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for the magnificent hopes they inspired served to support and carry forward those who held them through difficulties under which they would otherwise have fainted. The following extract from their first programme will show the spirit in which they entered on their undertaking, and the visionary hopes by which they were animated:

"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 selfsupporting home colony of united interests, to assist other societies in establishing such colonies.'

It is instructive to note what was passing in the mind of one of the greatest thinkers and writers of our own or any other country at the time when these simple but practical and earnest-minded men were thus engaged. Just before the Rochdale coöperators began their store at the close of the year 1843, Thomas Carlyle published to the world this thoughtful question, written, no doubt, some time before:

'A question arises here, Whether in some ulterior, perhaps some not far distant stage of the "chivalry of labour," your master-worker may not find it possible, and needful, to grant his workers permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs? So that it become in practical result, what in essential fact and justice it ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the chief master down to the lowest overseer and operative, economically as well as loyally concerned for it? Which question I do not answer. The answer, near

or else far, is perhaps, Yes;-and yet one knows the difficulties. Despotism is essential in most enterprises: I am told they do not tolerate "freedom of debate" on board a seventy-four! Republican senate and plébiscite would not answer well in cotton mills. And yet observe there too, freedom, not nomad's or ape freedom, but man's freedom, this is indispensable. We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile despotism with-well, is that such a mystery? Do you not already know the way? It is to make your despotism just. Rigorous as destiny; but just too as destiny and its laws. The laws of God: all men obey these, and have no "freedom" at all but in obeying them. The way is already known, part of the way; and courage and some qualities are needed for walking in it.'

We quote these words to show how ideas similar in character, though diversely expressed, were at the same time passing through the minds of thoughtful men of very different culture. Various abortive attempts had been made from time to time to realise the ideas on which the coöperative societies were founded; but they had failed chiefly through the moral and industrial defects of those by whom they were tried. At length an attempt was made at Rochdale by men who, though extremely poor and almost destitute of book-learning, were endowed with the qualifications necessary for carrying the enterprise they undertook to a successful issue. The example thus set was followed in all the large towns of the manufacturing districts. But we shall best comprehend the nature of this great movement by fixing our attention on the origin and progress of the Rochdale society, which served as a pattern to the rest, by whom its rules and methods were almost exactly copied. It was at the close of the year 1843 that the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Coöperative Store was first established. The new poor-law had prevented the working men of that town from looking, as they had previously been accustomed to do, to parochial relief as a resource on which, in case of loss of work, they might always fall back. The failure of the Rochdale Savings Bank, recently plundered by its actuary to the extent of 70,000l., had destroyed all faith in that hitherto popular institution; and the Rochdale working men, at least such of them as looked beyond the present moment, seemed to have no alternative left to them but that of spending their little savings in drink or hiding them in an old stocking, to be brought out of its place of concealment when the day of distress came on them. It was under these circumstances that twenty-eight Rochdale flannel-weavers managed to scrape together a sovereign each for the purpose of establishing a shop in which they might purchase genuine groceries and other necessaries at a moderate price, dividing among themselves whatever profits might remain at the end of the year. The views by which they were actuated are very clearly exhibited in an account which they shortly after published, of the lofty aims with which they made this very humble experi

ment.

'The objects of this society are the social and intellectual

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advancement of its members. It provides them with groceries, butcher's meat, drapery goods, clothes, shoes, clogs, &c. There are competent workmen on the premises to do the work of the members and execute all repairs. The capital is raised in one pound shares, each member being allowed to take not less than five and not more than a hundred, payable at once, or by instalments of three shillings and threepence per quarter. The profits are divided quarterly, as follows: first, interest at five per cent. per annum on all paid-up shares; second, two and a half per cent. off net profits for educational purposes; the remainder to be divided among the members in proportion to money expended. For the intellectual improvement of the members there is a library consisting of more than 3000 volumes. The librarian is in attendance every Wednesday and Saturday evening from seven to half-past eight o'clock. The news-room is well supplied with newspapers and periodicals, fitted up in a neat and careful manner, and furnished with maps, globes, microscope, telescope, &c. The news-room and library are free to all members. A branch reading-room has been opened at Oldham Road, the readers of which meet every second Monday in January, April, July, and October, to choose and sell the papers.'

