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    About 1838 a number of youths, whose ages would range from thirteen to sixteen years, began to club their pence together with the object of renting a plot of land to grow potatoes upon.  They intended to delve the land themselves, collect manure, buy seed, plant and reap the potatoes or whatever grew, and sell them amongst their neighbours.  Of course their ideas of Co-operation were crude, but there was the germ of the principle in their minds, even at their early age.  However, their means were too slender for some of them to comply with the terms of subscription of one penny per week.  They got behind with their cash contributions before there was a sufficient sum to purchase seed, which damped the ardour of the others who had managed to muster their share weekly.  At that time pennies were as scarce in the pockets of lads as shillings are now, consequently nothing came of their juvenile attempt.

    Eight or ten years later a number of very young men directed their attention once more to co-operative effort.  They subscribed in larger sums than they had been able to do before, and actually bought a cow and had it killed in a barn.  They sold it out to their neighbours, but they either sold at too low a price, gave too much weight, or had too much waste.  Their deficiency could not arise from excessive wages paid, because all their work was done for nothing, except a trifle to a butcher for killing.  But whatever the cause, the balance was on the wrong side of their humble ledger.  So down went the society.  For about ten years after the collapse of cow-selling no one had the courage to make another attempt.  At length a few persons attempted to establish a Farming Society.  They framed a code of rules under the title of "The Self-Help Co-operative Society," and took a farm of about nine statute acres.  They bought two cows, half a dozen pigs, reared several hatches of ducks, and bred a number of rabbits.  They planted potatoes, cabbages, turnips, wheat, oats, and vetches.  But the work was uncouth to them.  They had not the practical knowledge nor physical qualifications necessary for success.  They had the misfortune to lose a cow, which proved a death-blow to their enterprise, as they never numbered more than seven members, the lowest number recognised by law, and their means were too limited to bear the strain to which this thoughtless cow subjected them.  So the farming society at Failsworth died with the cow.  They called it in reporting language "succumbing to force of circumstances."  Another attempt has since been commenced by a number of Newton Heath and Failsworth people, to solve the problem of food production on a small scale, and if they can get cows of more consideration they expect to succeed.

    A fair example of the rapidity with which little difficulties succeed each other in the establishment of a store are contained in an account sent me by Mr. John Livingston, of Macclesfield.  The wife of a member was thought to be living in a degree of affluence disproportionate to her expenditure at the store.  She became a subject of observation, and was found outside the store with butter which she did not pay for.  She was forgiven on condition of her husband leaving the society.  Then a joiner, doing a job in the shop (who was a member) mistook his instructions, and worked at the till.  The police disposed of him for a month.  This meant some pounds of loss to the society.  Next, one of the committee men, when he had learned the profits of the trade, commenced shopkeeping on his own account.  Some loaves of bread discovered to be missing from the bakery, a potato was put in another loaf for a mark.  But potato and loaf were both missing.  This baker being discharged, the next spoiled two or three large bakings, of which each loaf was 4lbs.  They were sold at a reduced rate to the poor.  The directors afterwards learned from a servant girl that she heard the baker say he was paid for spoiling the bread.  A donkey and cart were set up to carry in and out the bread baked for the members.  But the animal died, not for his country's good nor that of co-operation.  The store stood the market with potatoes on a Saturday, and chalked on a board the words "Co-operative Potatoes."  They gave checks, and it occupied half their time to explain their use amidst the derisions of the hucksters.  The store next removed to a large shop and building in the same street, which cost £1,000 to the original owner.  The store has since bought it and two cottages, now a steam bakery and drapery shop.  They obtained a very smart shopman from another county, and he had a shopman for his bondsman.  The first lot of coffee was ordered from a Liverpool house by the shopman from its traveller.  In time the directors had to take the keys from their shopman, and sell a portion of the coffee at the wholesale price to his bondsman.  The Liverpool house was written to to ascertain the weight mark.  The answer was, "We have made a mistake and should have allowed you 18 lbs. as the tare." The persevering fellows get along smoothly now (1877).

    There was a store in another energetic manufacturing town (name lost) which was held in the market-place.  It never had any other place of business than its stall there.  In what way Mr. Tidd Pratt enrolled it (if it was enrolled) has not been communicated to me.  Mr. Tidd Pratt, had he been a man of curious mind, with a taste for describing the humours of humble men, could have told amusing instances of the adventures of the provident poor.  This market store was commenced by some young men of means too small to take a shop, but with vigour of mind and determination to do something in the way of Co-operation; so they negotiated with the market authorities for a stall, and the little enterprising committee, manager, salesman, secretary, and treasurer, or whatever officers they had, stood the market on Saturday afternoon and night—the only time when they were off work.  They made more noise than profit; but some nights they cleared as much as nine shillings, when their hopes rose so high that had the Government stood in need of a loan at that time, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had certainly heard from them, to the effect that if he could wait a bit they would see what they could do for him.  Their difficulty was to make the public purchasers understand all about the division of profits.  Surrounding traders supplied gratuitous information to the effect that the buyers would never hear of any profits.  They had no checks to give—those outward and visible signs of inward "Tin," which in other stores allay suspicions.  Indeed, these market co-operators did not themselves understand the mystery of checks.  But they promised a division of profits quarterly, which they had heard was the regular thing.  The dubious purchasers of cabbage and treacle went away in hope.  But before long, at the end of a fortnight, a shrewd old woman, who was afraid they would forget her face, appeared to ask if they would pay her dividend on the three pennyworth of potatoes she had bought two weeks ago.  No doubt the store would have answered had not the salesmen, who had been all the week in hot mills, caught cold in the damp air of winter, which ended in rheumatic fever with two of them, and the co-operative stall became vacant.  A good outdoor man, who, like Sam Slick, was waterproof and lively, could have made the "Co-op. Stall," as it was called, pay.

    The Newton Heath Society, which was commenced in 1840 by a few enterprising young fellows, paid their salesman fourpence in the £ upon the sales he made—a simple way of fixing a salary, and as the sales were few and far between in those days he had a motive for endeavouring to increase the purchasers.  But in later years, when the sales at stores exceed £100 a day, some limit would have to be found where the fourpence should stop.

    Co-operation was unknown in Halifax till the spring of 1829, when the first recorded society was formed, May 29th in that year.  An old and nearly worn-out member of the Brighton Co-operator, and another of the Associate, fell into the hands of Mr. Nicholson.  These he showed to his father and three brothers, which induced them, and four others, to commence a society.  Their first co-operative tea-party was held in April the following year.  About two hundred persons, chiefly women, were present; the "Tea Feast," as they called it, being given gratis, in order that the women might get some practical and pleasant knowledge of co-operation.  In the record of the society's existence they made a levy of four shillings a member to enable them to join the Liverpool Wholesale Society.  At the end of two years and a half the Halifax co-operators found that they had made a profit on their capital of £200, twenty times as much as the same money would have yielded them in a savings bank.  This society published in the Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operator, the first financial table of their progress which appeared.  It exhibited as follows the position of the society for the first three years:—
 

The Halifax Society of to-day is one of the mighty stores of the time, and has a history to itself like Rochdale.  If Halifax happens to lose £60,000, it still goes on its way, no more disturbed than one of the planets when an eccentric comet loses its tail.

    Mr. J. C. Farn has given instructive instances of early successes of co-operative societies occurring between 1826 and 1830.  A society had cleared £21 by the butchers' trade in one quarter; a second had been able to divide profits at the rate of 30s. per member; a third, which had commenced with 6s., had grown to £200 in eight months, £75 of which was profit; a fourth had a capital of £207, and had cleared £32 during the quarter; a fifth had its capital formed by payments of 6d. per week until it had reached £25, and in fifteen months it had cleared three times the amount in profit; a sixth, with a capital of £109, had cleared £172; whilst a seventh could boast of 700 members, who went boldly in for manufacturing.

    The story of the Burnley Society is well worth telling.  It has had great vicissitudes, years elapsing without progress or gain.  Save for incessant attention, ceaseless nights of labour at the books, and unwavering devotion given by Mr. Jacob Waring, the society had never stood its ground.  Other members worked; that Mr. Waring did so in the chief degree was acknowledged by the society when its day of success came by a public presentation to him.  Sometimes, when the books had been worked at till late on a Saturday night and almost into Sunday morning, the directors, when the balance came to be struck, were afraid to look at it, lest it should be against the society, as had so often happened before.  For two or three year's things were systematically going to the bad.  No one could discover how or why.  The stock entries, as goods arrived, were made in a small book.  Being small it got mislaid, or overlaid at the time when the quarterly accounts had to be made up.  It was so likely an occurrence that nothing was thought of it.  Everything seemed regular and yet the result was never right.  At length, not from any suspicion, but because no other change could be thought of to be tried, Mr. Waring suggested that a stock book be got so large that it could not be overlooked, so bulky that it could not be hidden, and so heavy that no one could carry it away and not know it.  After that quarter profits reappeared and never went out of sight any more.  Amid the many-advertised qualities of good account books, I never remember to have seen size and weight put down as virtues.  Yet there must be some obvious merit therein; for a bulky book saved the Burnley store.  It was not want of capital, not want of trade, not want of watchful management, the protracted deficits lay in small account-books.  Thin books brought small dividends; fat books produced fat profits.  In Burnley success seemed related to stock-book bulk.

