
1382 4 0
62 13 QI
£1,505
Balance to divide
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
7 0£
£ s. d.
1505 7 0|
£1,505 7 0|
Balance brought down.................................
62 13 9|
Frederick Greenwood, ) Auditors<
Abraham Howard,
J
Edmund Kelly, Assistant Auditor.
NO II.—ROCHDALE DISTRICT CORN MILL SOCIETY’S
Twenty-Ninth Quarterly Report, ending March 21th, 1858.
In issuing another Quarterly Report, the Committee of Manage
ment beg to call the attention of members to the gradual
progress in the business of the Society. In the quarter just
ended there is a slight falling off in the value of the business done,
owing to a depreciation in the price of flour. On the other hand,
there has been a fair, and on the whole, a satisfactory increase on the
quantity of business done, as the following figures of the ’previous
quarter’s transactions—compared with those of the quarter ending
March, 1858, of the present year, will show.
�68
HISTORT OF TJJE
The twenty-ninth quarterly report of the Corn Mill.
Flour.
Meal.
Sundries.
Quarter ending March, 1858............ 4643 . . . 1407 . . . 2470
Ditto.
«
December, 1857. . . 4193. . . . 1254 . . . 2090
450 ... 153 ... 380
Showing an increase on the December quarter of 983 bags.
The Committee have further to say, that the business of the Society
at present, is such as to give your Committee the expectation of an
important addition to the business of the current quarter.
Weir Street Mill, April 13th, 1858.
CASH ACCOUNT.
RECEIPTS.
To Cash, Balance, December 26th, 1857.................
-66 Receipts from Rochdale Equitable Pioneers ...
it
46
Co-operative Store, Bacup ... ...
46
ft
Do. do. Brickfield
................ ,.A
66
ft
Do. do. Middleton
... ..... ...
ft
ft
Do. <jp. Greenacres Hill, Oldharp,
66
ft
Do. do. Jagger Lane, Hwd.
ft
ft
Do. do. Bridge Street, do.............
66
ft
Do. do. Junction, Saddlth.............
66
ft
Do. do. Whitworth ..................
6.
<»
Do. do. Mi lnrow..........................
ft
ft
Do. do. Ending ..........................
U
66
Do. do. Steps
..........................
ft.
S‘
Do. do. Bury
..........................
66.
ft
Do. do. Greenbooth ..................
ft
Do. do. Shaw
..........................
ft.
ft
Do. do. Mossley.................. ...
ft
ft
Do. do. Duckinfield ..................
66
ft
Do. do. Wardle................
...
66
ft
Do. do. Firgrove... .... .... ...
66
ft
Do. do, Littleborpugh,., ... ...
66
46
Do. do. Ridings..........................
ft
66
Do. do. Ashton ..........................
66
ft
Do. do. Jumbo ..........................
46,
ft
Do. do. Roy ton ....................... ...
66
ft
Do. dp. Bagslate .... ... .... ...
66
ft
Do. do. King Street, Oldham ...
66c
ft
Dp, do, Hpbers. ........... ... w
66
ft>
Do. do. Greenfield
... ... ...
ft
66
Do. do. Chadderton .......... ...
ft.
66.
Do. jo. Facit
.......... ... ...
66
46.
Sundry persons...........
..
Discounts, or Interest......... . ..........................
Contributions
.................................................
£
s. d.
••• ••• 1540 13
••• ... 5382 1
... ... 1582 18
664. 3
w595 11
VA
581 6
MeV W
... ...
391 16
265 7
... ...
... ... 251 3
250 4
... ...
... ...
207 11
...........
206 5
...........
200 0
•.........
196 2
......... .
170 7
155 6
... '•••
...........
153 3
137 9
... ...
137 0
... ...
...........
129 2
104 10
...........
100 17
... ...
......... .
100 9
96 18
... •••
63 1
...........
0
......... .
55 0
50 9
31 2
. ,. ... .
26 12
24 9
... ....
... ... 2168 17
142 2
......... .
...........
310 18
HI
74
7
2
9
7
0
6
74
0
3
0
4
0
0
0
6
6
0
0
0
6
0
0
6
0
0
0
6
0
10|
*
2
6
11
£16;530; T 4
�69
ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
Corn. Mill profits—the twenty-ninth quarter, £780.
£
DISBURSEMENTS.
S.
d.
By Accounts paid for Grain .................................................. 13307 12 7£
“ Sacks returned ... ... ... ... ...