It may provoke a smile to find 'social and intellectual advancement' placed in juxtaposition with 'groceries, butcher's meat, drapery-goods, clothes, shoes, clogs, &c.' And yet the connection between these two categories of objects is in reality very close. Men must be provided with necessaries, or they will be unable to make social and intellectual advancement; and the more abundantly they are supplied with them, and the more completely they are released from all care and anxiety about them in the future, the more time will they have at their disposal for moral, intellectual, and spiritual cultivation, and the better inclined will they be to devote that time to them. There are, no doubt, instances in every class and in every society in which prosperity panders to the lowest passions and vices of our nature; but every advance of civilisation helps to correct this tendency -to diminish the number of cases in which the leisure and the opportunities which prosperity brings with it are abused, and to enlarge the number of those in which they are rightly employed. At all events, any person who doubts this needs.

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only to go into one of the news-rooms connected with the great central coöperative establishments of the manufacturing districts on a Saturday afternoon in order to be convinced that there are great numbers of persons by whom the advantages which these establishments have placed within their reach are duly valued and usefully employed.

And this leads us to speak of the educational branches of these establishments, which in the eyes of their founders formed a most important part of them. The books in the libraries and the newspapers in the reading-rooms have been selected with a care and judgment which, considering the antecedents of those by whom they have been chosen, is truly marvellous.

It is a sort of social and philosophical commonplace to associate increased wealth with licentiousness, corruption, and decay; to point to Tyre or Babylon and to Rome as proofs that the increase of wealth and the consequent command of many luxuries are the harbingers of decay and the forerunners of moral and political dissolution; and in the same spirit the enemies of these coöperative institutions have been profuse in their predictions of the evils that would flow from them, and in their assertion that their prophecies have been actually fulfilled with regard to them, supported by cases in point, which they bring forward in proof of these allegations. It must be remembered, however, with regard to the cities which we have mentioned above that it was not their wealth, but the excessive inequality of its distribution, that brought them to the dust. When the opulence of the few stands out in portentous contrast with the wretchedness of the many; when on one hand there is superabundance, and on the other starvation -here riotous licentiousness, and there cowering downtrodden servility; when every Dives looks out on a thousand Lazaruses,—then it is that the wealth is the cause of dissolution and the forerunner of ruin. But the case now under our consideration is the very reverse of this. The tendency of coöperation is not, indeed, to diminish the capital of the employer, but to increase that of the labourer, and to insure a more equal distribution of wealth. One of the chief reasons why the Rochdale Pioneers became the advanced guard of a great and astonishing progress is, that they neither desired to pull down other classes, nor

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which they be

The

to raise themselves out of their own class, but to raise themselves by elevating the class to longed; to level up, not to level down. These men,' as Mr. Cobden observed to the author in conversation about the first Rochdale Pioneers, not long before his death'these men would have succeeded in anything they undertook.' They were men of courage and men of business. Their aim and ambition was, that the working class should be well fed, well clad, well housed, well washed, well educated; in a word, that in the highest and best sense of the term they should be respectable. If any taint of the socialistic and communistic theories in which the society originated still adhered to them, it was rapidly removed by the practical realities with which they had to deal. prodigious and rapid growth of the establishment at the head of which they were placed required considerable administrative ability, and it was forthcoming. To their honour it should be mentioned, that far from being actuated by any desire to monopolise the advantages they enjoyed, they were animated by a generous spirit of proselytism, which led them to put themselves to considerable trouble and expense in communicating to inquirers from all parts of the kingdom the results of their experience, and aiding them in the formation of new societies. The following extract from a paper they printed at an early period of their history, in order to send to all those who applied to them for information with a view to the formation of new societies, illustrates the spirit of generosity and wisdom by which they were animated:

1. Procure the authority and protection of the law by enrolment.

2. Let integrity, intelligence, and ability be the indispensable qualifications in the choice of officers and managers, and not wealth or distinction.

3. Let each member have only one vote, and make no distinction as regards the amount of wealth any member may contribute.

4. Let majorities rule in all matters of government.

5. Look well after money matters. Punish fraud, when duly established, by the immediate expulsion of the defrauder.