    Human nature is porcupine in Sheffield.  Suspicion is a profession, disagreement was long an art among Sheffield operatives.

    Leeds used to have great talent in this way; hence it has presented an entirely different phase of Co-operation from Rochdale—different in its aims, its methods of procedure, and its results.  When Leeds men made profits they would spend them instead of saving them.  A noble mill and grounds were to be sold.  A year's profits would have bought the property and made a mighty store.  Years after they had to give more for the ground alone than they could have had both land and building.  Leeds has been remarkable for possessing two friends of the industrial classes, knowing them thoroughly, sympathising with them thoroughly, mixing with them, taking a personal part in all their industrial efforts, and accustomed to write and speak, and capable in both respects.  No town ever had two better industrial and co-operative expositors than John Holmes and James Hole.  Mr. Holmes's economic advantages of Co-operation in reply to Mr. Snodgrass is a notable example of practical controversy, fair, circumstantial, and cogent.  A gentleman whom nobody supposed existed save in the "Pickwick Papers," one John Snodgrass, a practical miller, was proprietor of the Dundas Grain Mills, Glasgow.  He wrote against the Leeds Corn Mill.  It was in defence of the mill that Mr. Holmes wrote in reply.  The men of Leeds showed true co-operative honesty in their corn mill affair.  When they made no profit they were advised to grind a cheap kind of Egyptian corn instead of more costly English or good foreign wheat.  The Leeds co-operators would not use Egyptian corn on principle.  Hard, suspicious, jealous, discordant, and greedy as many of them then were, they would not use it.  They could make thousands by doing it, and yet they did not do it.  They loved money, yet would not make it in a deceptive way.  Mr. Gladstone showed in his great speech at the inauguration of the Wedgwood Memorial that beauty paid—that Wedgwood had found it so.  Manufacturers may be expected to study beauty when it pays.  The Leed co-operators honourably stuck to purity when it did not pay.

    In the winter of 1847 David Green, of Leeds, John Brownless, and others, began to meet in a room in Holbeck, used as a school and meeting-house by the Unitarians.  Mr. Mill, afterwards known in London as Dr. John Mill, acted as minister.  At times Mr. Charles Wickstead officiated.  In that room the project of the Leeds Co-operative Corn Mill originated.  The Leeds Co-operative Society furnished materials for as curious a history as any store in the kingdom. [241]  Though its profits in 1905 exceed all other stores, there was a time when it lost upon everything it undertook to deal in; never were there such unfortunate co-operators.  They lost on the flour mill; they lost on the drapery—they lost always on that; they lost on the meat department—they never could get an honest manager there; they lost on the tailoring; they lost on the groceries; they lost on boots and shoes; and they lost their money which they did take, for that used to disappear mysteriously.  When Mr. John Holmes used to predict that they would surely make 5 per cent. profit, and eventually make more; that he should live to see the day when they would make £10,000 a year—the quarterly meeting, which had been looking long for dividends and seen them not, laughed at his speeches, would whistle as he spoke, and tap their foreheads to indicate there was something wrong there in the speaker, and exclaim, "Holmes has a slate off, and a very large one too!  Holmes is up in the clouds again, and will never come down!"  Mr. Holmes came to enjoy high repute as a true prophet.

    One day he met a woman whom he had long known as a steady frequenter of the store, who gave him brief, indistinct answers to his friendly greetings, nothing like her accustomed vivaciousness of speech; and he said to her, "What's the matter? Have you the faceache?"  With some confusion she at length said, "She had been having some decayed teeth taken out.  Her husband had found that he had a good accumulation of dividends at the store, and said she should have a new set of teeth and look as well as a lady, and they had not came home yet."  Mr. Holmes very properly complimented her husband on so honourable a proof of regard for his wife and pride in her good looks, and went away amused at this unexpected use of dividends which had never occurred to him.,

    Of the interest which co-operators take in their property when they eventually get it, Mr. Holmes gives me this instance.  Once when their mill was burnt down and they had some horses in the stable, hundreds of members ran from every part of the town and rushed into the stables, and, despite the fire, got the horses out safely.  Had the horses been owned by some alien-minded proprietor, all the horses would have been lost.

    For years the society had no educational fund.  It made occasional grants to enable lectures to be delivered at the chief stores in their district—Holbeck, Hunslet, Woodhouse Moor, and other places.  When I have had the honour to be one of the lecturers I have argued for knowledge on commercial grounds, and taken for my subject, "Intelligence Considered as an Investment."  The members whom it was most desirable to influence did not, as a rule, attend, not having knowledge enough to know that knowledge has value.  Wise directors, who proposed an Educational Fund, found it opposed by the general meetings lest it should diminish the dividends.  Mr. Holmes has likened making the proposal to walking in a garden immediately after rain.  The paths, as any one knows, which were perfectly clear before, are suddenly covered with crawling creatures.  They spring up out of the earth so rapidly that you can scarcely place your foot without treading upon the slimy things.  In the same manner, when a proposal for Education Funds is made to an uninformed meeting, the worms of ignorance crawl forth on every path where their existence was not suspected; elongated and—in the case of human worms—vociferous cupidity carries the day against them.

    Bradford, not far from Leeds, is another of the likely towns in which it might be supposed that Co-operation would flourish.  Yet it did not soon attain distinction there.  Its artisan population, energetic, conspiring, and resolute, suffered as much as the workpeople of any town.  Chartism could always count on a fighting corps of weavers in Bradford.  It has also had some stout co-operators, and in earlier days there was a branch of communists there who held a hall.

    Liverpool has known co-operative initiation.  Mr. John Finch, dating from 34, East Side of Salt House Dock, Liverpool (date about 1830), appeared as the treasurer and trustee of the first Liverpool Co-operative Society, and of the wholesale purchasing committee of that society.  He reported that the "First Christian Society" in Liverpool has 140 members, the business at the store being £60 per week, and that a second Christian Society had 40 members.  He mentioned the existence of five societies in Carlisle, and gave the names of five presidents, five secretaries, and five treasurers.  The highest capital possessed by one of these societies was £260, the weekly receipts £50.  He says, the "Weekly Free Press takes Co-operation up too coldly and is too much of a Radical to do the cause any good."  Yet as the most important advocates of Co-operation wrote in it, and the chief Metropolitan social proceedings were printed in it; as this was the only newspaper representing Co-operation, a public advocate of the cause should have held his disparaging tongue until there was a choice.  The Weekly Free Press was a London newspaper, of 1830, which announced that it was "exclusively devoted to the interests of Co-operation."  The Godalming Co-operative Society had passed a resolution "that every member who takes in a weekly paper shall substitute the Weekly Free Press in its stead."  This society had very decided ideas how to get an organ of the movement into circulation.  The Weekly Free Press was the earliest newspaper of repute which represented Co-operation.

    The first Liverpool Society of 1830 was the earliest which prefixed an address to its rules.  It was not very well written, but the example was a good one.  It gave the opportunity of interesting those into whose hands the rules fell.

    The Warrington Society of 1831 prefixed to its articles an excellent sentence from Isaiah, namely, "They helped every one his neighbour, and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage."  The rules of this society are remarkable, like all the rules of the co-operative societies of that time, for their anxiety concerning the moral character of their members.  They prohibited indecent and improper language in the committee-room; they would hold no meeting in a public-house; no person was refused on account of religious opinions; no person of an immoral character was admitted; and, if any member became notably vicious after he was a member, he was expelled unless he reformed.  They fixed the interest on money borrowed at 5 per cent.—the earliest instance of that amount being named in official rules.  One of their rules was that "when sufficient money was in their hands some kind of manufacture should be commenced."  They refused, "as a body, to be connected with any political body whatever, or with any unions for strikes against masters."  The society was pledged to "steadily pursue its own objects."  Had it done so they would have been going on now.  They, however, did think of progress.  This Warrington Society agreed to form a library, to take in a newspaper, and to publish tracts on Co-operation—not common with many modern societies.