.,. ... •••
•••
417 8 ft
** Lancashire and Yorkshire Kailway Company’s Accounts 361 16 2
“ Sundry Accounts........................ . ... ... ... .... .v.
307 11 7
«• Addition to Fixed Stock ...................
192 14 1
“ Men’s Wages
.................................. ... .... ••• —. 183s IQ? 0
Discounts paid ......................................................... •••
175 1 111
* Coal Accounts paid ..........................................
43 3 71
* Pigs,
do. ....................................... . •— ••• •••
35 0 0
“ Hay and StrawAccounts paid................
13 10 0
¥ Travelling Expenses ................... .... — •••. •••
H IQ 2
* Tolls .................................................................................
9 14 5
* Withdrawals.........................................................................
615 6 6
Balance, Cash on hand..................
855 13 2j
£16,530 1 4
GsEN-EBAiL
ACCOUNTS.
lIHmThT
*
I
MEMBERS’LIABILITIES.
£
By Member’s,Shares, as per Ledger
... .M
v. ...
- Loans ... .... ....
... ... v.............................. ..
" Redemption Fund
... ......................... . ...................
“ Contributions) ................ ..
... w ................ *•
* Deposits
> ..........................................
— •••
“ Propositions ) ....................................................... - •••
“ Interest due............................................................... 121
* Owing L. & Y. Railway Co. for Carriage................
77
“ Owing for Coals ... ... ....
... ..... .... <m
“ Owing for Sundries ... ....
v ••• w
“ Depreciation of Eixed Stock
.... ..% ... .... ......
“ Balance, Profit ... ... ..........................
•••
S.
d.
4939 3 0|
4628 9 5
135 2 11
11
194 0 ft
1 7 ft
17 0
3 4
6 13 5
^0 18 4
66 19 3
7.83 14 1
£1:15,090 19 81
assets.
To Balance, Cash on hand
w, ...
w, v. w,
v Fixed Stock Recount .... ..... ...... w .w.
»w. •
»
*
------- “ Grain, Flour, etc., on hand,.,,
w
jbsjl. .. “ Accounts owing .... .....
••• w, w. w. v.
“ Value of Horses and Carts ... .... ...........
•••
« Value of Pigs
........................
••• ......... * ••••• •••
| “ 901 Empty Sacks, Is. each... ... .................................
“ Hay and Straw on hand ... ........................................
“ Manure on hand .,................
• ..................
* Coals
ditto- .................. ... .................................•
ifcrr
“ Paid for Grain not yet received......................... ... •••
£. s.
855.13
^357 14.
%749 11
1.380.19
150. ,0
I®®- ®
45 1
3 0
® 01
d.
2|
9
7
8
0
®
0
0
®
®
406 10 6
£11,090 19 8J
�70
HISTORY OF THE
Conditions requisite for co-operative success.
PROFIT ACCOUNT.
By Dividend on £13,824 purchase, being Members’ trade,
at Is.................................................................................
“ Dividend on £686 purchase, being Non-members’ trade,
at Is................................................................................. '
“ Balance................................................................................
£
s. d.
691 ■ 4 0
34 6 0
58 4 1
£783 14
To Balance, Profit
.
I
£ s. d.
783 14 1
£783 14
To Balance brought down ...
1
58 14
1
Audited by Samuel Stott and A L. Butterworth.
NO. in.—PROFITS OF CO-OPERATION.
Note to Tables, p. 4Q.
It will be seen that the capital of this Society is, in round numbers,
turned over five times a year, at a rate of 8 per cent, on the returns
gross, and 35 per cent, net upon the capital.—John Holmes. Paper
partially read before the British Association for the Advancement of
Social Science, at Birmingham.
NO. IV.—CONDITIONS REQUISITE FOR THE SUCCESS OF CO-OPERATION.
1. Sufficient members to enable the principle to operate.
2. Capital requisite to purchase all economically.
3. All sales, as well as purchases, to be for ready money only.
4. Understanding of the necessary conditions of business.
5. Managers equal to the average abilities of the trade.
6. Directors who have confidence in the principles of co-operation,
and not too much confidence in any one untried.
7. Perseverence and patience to work out necessary results.
8. Forbearance towards each others disinterested opinions.
9. Equitable rules relating to Members, and legal ones under the
Friendly Societies’, or other Parliamentary Acts.
10. Reports regularly published, showing income, out-go, expenses,
operations, profits or loss, and the relations of each.