    The Runcorn Economical Society of 1831 took for its motto the brief and striking passage, "Sirs, ye are brethren."  But they did not apply the spirit of this to women, for they allowed no female to serve in any office.  Neither did they permit any member to make known to any person who was not a member the profits arising from the society's store; a great contrast to the more profitable publicity of later societies.  No doubt the Runcorners made good profits.  No society ever forbids disclosures unless it has something to its own advantage to conceal.  This society was creditably fastidious as to its members.  It would have none but those of good character, who were sober, industrious, and of general good health.  They did not wish sickly colleagues, nor would they admit a member under sixteen, nor above forty years of age—as though frugality was a virtue unsuitable to the young, or not necessary for the old.

    In the rules of the first Preston Society, instituted on Whit Monday, 1834 (I quote from the copy which belonged to Mr. John Finch, then of Cook Street, Liverpool), there was one against speaking disrespectfully of the goods of the society.  It declared that "if any member did so, he should be excluded, and his share should be under a forfeit of six months' profit, together with a discount of 10 per cent. for the benefit of the establishment.  The directors of many other societies would have more peace of mind if they could get passed rules of this description.  This society accepted no member who belonged to another co-operative society, nor, if he had formerly belonged to one, unless he produced testimonials as to his character and the cause of his leaving.  Any market man neglecting to attend when sent for, or not attending on market days at proper time, was fined a sum equal to that paid for another member's attendance.  No money was paid to the wife of any member, unless her husband agreed to her receiving it.  The Rochdale Society never put any of this nonsense into its rules, but paid the woman member, and left the husband to his remedy, which wise magistrates made it difficult for him to get.

    The rules of the earlier co-operative societies form an interesting subject of study.  Some of the societies seem to have expected rapscallion associates, for they had rules for the treatment of felons who might be discovered among them.  But as a whole, a study of the rules would greatly exalt the political estimate of the capacity of the working class for self-government.  The wisdom, the prudence, the patient devices, which co-operative rules display, must be quite unknown, or we should never have heard the foolish and wholesale disparagements of working people which have defaced discussion in Parliament.

    America is not only a country where social ideas have room for expansion, but also seems a place where the art of writing about them improves.  Certainly emigrants there will relate what they never tell at home.  The Countess Ossoli used to value the "rough pieces of personal experience" (always fresh and excellent packages of knowledge when you can get them) which backwoodsmen would tell by their night fires.  At home persons imagine home facts can have no interest, or conclude that they are well known.  Few writers know everything, and it is well for the reader if an historian has but a limited belief in his own knowledge, and is minded to inquire widely of others.  Under this impression I became possessed of the following curious history of the early adventures of a Lancashire store (England) related to me by a Lowell correspondent, whose name (the printer not returning me the letter) I regret not being able to give.

    "The Blackley (Lancashire) Store commenced in the fall of 1860 with some forty members.  We lost no time in renting premises and commencing business.  The first year I acted as secretary, and then resigned my office to abler hands, which still retain it.  I was, however, elected a director, and served in the various offices of Committeeman, President, Auditor, and Librarian, six years more.  During the first year we acted on the plan of giving the storekeeper a dividend on his wages, equal to that paid to members on their purchases.  We may, therefore, claim to be the first, or about the first, society in England to adopt the device.  It was discontinued for a time—it has, however, been readopted.  Our first president, who was an overseer in one of the mills in the village, was addicted to thinking that respectability was a good thing for us, and thought us fortunate when the élite of the village smiled on us.  It was a great day for him when at one of our meetings we had a real live mayor to preside, supported by the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, a canon of the Church, the village rector and other dignitaries.  But it did us little good. [243]  When the show was over there was an end of them, because they did not really care for us.  But one gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Child, rector of a neighbouring parish, did take a kindly interest in us, and was always ready to help us when need came, and our members became much attached to him.  At the end of the first year we set about building a store of our own, and our president designed that the laying of the cornerstone should be a grand affair.  A silver trowel was to be presented to some one.  Every one of us turned to our friend, the Rev. Mr. Child, whom we wished should possess it.  Alas! our ceremoniously-minded president suggested it would not be courteous to our rector, the Rev. Mr. Deeling, to ignore him and offer it to another, though he had shown us little favour, and was under the influence of the shopocracy.  At length we agreed to offer the silver trowel to the rector, in the hope that he would refuse it, and we should be free to confer it on our friend Mr. Child.  Woe on us!  Rector Deeling accepted it!  He came and did the work, made us a short speech, took the trowel, and ever after shunned us.  During the cotton famine many of our members suffered severely, but it was an inexorable condition with the committee of relief which came into being in our quarter, that no member of the store could receive anything from them so long as he had a shilling invested; and I shall long remember seeing the poor fellows coming week after week for a few shillings out of their savings, until it was all gone, whilst their neighbours, who had as good an opportunity but saved nothing, were being well cared for.  I have often felt a wonder, on looking back to that dreadful time, how we got through it without coming to grief.  A young society, with small capital, and putting up a building that cost £1,000 yet we stood well upright.  I am certain if we had foreseen the events of the four years that were then before us, we should certainly have shrunk from encountering them.  Nevertheless, we weathered the storms, and came out prosperous.  I can only account for our success by the inherent soundness of the co-operative principle, and its self-sustaining power.  It was certainly not owing to any particular ability or foresight in the men who had the conduct of it.  I have no further facts from this American side of the water for you, and you do not ask for opinions, yet I cannot help giving some.  The people of America, I think, are not ripe for co-operation—they have not been pinched enough, and the opportunities for individual enterprise are too good.  They cannot understand anything but a speculation to make money, and the general moral scepticism is such that any one promoting a store would be suspected of wanting to make something out of it."

    The story of the silver trowel is as pretty an episode as any to be met with in the history of co-operative adventures.  The rector who took it did quite right, and the silly co-operators who offered it deserved to lose it.  How was he to know that they did not intend to honour him when they pretended they did?  The president who plotted the presentation was evidently a man well up in his line of business.  It is a sacred rule of English public life never to bring to the front actual workers of mark, lest you should deter people from coming to the front who always hold back.  If any honour is to be shown, the rule is to pass by all who have earned it, and bestow it upon some one never known to do anything.  The Blackley co-operators are to be congratulated.  They lost their trowel on sound conventional principles.  But if they had no money left to make an equal honorary present to their real friend, the Rev, Mr. Child, they ought to have stood in the market-place on Saturday nights and begged, like Homer, with their hats, until they had enough money for the purpose.

    In Radnorshire there is a parish of the name of Evenjobb—pleasant to a workman's ears.  Pleasanter than Mealsgate or Boggrow, or other extraordinarily-named places which abound in Cumberland, is the wide, watery plain of Blennerhasset, with its little bridge and quaint houses.  Here in this seldom-mentioned spot, is a very old-endowed Presbyterian meeting house, where heretics of that order once had a secure refuge to themselves.  The co-operative store there is a very primitive one; none like it exists elsewhere in England.  The members subscribe no capital and take no shares.  Mr. William Lawson provided the whole.  They have all the profits and he has all the risk and no interest, or if any accrues to him he spends it for the "public good."  He has since wisely placed at the service of the members the opportunity of purchasing the shares for themselves, and remodelling the store on the plan of those which are self-directed and managed by members, who take interest because they take the risks.

    There are stores of the self-helping type now established in the neighbourhood of Blennerhasset.  I delivered in 1874 the opening addresses of the Aspatria Society's Store in Noble Temple, and a well-built, substantial, well-arranged store it is.  From the name Noble Temple, the stranger would expect that it was some stupendous structure of unwonted beauty, or that some architect, amazed at the felicity of his conception, had given it that exalted name ; whereas the ground on which it stands happened to be named "Noble," and the very flat and ordinary fields around are called "Noble Fields."  Mr. W. Lawson built the hall for the people and considerately stipulated that it should be used on Sundays for useful addresses.

    There are many of the Scotch societies remarkable for singular features.  There was the Kilmarnock Store, which kept two cats—a black cat and a tabby cat—to catch the mice of the store.  But a prudent member, thinking this double feline expenditure told unfavourably on the dividends, attention was duly called to it.  At a Board meeting the question was argued all one night.  There was a black cat party and a tabby cat party.  It was agreed on both sides that the two could not be kept; and a strong partisan of the tabby cat moved the adjournment of the debate.  In the meantime the black cat, either through hearing the discussion, or finding a deficiency of milk, or more probably being carried off by the kind-hearted wife of some member—disappeared; and the division was never taken; and the secretary, who was instructed to ascertain what effect its support would have upon the dividends, never concluded his calculations.

    Mauchline, which Burns knew so well, never took to co-operation until the agitation for the People's Charter set men thinking of self-help.  The committee began with giving credit to the extent of two-thirds of the subscribed capital of each member.  At a later stage in their career they extended the credit to the whole of the subscribed capital.  The store must have been the most rickety thing out.  Mr. Hugh Gibb, who was its president, and who understood co-operation, resisted this discreditable policy with an honourable persistence which rendered him unpopular.  He constantly described credit as a foul blot upon co-operation, since it tended to keep the members in a state of dependence from which co-operation was intended to deliver them.  By this time the store has got off the siding of credit, and is fairly upon the main line of cash payments.

    The purchase of the Mechanics' Institution at Blaydon—Joseph Cowen, junr., was the founder—by the co-operative store is an instance of public spirit more remarkable than that displayed by any other society.  This Mechanics' Institution has fulfilled in its day more of the functions which Mechanics' Institutions were intended for, than have been fulfilled elsewhere.  Political, social, and theological lectures could be delivered from its platform.  Its news-room was open on the Sunday, when it could be of most service to the working class.  Eminent public men were honorary members of it; Garibaldi, Orsini, Kossuth, Mazzini were the chief names.  The first honorary distinction conferred upon me, and one I value, was that of placing my name on that roll.  On the Co-operative Store annexing it to their Society, they still kept the platform free and the news-room open on Sunday.  The Institution is well supplied with books and the best newspapers of the day, accessible to all the members of the store free, and to the villagers not belonging to the stores on payment of a small fee.  In addition to a free library, well supplied with desirable books, the social features of a working-man's club are added.  This liberal provision for the education and social pleasures of the co-operators illustrates the high spirit in which the best stores have been conceived and conducted.

    Co-operators have received distinguished encouragement to devote part of their funds to educational purposes whenever they have made known that they were endeavouring to form a library.  The Sunderland Society, in 1863, received gifts of books from Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Mill, Lord Brougham, and Mazzini in 1864.  Later, in 1877, Professor Tyndall gave a complete set of his works to be presented to such Co-operative Society as I might select.  They were awarded to the Blaydon-on-Tyne Society.  Blaydon-on-Tyne is merely a small village, through which the river and the railway run, and distinguished as the birthplace and residence of Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P.  The houses are encompassed by grim manufacturing works, yet Blaydon has the most remarkable store next to that of Rochdale.  It began to grow, and went straight on growing.  Its book-keeping is considered quite a model of method.  The store has grown from a house to a street.  The library contains upwards of 1,500 volumes of new books.  Of course they have an Education Fund of 2½ per cent, net profits, reserved for instruction.  No co-operative society has outside respect which has not this feature.

    The store assets increased by upwards of £500 during 1876, notwithstanding that there had been £20,119 in shares and profit withdrawn.  After discharging horse and cart and all other accounts, there was paid in dividends £13,003.  Mr. Spotswood informs me that their Education Fund was then close upon £400 a year, and that they were busy fitting up three branches with news-rooms and libraries.  [244]  There is a good science class in Blaydon, and most of the students are the sons of members.  The pitmen and artisans of the Tyneside are distinguished among workmen for their love of mathematical science, and Professor Tyndall's gift will be read, and studied, and valued there.

 
CHAPTER XXXIV.

VICISSITUDES OF INDUSTRIAL LITERATURE.

CO-OPERATIVE literature has a distinctively English character.  It is enthusiastic and considerate, advising gain only by equitable means.  If it dreams, it dreams constantly how men can best take the next step before them.  Nevertheless it would be the better in some respects for an infusion of Continental and American ideas into it.  There are what naturalists would call "specific growths" of associative conceptions in other countries, richer and loftier than ours, and they would be valuable additions to the bleak and hardier products of Great Britain.  The co-operative idea in its "germ state" has always been in the mind of man in all countries though in very atomic form.  The power and advantage of mere unity were themes of the ancient fabulists, and philosophers speculated how unity in life might produce moral as well as physical advantages.  Ancient India, as we now know, was rich in pacific thought which gave rise to pastoral communities.  Comparative co-operation would be as interesting in social science as comparative language or comparative anatomy has been in philology and osteology.

    The co-operative custom of Greek fishermen, of Cornish and Northumberland miners, of Gruyere cheese makers, of American and Chinese sailors; the devices of partnership of Ambelaika, show that for some two centuries constructive co-operation has been in action without being extended to other places or trades.

    In other countries men of the "wilder sort" are wilder than in England, and have sometimes made communistic co-operation hostile and alarming.

    One reason why the American nation is smarter than the English is, that the State has a Propagandist Department, and publishes costly books for the information of their people.  To them England must seem parsimonious, seeing that we have growls in Parliament at the expense of printing the dreary-looking Blue Books we produce.  There come over here from America, every year, volumes teeming with maps and diagrams of every kind, issued by the State Board of Health and the Bureau of Labour of Washington and Massachusetts.  But we have no Bureau of Labour, though we ewe everything to our being a manufacturing country. [245]  No minister has ever thought of creating a State Department of Labour.  It is with difficulty that we get, every three years, a few sheets printed of the Reports of Friendly and Co-operative Societies.  Deputations of members of Parliament had to be appointed to wait on the Printing Committee to get this done; and it is believed the Committee took medical advice before meeting the deputation, as no one can foresee what the effects might be.  For several years we had debates at our Annual Congress as to how the House of Commons might be approached with this momentous application.  Yet it was not a question of loss.  It is economy to give the information.  In America it is given by the State to every society or manufacturer of mark likely to profit by it.  The American reports mentioned, some years exceed 600 pages, handsomely bound and lettered, suitable for a gentleman's library.  A considerable number of these volumes are sent to England, to societies and individuals publicly known to be interested in the questions to which they relate.

    There is one instance in which the English Government, it must be owned, has done more than any other government, in publishing Blue Books upon the condition of the Industrial Classes Abroad, written by Her Majesty's Secretaries of Embassy and Legation which were issued for three years under the direction of Lord Clarendon.  The reports gave information as to the state of labour markets in foreign countries, the purchasing power of the wages paid compared with what the same money would procure at home; the manner in which workmen were hired and housed; the quality of the work executed; the kind of education to be had for families of workmen; the conditions of health in the quarters workmen would occupy, and other information of the utmost value to emigrant artisans and labourers. [246]

    So long as social ideas on the continent are sensible, we seldom hear of them in our journals or from the lips of our politicians, even though the social movement may be extensive and creditable.  But if an idiot or an enemy makes a speech to some obscure club it is printed in small capitals, as though the end of the world had been suddenly disclosed.

    The Standard is a curious and mysterious source of this information.  Though Conservative, it was long the only penny daily paper in which the working-class democrat found a full account of the proceedings in Parliament, so essential to their information.  Besides, it gives copious accounts of the revolutionary leaders, their movements and speeches abroad.  If Castelar, Gambetta, Victor Hugo, or Bakunin have made speeches of mark, or of alarming import, insurgent readers in England could find the most complete and important passages in the columns of the Standard alone.  Possibly its idea is that these reports would excite the apprehensions of Conservative supporters, and terrify the immobile and comfortable portion of the middle class.  In 1871, when the Industrial International Association met at Geneva, this journal told us that the internationalists raised the "Swiss flag without the cross, democracy without religion," and the Red Republic, and a good deal more.  The late Mr. George Odger was at the Congress.  At that time, the Emperor Napoleon being uncomfortable about the proceedings of Giaribaldi, whom the association wished to invite to their Congress, M. Boitelle had the foreign members arrested as they passed through France, and their papers seized.  Two of the members, Mr. George Odger and Mr. Cremer, "being of English birth," the Standard said "English like, they made an awful row about this insult to their country and their flag."  Lord Cowley took the matter up; the men were soon at liberty, but their papers were detained by the police, and months elapsed before the delegates received them back.  Napoleon wished to please Lord Cowley and to win the working men of Paris, so M. Rouher yielded up the documents to Odger, and "requested Bourdon, as the man whose signature stood first on the Paris memoir, to honour him with a call at the Ministry of the Interior."

    The Standard of October, 1871, gave particulars of the trial of Netschaiew, and quoted a document produced on that occasion, purporting to detail the duties of the real Revolutionists being the profession of faith of the Russian Nihilists—presenting it as "the ne plus ultra of Socialism."  A more scoundrelly document was never printed.  The conciseness and precision of its language prove it to be the work of a very accomplished adversary.  The creed contained eleven articles; but the quotation of six of them will abundantly satisfy the curiosity of the reader.  They treated of the "position of a revolutionist towards himself."

"1. The revolutionist is a condemned man.  He can have neither interest, nor business, nor sentiment, nor attachment, nor property, nor even a name.  Everything is absorbed in one exclusive object, one sole idea, one sole passion—revolution.

"2. He has torn asunder every bond of order, with the entire civilised world, with all laws, with all rules of propriety, with all the conventions, all the morals of this world.  He is a pitiless enemy to the world, and, if he continue to live in it, it can only be with the object of destroying it the more surely.

"3. The revolutionist despises all doctrines and renounces all worldly science, which he abandons to future generations.  He recognises only one science—that of destruction.  For that, and that alone, he studies mechanics, physics, chemistry —even medicines.  He studies night and day the living science of men, of characters, and all the circumstances and conditions of actual society in every possible sphere.  The only object to be attained is the destruction, by the promptest means possible, of this infamous society.