11. Correct audits of accounts, and guarantees from all in trust.
12. Careful oversight by all officials, and yet respect towards all who
do their duty as servants to the Society.
13. Accumulation of funds for the purpose of extension, loss, wear
and tear, etc., etc.
All failures (and we know many sad ones) arise from the open
breach of some one or more of the above conditions.—John Holmes.
Idem.
�71
ROCHDALE EQUITABLE PIONEERS.
___________
Five thousand co-operators within ten miles of Rochdale.
NO. V.---- RECENT LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE PIONEERS
*
SOCIETY.
Equitable Pioneers’ Co-operative Stores,
Nos. 8, 16, and 31, Toad Lane,
Rochdale, April 17th, 1858.
Sir,—By this post I send the above report of the R. D. C. C. M. S.
for March, 1858, from which you will see that the Society is making
progress—as is the co-operative principle as a whole. I think I told
you that our next step forward will he to extend the operations of
the ‘ Manufacturing Society ’ here, and, while I write, a Committee
is sitting to consider proposals which have been made in response to
an advertisement for a capitalist to build us a Mill, which we purpose
to fill with machinery, and work. The working classes may at times
lose by having over confidence, but do not they lose much more who
never have any confidence ? The five thousand members of the Co
operative Societies within ten miles of Rochdale, representing
twenty-five thousand persons, could not derive the benefits they now
receive unless they had confidence in each other and in the principle of
co-operation. We have received information by telegram thatDr. Bernard
is acquitted, which produces great pride and satisfaction here. The
people here are in no mood either to pander to, or flatter, the Emperor
of France: a little more, and they would have been prepared to
go to war—not with France, but Napoleon.
William Cooper.
To Mr. G. J. Holyoake.
NO.
VT.---- THE
OPINION
AND
ADVICE
OF
LORD
GODERICH,
M.P.
CA later Letter from the Secretary of the Store.)
WEreceived a long letter from Mr. Holmes, of Leeds, this morning, April
26, 1858, which shows that they are aiming at Co-operative Stores to
distribute their groceries in preference to the agency principle, which
they adopted to distribute the flour made at their Mill. In the course of
his letter he remarks, ‘ The other day our West Riding Member, Lord
Goderich, being in the town, visited our Mill, and met the Board in a
conference. We had a very interesting meeting and conversation.
His lordship told us we, Leeds and Rochdale (or rather Rochdale and
Leeds, for we cheerfully give way to your superiority), were the
objects of frequent conversations both in the House and out of it;
that our success was most welcome to some good statesmen, who see
if the people are doing well, all else must be well. Our prosperity
was pointed at as proving the people can, and will, manage their own
affairs. If we fail, the reputation of the principle will be seriously
damaged, and when our contentions and difficulties are mentioned, it
ties their hands. He told us it was not ourselves alone we should
consider^, we were now objects held up and closely watched by other
Societies, and other people would follow us if we succeed, or be dis-
�72
HISTOBY OS' THE BOCHDALE EQUITABLE MONEE Kg.
Important advice of Lord Goderich, M.P.
heartened if we fail. We had a most kind and strong exhortation
to go on, economise, save, and extend — to be shrewd, wise
and peaceful. It would take me long to tell you all, but he
promised us good service should we need it, and he be able to do us
good. By the way I could recommend you to send reports to Lord
*
Goderich, Mr. Conningham, M.P., Mr. Slaney, M.P., and other good
friends in London. It affords them pleasure, and their sympathy is
deserving of return.
*
The cordial interest taken by Lord Goderich in the welfare of the
working classes is well known, not only in the West Biding but
throughout England. We choose to close this brief history with the
above transcript of his wise and influential Words of encouragement
and advice.
END.
JOHN
WATTS, PKiNTEK, 147, FLEET STREET, LoSPON.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Self-help by the people : history of co-operation in Rochdale
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 3rd
Place of publication: London
Collation: [4], 72 p. : ill. (tables) ; 19 cm.
Notes: "The chapters of this little 'History' were commenced to be inserted in the Daily News (in 1857)..." [From Preface]. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Creator
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Holyoake, George Jacob
Publisher
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Holyoake & Co.
Date
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[1858]
Identifier
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G5213
Subject
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Co-operative Movement
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Self-help by the people : history of co-operation in Rochdale), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Cooperation
Rochdale (Greater Manchester)
Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society
Socialism