"4. He despises public opinion; and detests the existing state of public morals in all its phases.  The only morality lie can recognise is that which lends its aid to the triumph or revolution; and everything which is an obstacle to the attainment of this end is immoral and criminal.

"5. The revolutionist is without pity for the State and all the most intelligent classes of society.  Between himself and them there is continued implacable war. He ought to learn to suffer tortures.

"6. Every tender and effeminate sentiment towards relations—every feeling of friendship, of love, of gratitude, and even of honour—ought to be dominated by the cold passion of revolution alone.  There can be, for him, but one consolation, one recompense, and one satisfaction—the success of revolution.  Day and night he should have only one thought, one object in view—destruction without pity.  Marching coldly and indefatigably towards his end, he ought to be ready to sacrifice his own life, and to take, with his own hands, the lives of all those who attempt to impede the realisation of this object."

    Society is very safe if its destruction is only to be accomplished by agents of this quality.  No country could hope to produce more than one madman in a century, capable of devotion to this cheerless, unrequiting, and self-murdering creed.  What there would remain to revolutionise when everything is destroyed, only a lunatic could discover.  Poor Socialism, whose disease is too much trust in humanity, whose ambition is labour, and whose passion is to share the fruits with others, has met with critics insane enough to believe that Netschaiew was its exponent.

    So late as when the Commune was a source of political trouble in Paris, the advocates of the Commune were called "Communists," and the ignorance of the English press was so great, that these agitators were always represented as partisans of a social theory of community of property.  Whereas, in that sense, none of the leaders of the Commune were communists.  The Commune meant the parish, and the same party in England—had it arisen in England—would have been called Parochialists.  The advocacy of the Commune is the most wholesome and English agitation that ever took place in France.  It arose in a desire of the French to adopt our local system of self-government.  It was the greatest compliment they ever paid us.  And the English press repaid it by representing them as spoliators, utopianists, and organised madmen.  During the invasion of the Germans the French found that centralisation had ruined the nation.  The mayors of all towns being appointed by the Government, when the Government fell, all local authorities fell, and the Germans overran the helpless towns.  Had the Germans invaded England, every town would have raised a regiment by local authority, and every county would have furnished an army.  Every inch of ground would have been contested by a locally organised force.  It was this the Communists of France wished to imitate.  The claim for local self-government was made chiefly in Paris, and for Paris alone—there being probably no chance of sustaining a larger claim: but as far as it went the claim was wholesome.  The French have been so long accustomed to centralisation that their statesmen are incapable of conceiving how local self-government can co-exist with a state of general government.  In England we have some 20,000 parishes.  If we had centralisation instead, and any public man proposed that 20,000 small governments should be set up within the central government, he would seem a madman to us.  But we know from experience that local self-government is the strength and sanity of this nation.  The first time the French imitated this sanity, our press, with almost one accord, called them madmen.  William de Fonvielle—whose brother, Count de Fonvielle, was shot at by one of the Bonapartes—exerted himself, in the French press, to procure for the Communists the name of Communardists, to prevent the English press making the mistake about them which wrought so much mischief on public opinion here.  I assisted him where I could, but we had small success then.

    The pretty name of Socialism had got a few dashes of eccentric colour laid upon it by some wayward artists in advocacy, which casual observers—who had only a superficial! acquaintance with it, and no sympathy for it which might lead them to make inquiries—mistook for the original hue, and did not know that the alien streaks would all be washed off in the first genial shower of success.  Earl Russell pointed out, some years ago, that if the Reformation was to be judged by the language and vagaries of Luther, Knox, and other wild-speaking Protestants, it would not have a respectable adherent among us.

    The English theory of "communism," if such a word can be employed here, may be summed up in two things: 1. The hire of capital by labour, and industry taking the profit. 2. All taxes being merged in a single tax on capital, which Sir Robert Peel began when he devised the income-tax.  Labour and capital would then subscribe equitably to the expenses of the State, each according to its gains or possessions.

    Workmen are not the only men with a craze in advocacy.  No sooner does a difficulty occur in America as to the rate of railway wages, than sober journalists screech upon the prevalence of "Socialistic" ideas and put wild notions into the heads of the men.  The ancient conflict between worker and employer always seems new to journalists.  The mechanic calls his master a "capitalist," and the journalist calls the workman a "communist."  The same kind of thing no doubt went on at the building of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues—which Moses, unaware of the facts, otherwise accounted for—was most likely brought about by journalists.

    Among all the people of America, no one ever heard of a conspiring or fighting communist.  The people who form communities in America are pacific to feebleness, and criminally apathetic in regard to politics.  The communistic Germans there are peaceable, domestic, and dreaming.  The followers of Lasalle, if they had all emigrated to America, would be insufficient to influence any State Legislature to establish Credit Banks.  The railway men do not want Credit Banks.  The Irish never understood Socialism, nor cared for it.  The mass of working men of America do not even understand Co-operation.  The Russians have some notions of Socialism; but Russians are very few in America, and Hertzen and Bakunin are dead.  The French are not Socialists, and would be perfectly content as they are, were it not for the "Saviours of Society," the most dangerous class in every community.  The term "communism" is a mere expletive of modern journalism, and is a form of swearing supposed in some quarters to be acceptable to middleclass shareholders.

    In the time of the first Reform Bill, many of the active co-operators in London were also politicians, and some of them listened to proposals of carrying the Reform Bill by force of arms.  This was the only time that social reformers were even indirectly mixed up with projects for violently changing the order of things.  But it is to be observed that their object was not to carry their social views into operation by these means, but to secure some larger measure of political liberty.  The conspiracy, such as it was—if conspiracy it can be called—was on behalf of political and not of social measures.  The fact is, at that time, the action in which they took interest was less of the nature of conspiracy than of excitement, impulse, and indignation at the existence of the political state of things which seemed hopeless of improvement by reason.  Indeed, the middle class shared the same excitement, and were equally as forward in proposing violent proceedings [247] as the working class.  It is worthy to be particularised that the best known practical instigator of military action was a foreigner—one Colonel Macerone.  If the reader will turn to the pamphlets which the Colonel published he will find that the kind of men Macerone sought to call to arms were far from being dissolute, sensual, or ambitious of their own comfort.  The men who were to march on the Government were to be allowed but a few pence a day for their subsistence, and the Colonel pointed out the chief kind of food they were to carry with them, a very moderate portion of which they were to eat.  Water or milk was to be their only beverage.  A more humble or abstemious band of warriors were never brought into the field than those whom Colonel Macerone sought to assemble.

    About 1830 a penny pamphlet was published by C. Bennett, of 37, Holywell Street, entitled "Edmund's Citizen Soldier."  The first portion was "That true citizen soldier, Colonel Macerone, remarks that the population of most countries are much better acquainted with the use of arms and with the practice of military movements than the English citizens are.  Every man, and almost every boy in America possesses the unerring rifle.  In France, one man in every ten has seen military service.  England, however, is the great workshop for arms for all the world, and the fault is our own if we learn not the use of the things we make.  The pike, made of the best ash, is sold by Macerone, at 8, Upper George Street, Bryanstone Square, at 10s.  The short bayonet will not protect a man from severe cuts from the long sword of a bold horse-soldier.  The long pike will.  A walking soldier runs tenfold more danger in flying from a horse-soldier, than in showing a determined neck-or-nothing front to the mounted horseman."

    Of course, had revolvers been then a military arm, the half-famished pike-men had had a poor chance against the well-fed mounted horsemen.  But the yeoman cavalry of that day were far from being unapproachable.  My old friend James Watson, mentioned as one of the earliest co-operative missionaries on record, possessed one of the "Colonel Macerones," as these pikes were called.  When I came into possession of his publishing house in Queen's Head Passage, London, I found one which had long been stored there.  It is still in my possession.  In 1848, when the famous 10th of April came, and the Duke of Wellington fortified the Bank of England because the poor Chartists took the field under Feargus O'Connor—and a million special constables were sworn in, and Louis Napoleon, then resident in London, was reported one of them—this solitary pike was the only weapon in the metropolis with which the "Saviours of Society" could be opposed.  The Duke of Wellington could have no idea of the risks he ran.  It still stands at the door of my chambers, and I have shown it to Cabinet Ministers when opportunity has offered, that they might understand what steps it might be necessary to take, in case the entire Socialistic arsenal in England (preserved in my room) should be brought to bear upon the Government in favour of Co-operation. [248]

    Joseph Smith, the "sheep-maker" (who would not allow an audience to depart until they had subscribed for a sheep for the Queenwood community), mentioned previously, returned to England in 1873, and after thirty years' absence, unchanged in appearance, in voice, or fervour, addressed a new generation of co-operators.  He returned to Wissahickon, Manayunkway, Philadelphia, where he keeps the "Maple Spring" Hotel, where he has the most grotesque collection of nature and art ever seen since Noah's Ark was stocked.  As I have said, he certainly had as much "grit" in him as any Yankee.  There is no doubt that he began business on his own account at seven years of age in some precocious way.  There is no danger to him now, in saying that his first appearance in politics was knocking an officer off his horse by a brickbat at Peterloo in 1819, excited by the way the people were wantonly slashed by ruffians of "order."  He was the only one of the Blanketeers I have known.  The Blanketeers were a band of distressed weavers, who set out from Manchester in 1817 to walk to London, to present a remonstrance to George the Third.  They were called "Blanketeers" because they each carried a blanket to wrap himself in by the wayside at night, and a pair of stockings to replace those worn out in the journey.  Each poor fellow carried in his hand his "Remonstrance" without money or food, trusting to the charity of patriots of his own class for bread on his march.  Thus these melancholy insurgents, armed only with a bit of paper to present to as hopeless a king as ever reigned, set out on their march to London.  The military were set upon this miserable band, and Joseph Smith was one of those who were stopped and turned back at Stockport.  He claims to have devised the first social tea-party at the Manchester Co-operative Society on December 24, 1829—a much more cheerful and hopeful undertaking than Blanketeering.

    In November, 1847, we had a German Communist Conference in London, at which Dr. Karl Marx presided, who always presented with great ability the principles of Co-operation with a pernicious State point sticking through them.  He said in a manifesto which he produced, that the aim of the communists was the overthrow of the rule of the capitalists by the acquisition of political power.  The aim of the English communists has always been to become capitalists themselves, to supersede the rule of the capitalists by taking the "rule" of it, into their own hands for their mutual advantage.  A congress of the same school was held at Geneva in 1867.  Contempt was expressed for the dwarfish forms of redress which the slave of wages could effect by the co-operative system.  "They could never transform capitalistic society.  That can never be done save by the transfer of the organised forces of society."  This was no congress of co-operators, but of mere politicians with an eye to State action.  Of the sixty delegates present only seven were English, and this was not their doctrine.

    Of later literature, including chiefly publications, explanatory and defensive of Co-operation, appearing since 1841, may be named the Oracle of Reason, the Movement, the Reasoner, the People's Review, the Cause of the People, the Counsellor, the English Leader, the Secular World, the Social Economist, and the Secular Review.  These journals, extending from 1841 to 1877, were edited chiefly by myself, sometimes jointly with others.  They are named here because they took up the story of Co-operation where the New Moral World left it, and continued it when there was no other representation of it in the press.  Every prospectus of these papers dealt with the subject, and the pages of each journal were more or less conspicuously occupied by it.

    The Oracle of Reason was commenced by Charles Southwell, whose name appeared as editor until his imprisonment, in Bristol, when I took his place until the same misadventure occurred to me at Gloucester, being at the time on my way to Bristol to visit him in gaol there.  When the two volumes of the Oracle ended, Maltus Questell Ryall and myself commenced the Movement.  The Oracle and the Movement contained "Letters to the Socialists of England," and the Movement ended with the "Visit to Harmony Hall," giving an account of the earlier and final state of the Queenwood Community.

    In 1845, I published a little book entitled "Rationalism," which was then the legal name of Co-operation; the societies then known to the public being enrolled under an Act of Parliament as associations of "Rational Religionists."  The only reason for mentioning the book is, that the reader who may chance to look into it will see that the conception of the co-operative movement, the criticism and defence of its principles and policy pervading this history, were indicated there.  The Cause of the People was edited by W. J. Linton and myself, Mr. Linton well known to young politicians of that day as the editor of the National, and to artists as the chief of wood engravers, and since as an advocate of the political and associative views of Joseph Mazzini.  When the New Moral World ceased, I contributed papers on the social movement in the Herald of Progress, edited by, John Cramp, and incorporated this periodical in the Reasoner, commenced in 1846, of which twenty-six volumes appeared consecutively.  The Counsellor contained communications from William Cooper, the chief writer of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers, and one from Mr. Abram Howard, the President of the Rochdale Society at this time. [249]  The English Leader, which appeared under two editors, and extended to two volumes, continued to be the organ for special papers on Co-operation.  The Secular World also included a distinct department, entitled the "Social Economist," of which the chief writer was Mr. Ebenezer Edger before named, who promoted Co-operation with the ability and zeal of his family, never hesitating at personal cost to himself.  Afterwards the Social Economist appeared as a separate journal under the joint editorship of myself and Mr. Edward Owen Greening, who had previously projected the Industrial Partnerships Record, published in Manchester in 1862, the first paper which treated Co-operation as a commercial movement.  Co-operative stores and productive manufacturing societies had by that time grown to an importance which warranted them being treated as industrial enterprises, affording opportunities to the general public of profitable investment.  The Industrial Partnership Record was the first paper that published "Share Lists" of those concerns.  Mr. Greening afterwards established the Agricultural Economist [250] (a name suggested by me), the largest commercial paper the co-operative movement had had, to which, at periods, I was a contributor.  Of separate pamphlets the best known is the "History of Co-operation in Rochdale," narrating its career from 1844 to 1892 (published by Sonnenschein). Mr. William Cooper, of the Rochdale Pioneers, in a letter to the Daily News (1861) reported that as many as 260 societies were commenced within two or three years after the publication of the "History" from 1844 to 1892, through the evidence afforded in the story of what can be done by people with the idea of self-help in their minds.  In some towns the story was read night after night to meetings of working men. [251]  This was also done at Melbourne, Australia.  Many years after the appearance of the work, when its story might be regarded as old, Mr. Pitman reprinted it in the Co-operator, it being supposed to be of interest to a new generation of co-operators.  It has been translated in the Courier de Lyons by Mons. Talandier and by Sig. Garrido into Spanish.  It has appeared also in many other languages, so that the Rochdale men have the merit of doing things distant people are willing to hear of.

    In 1871 the thirtieth volume of the Reasoner was commenced, which extended over two years.  I issued it at the request of a committee of co-operators and others in Lancashire and Yorkshire, who made themselves responsible for the printing expenses.  The editor was to be paid out of profits; but the comet of profits had so large an orbit that it never appeared in the editor's sphere.

    The "Moral Errors of Co-operation," a paper originally read at the Social Science Congress in the Guildhall, London, has been frequently reprinted by various societies.  The "Hundred Masters"' system, written in aid of the workmen when the famous struggle took place in Rochdale, when Co-operation halted on the way there, originally appeared in the Morning Star, a paper which gave more aid to progressive movements than any daily paper of that day in London.  "Industrial Partnerships, Divested of Sentimentality," was written to explain their business basis.  The "Logic of Co-operation" and "Commercial Co-operation" were two pamphlets of which many thousands were circulated, written in support of a question of establishing in co-operative production the same principle of dividing profits with the purchaser, which breathed life into the moribund stores of a former day.

    In maturer years, some authors are glad to have it forgotten that they have written certain works in their earlier days.  For me no regret remains.  Other persons have, in many instances, considerately come forward and taken this responsibility on themselves, either by printing editions of my books and putting their own name on the title-page; or by copying whole chapters into works of their own, as their own; or by translating a whole book into another language, where it had the honour of appearing as an original work in that tongue by an author unknown to me.  The "History of Co-operation in Rochdale" has as often appeared without my name as with it.  In Paisley a summary was made of it and sold without my knowledge.  After it was done a copy of it was sent to me, and I was asked whether I would permit it appearing without my name.  I said I would; the reason given for the request being that people would be more likely to read the book if they did not know who was the author, which I took to be a delicate way of telling me I was not a popular writer.  The Chambers Brothers published a paper in their Journal, by one of their contributors, who had interwoven essential portions of the Rochdale story into his article without reference to its origin, no doubt apprehensive lest the mention of the author might jeopardise its insertion.  But when the Chambers became aware of it, they frankly supplied the omission by a note in their Journal.

    Even distance, which lends enchantment to so many things, can do nothing for me.  A few years ago an American preacher called upon me, and told me that one of his brethren had printed an edition of one of my books, "Public Speaking and Debate" (written for co-operative advocates and others), and composed a preface of his own and put his own name on the title-page, which had done the sale a world of good.  Some of the proceeds would have done me good in those days, but my friendly informant did not advert to the probability of that.  Not long ago the editor of an International Journal, a paper issued in London with a view to furnish benighted Englishmen with original translations of foreign literature, bestowed upon his readers chapter after chapter of what he led them to believe, and what he believed himself, was a new and readable history of certain co-operative stores in England, based on the recent German work of Eugene Richter.  After this had proceeded for some weeks I sent word to the editor that if he was at any expense in providing his translation, I could send him the chapters in English, as they were part of a book published by me in London sixteen years before.  The editor sent me the volume from which he was printing, that I might see in what way he had been misled, and discontinued further publication.  The book was entitled "Co-operative Stores" and published by Leypoldt and Holt, of New York, who probably had no knowledge from what materials the work had been compiled.  Eugene Richter's work, on which the Leypoldt one is based, I have never seen.  As far as reprints of anything I have written are concerned, I have given permission without conditions to any one asking it, content that he thought some usefulness might thereby arise.  An unexpected instance of care for my reputation, as shown by the thoughtful omission of my name, occurred in the Quarterly Review.  A well-known writer [250] having supplied an article on a Co-operative topic, the "History of the Rochdale Pioneers" was one of five or six works placed at the head of it.  Of course the names of all the writers were duly added.  But when the editor came to mine, something had to be done.  To put down the book as authorless had been a singularity that might attract attention.  To avoid this the name was omitted of every other writer in the list, and for the first time an article in the Quarterly was devoted to six nameless authors, who had all written books of public interest.  The envious man in Æsop by forfeiting one eye put out two others, by losing my head five other writers were decapitated, and have gone down to posterity headless in Quarterly history.

    In June, 1860, a record of co-operative progress, conducted exclusively by working men, and entitled the Co-operator, was commenced.   Its first editor was Mr. E. Longfield.  Mr. Henry Pitman, of Manchester, was one of its early promoters.  This journal represented the Lancashire and Yorkshire co-operative societies.  By this time the reputation of the Rochdale Society continually attracted foreign visitors to it.  Professors of political economy and students of social life frequently sent inquiries as to its progress.  The letters which many of these gentlemen wrote, and the accounts they published in foreign journals of what had come under their notice in visits to England, form a very interesting portion of the papers in the Co-operator.  Professor V. A. Huber, of Wernigerode, was a frequent and instructive contributor.  Early in 1860, Gabriel Glutsak, civil engineer of Vienna, wrote to the Leeds Corn Mill Society for their statutes and those of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers, with a view to submit them to his Government, and to ask permission to establish similar societies there.  In 1863, L. Miloradovitsch, residing at Tschernigor, in Russia, two weeks distant from St. Petersburg, contributed an interesting paper on Russian associations.  Mr. Franz Wirth, editor of the Arbeitgeber, Frankfort, contributed information concerning Co-operation in Germany, and reported concerning their German Co-operator, the Innung der Zukunft, by Mr. Schulze, of Delitzsch.

    At first the Co-operator was a penny monthly.  At the end of twelve months it was stated to have reached a circulation of 10,000 copies.  This was an illusion by confounding the number printed with those sold.  When the first shriek of debt occurred, bales of obstinate numbers were found which would not carry themselves off.  Co-operation always proceeded under greater restrictions than those which trade imposed upon itself.  Besides pledging itself to genuineness, fair weight, and fair prices, the editors of its official papers frequently refused to recognise applications of the principles, however profitable, which were not considered useful or creditable to working men.  Mr. Pitman, later editor of the Co-operator, kept no terms with any who wished to go into tobacco manufacturing or brewing, and ultimately became disagreeable to those who thought of having their children vaccinated.

    The periodical literature of the societies continued to present various drolleries of thought, though not executed with that Japanese vividness of colour observable in its primitive efforts.  If a passing notice of them is made here, it is merely that the narrative may not be wanting in the light and shade belonging to it.  If the wilful reader should bestow as much attention upon periodicals the present writer has edited as he has upon co-operative journals, such reader would no doubt find (of another kind) quite as much matter to amuse him.

    In the Co-operator the artistic imagination was again occupied, as in earlier years, in endeavouring to devise symbols of Co-operation, but nothing very original was arrived at.  Societies fell back upon the old symbol of the Hand in Hand, to which they endeavoured to give a little freshness by writing under it the following verse—

It did not occur to the poet that the worthy brothers would faint much sooner if they endeavoured to march on hand in hand.  Co-operation has many applications, but crossing the streets of London is not one of them, for if several persons should endeavour to do that hand in hand they would all be knocked down.  The revivers of the "hand in hand" symbol seem to be regardless of Mr. Urquhart's doctrine, imported from a land of lepers, that shaking hands is an unwarrantable proceeding, a liberty not free from indelicacy, wanting in self respect on the part of those who offer or submit to it.  The co-operator of 1862 had recourse to the figure of our old friend, the young man endeavouring to break a bundle of sticks; but he is now represented as doing it in so dainty and fastidious a way, that he is not likely to succeed if he operated upon them singly; and there stand by him two young co-operators, one apparently a Scotchman, wearing a kilt, both, however, watching the operation as though they were perfectly satisfied that nothing would come of it.  A belief that art must have some further resources in the way of symbols, led the editor of the Co-operator to offer a prize to students at the Manchester School of Art for a fresh emblem of unity.  The best of four designs was published, representing an arch with a very melancholy curvature, on which reposed the oft-seen figure of justice with her eyes bandaged, so that she cannot see what she is doing; and near to her was a lady representing Commerce, who appears to be playing the violin.  Underneath was a youth apparently tying the immemorial bundle of sticks, and a pitman wearing a cap of liberty, with a spade by his side, apparently suggesting that freedom was something to be dug for.  In the centre was a spirited group of three men at an anvil, one forging and two striking, in Ashantee attire, the limbs and body being quite bare.  The flying flakes of molten iron must have been encountered under great disadvantages.  The action at the forge is certainly co-operative, but the editor betrayed his scant appreciation of it by saying it would make a capital design for "our brothers in unity" (the Amalgamated Engineers were meant); but "our brothers in unity" did not take it up.

    The third volume of the Co-operator was edited by Mr. Henry Pitman.  He introduced a new illustration in which two workmen were approaching two bee-hives with a view to study the bees' habits; but, unfortunately, a stout swarm of bees were hovering over their heads, making the contemplation of their performance rather perilous.  A bee-hive does not admit of much artistic display, and bees themselves are not models for the imitation of human beings, since they are absolutely mad about work, and brutal to the drones when they have served their turn.  A society conducted on bee principles would make things very uncomfortable to the upper classes, and the capitalists would all be killed as soon as their money had been borrowed from them.  The popularity of bees is one of the greatest impostures in industrial literature.  However, the Co-operator, under Mr. Pitman's management, was a very useful paper.  Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, and Mr. William Howitt oft wrote in it very valuable letters.  Dr. King, of Brighton, sent information to it.  Canon Kingsley and the chief of the friends of industrial progress with whom he acted were contributors to its pages.  Writers actively engaged in the movement supplied papers or letters, and foreign correspondents furnished interesting facts and inquiries which will long have value.  But the success of journals of progress is not measurable by their merits.  The people the editor has in view to serve are the uninformed, and they do not care about papers because they are uninformed. It is to the credit of social propagandists that they appeal to reason.  This is against their success, since reason is seldom popular.  When Mr. Thornton Hunt left the Spectator he joined a journal which understood the popular taste, and the shrewd proprietor at once said to him, "Take note, Mr. Hunt, what we want on this paper is not strong thinking, but strong writing."  The Co-operator had little strong writing, that not being in its line, and was not over-weighted by strong thinking; but it had merits which deserved greater success than it met with.  It very early hung out signs of debt, and gave a great scream on the occasion, and actually put a black border round the statement in its own pages, as though it was anxious to announce its melancholy demise while it was yet alive.  Some one had revealed to the editor the difference between 10,000 printed and 10,000 sold.  Mr. J. S. Mill and Miss Helen Taylor gave £10 each to promote the continuance of the Co-operator, of which eight more volumes were issued.  In 1871, however, the debt amounted to £1,000.  The editor, nevertheless, refused to relinquish it, or accept an offer from the co-operators to purchase it.  It was not probable that he loved liability, though it had that appearance.  It was, doubtless, from a natural reluctance to relinquish a journal which he had conducted with usefulness and honourable perseverance during so many years, that he clung to it. It had but one printer during all that time, who had cheerfully suffered that considerable debt to accumulate.  If in patience or in faith he had shown this perseverance of trust, it was equally unprecedented and inexplicable.  Had his virtues been known in London, he would have been much sought after by editors of other periodicals, who would have appreciated such a printer.  Ultimately the debt was paid rightly and creditably, mainly by gifts from co-operative societies and votes from the Wholesale, who paid at one time the residue unliquidated, of upwards of £ 500.

    To the Co-operator has succeeded the Co-operative News, of which nine volumes had appeared, 1878.  This journal is the official representative of the societies.  A Newspaper Society was formed to establish the Co-operative News.  At the request of the committee, which included the leading co-operators of the North of England, I wrote the earlier prospectuses of the paper, and as they purposed buying up Mr. Pitman's Co-operator, I and Mr. Greening relinquished to them the Social Economist, which we conducted in London, in order that the new journal might have a clear field and the widest chance of a profitable career.  The Co-operative News is now owned by co-operative societies who hold shares in it.  For a time individuals held shares.  I was the last who did.  In 1876 I resigned mine in order that there might be that unity in its ownership which, in the opinion of its promoters, promised most efficiency for its management.  During an important period it was edited by Mr. J. C. Farn, who increased the economy of its management.  It was afterwards conducted by Mr. Joseph Smith and Mr. Samuel Bamford. Co-operative News, though a relevant, is not a profitable name.  The outside public look less into it than its general interest would repay, believing it to be a purely class paper.  Indeed, co-operators would take it in with more readiness if it bore a fresher name—a routine title tires the mind.  Working men some years ago would not take in the Working Man, one of the most instructive journals devised for them.  Working men are not fond of being advertised once a week as working men: for the same reason the middle class would not be enthusiastic on behalf of a paper called the Middle-class Man.  Mr. Cobden thought, when the Morning Star was commenced, that the public would value what they very much needed—news.  But news is only of value in the eyes of those who can understand its significance, and that implies considerable political capacity.  What the average public wanted was interpreted news—ready-made opinions—having little time and not much power to form their own.  Journals which gave them less news and more opinion had greater ascendancy than a journal which sought mainly to serve them by enabling them to think for themselves.  If men in a movement knew the value of a good paper representing it, guiding it, defending it, they would certainly provide one.  A co-operative society without intelligence, or an industrial movement without an organ, is like a steamboat without a propeller.  It is all vapour and clatter without progress.  An uninformed party is like a mere sailing boat. It only moves when outside winds blow, and is not always sure where it will be blown to then.

    In commencing their Journal the co-operators entered upon a new department of manufacture—the manufacture of a newspaper.  This is an art in which they had no experience, but in which they have displayed as much skill as people usually do who undertake an unaccustomed business.  Journalism in its business respects requires capital, skill, and technical knowledge, as other productive trades do.  Any one familiar with the mechanism of a newspaper can tell without being told—when it is conducted by charity.  Every column betrays its cheapness.  It is not the flag, it is then the rag of a party, and every page in it is more or less in tatters.  Instead of being the weekly library of the members, consisting of well-written, well-chosen articles, readable and reliable, it is the waste-paper basket of the movement, and everything goes into it which comes to hand and costs nothing.  No one is responsible for its policy; its excellences, if it has any, come by chance; its subjects are not predetermined; the treatment of them is not planned; and a journal of this description represents a movement without concert.  Poverty is always fatal to journalistic force.  Those who manage a poor journal mean well, but they do not know what to mean when they have no means.  They cannot be said to fail, because men who aim at nothing commonly hit it, and this is the general sort of success they do achieve.  Indeed, a journal may do worse than aim at nothing, because then nobody is hurt when its conductors strike their object.  It is much more serious when persons are permitted to be attacked, and local views—however excellent—are put forward in its pages in a party spirit, with disparagement of others, producing excitement instead of direction.  A representative journal owes equal respect and equal protection to all parties, guiding with dignity, securing progress with good feeling.  There is a difficulty in conducting an official paper—a difficulty everybody ought to see from the first—the difficulty of being impartial.  Impartiality is generally considered insipid.  Few writers can he entertaining unless they are abusive; and few editors are good for anything unless they are partisan.  If they have to strike out of an article the imputations in it, they commonly strike out the sense along with it, until the article has no more flavour than a turnip.  Still, if there be no choice, it is better to have a turnip journal than a cayenne pepper organ—better to have a salmon for an editor, who is always swimming about his subject, than a porcupine one, who is sticking his fretful quills into every reader, and pricking the movement once a week.

    Every new member of a store should be required to take the official paper.  This alone would increase the circulation of the Co-operative News 30,000 a year.  If every new member took the paper, every old member would be very much wondered at if he did not take it also.  No groceries carried into any member's house ought to be warranted unless the newspaper of the stores went with them.

    Co-operation is like a bicycle.  If those who ride it keep going they go pleasantly and swiftly, and travel far, but if they stop they must dismount or tumble.  There are many great measures a statesman could devise, and which he would gladly have his name associated with, which he cannot venture to bring forward unless there be educated opinion to appeal to.  He is obliged to confess that "the time has not arrived."  This is in some cases a cant excuse put forward by timid or insincere statesmen.  But the truth of the plea is too obvious where the public are ignorant.  In co-operative societies, in their smaller way, the same thing is true.  Every intelligent board of directors know that they could do much better for the society if the members were better informed.  There is not a co-operative society in the kingdom which might not be twice as rich as it is, if the members were as intelligent as they should be.  Without knowledge, all movement is like that of the vane—motion without progress, whereas Co-operation should resemble the screw steamer and unite motion with advancement.

 
CHAPTER XXXV.

FAMOUS PROMOTERS

IN 1848 Co-operation received unexpected recognition, great beyond anything before accorded to it, and one which only a man of singular fearlessness would have accorded: it was from John Stuart Mill.  In a work, sure to be read by the most influential thinkers, he said: "Far, however, from looking upon any of the various classes of Socialists [253] with any approach to disrespect, I honour the intention of almost all who are publicly known in that character, as well as the arguments and talents of several, and I regard them, taken collectively, as one of the most valuable elements of human improvement now existing, both from the impulse they give to the reconsideration and discussion of all the most important questions, and from the ideas they have contributed to many, ideas from which the most advanced supporters of the existing order of society have still much to learn." [254]  When this tribute was rendered to these social insurgents their fortunes were at a very low ebb.  Only three years before they had publicly failed at Queenwood.  The prophets who had done their best to fulfil their sinister predictions were exultant, contemptuous, and conceited.  It was no pleasant thing to bear the name of "Socialist" when Mr. Mill spoke of them with this generous respect.  He even went farther than vindicating their character—he suggested a justification of one of the least accepted of their schemes.  Mr. Mill said: "The objection ordinarily made to a system of community of property and equal distribution of produce—'that each person would be incessantly occupied in evading his share of the work'—is, I think, in general, considerably over-stated.  There is a kind of work, that of fighting, which is never conducted on any other than the Co-operative system: and neither in a rude nor in a civilised society has the supposed difficulty been experienced.  In no community has idleness ever been a cause of failure." [255]

    Long before Miss Martineau visited the Socialist Communities of America she held communication with co-operators at home.  "The Manchester and Salford Association for the Spread of Co-operative Knowledge" wrote to her, as her illustrations of Political Economy had interested the society.  Miss Martineau sent a reply in which she professed that their interest in her labours was very gratifying to her.  One passage is worth citing here for its valid import: "Within a short time, and happily before the energy of youth is past, I have been awakened from a state of aristocratic prejudice to a clear conviction of the equality of human rights, and of the paramount duty of society to provide for the support, comfort, and enlightenment of every member born into it.  All that I write is now with a view to the illustration of these great truths: with the hope of pressing upon the rich a conviction of their obligations, and of inducing the poor to urge their claims with moderation and forbearance, and to bear about with them the credentials of intelligence and good deserts."  Miss Martineau took care to indicate that the equality which she favoured was the equality of human right, and not of condition.

    Lord Brougham personally promoted Co-operation.  The first part of the "History of the Pioneers of Rochdale," by the present writer, was dedicated to him by his consent.  Where others were content to vaguely and generally praise a principle, Lord Brougham would single out and name for their credit and advantage those who had promoted or served it.  This is never done save by those who intend to aid a cause.  Lord Brougham was the first politician of great mark who cared about general progress, and whatever faults he had of personal ambition, he had little of the common fear of being compromised by being identified with the promotion of social welfare, because the persons caring for it had unpopular opinions of their own on other subjects.

    Those who write the most useful books have often to wait long for appreciation.  At the time of their appearance the public may not be caring about the subject, and when it does care about it, it has forgotten those who have written upon it.  This or some such cause has led to the comparative neglect of the books of Arthur John Booth, M.A., author of a work entitled the "Founder of Socialism in England" and of a volume upon "St. Simon," being a chapter on the History of Socialism in France, remarkable for its research and completeness of statement.  This work, like the previous one named, has been far less spoken of and read in socialist circles than books so conscientious deserve to be.  Several of the disciples of Robert Owen have been designated to write some memorial of him, yet to this day (1877) the most complete view of his principles and character which has appeared is that from the pen of Mr. Booth—which embraces other subjects than those in Mr. Sargent's life of Robert Owen, and gives a more detailed account of his efforts in originating public education and promoting the art of industrial association in England.  No one can peruse Mr. Booth's book without acquiring a very high estimate of Mr. Owen's character and capacity.  Mr. Booth records that Mr. Owen not only incited parliamentary committees to inquire into ameliorative plans