COOPERATION IN ENGLAND. 745 



In 1864 a new and important application of the principle of asso- 

 ciation was made in Manchester a wholesale society was founded, to 

 supply some hundred and fifty stores. No more serious difficulty had 

 hitherto been met by small new societies than that of buying well. 

 Often remote from the great centers of production, and purchasing in 

 small quantities through a committee or manager of defective knowl- 

 edge of qualities and prices, much hard-earned money was wasted. 

 Now, in buying through the Wholesale, a society avails itself of the 

 services of expert buyers, who obtain, through their vast purchases, 

 goods at the lowest current prices. Stores are not obliged, as they 

 used to be, to buy more goods than they immediately require, to reach 

 the minimum prices of the market ; hence they can carry on business 

 with less capital than they needed formerly. To detect adulterations 

 and determine the quality of wares offered to it, the Wholesale Society 

 employs an analytical chemist. The business of this vast organization 

 now serves more than five hundred societies ; it employs buyers in eleven 

 towns and cities in England, Ireland, France, and America. Its sub- 

 scribed capital is $686,000 ; the shares, which are five pounds sterling 

 each, are issued on condition that an affiliated society takes out one for 

 each ten members belonging to it, increasing the number annually as 

 its members increase. One shilling per share must be paid on applica- 

 tion, on which five per cent, interest is allowed ; the remainder can be 

 paid up at once, or be paid up by accumulation of dividends and inter- 

 est. The sales of the Wholesale Society for the year ending January 

 11, 1880, were $13,166,545 ; yet the managers state that these large 

 figures could have been more than doubled had all the societies in the 

 kingdom been joined to the Wholesale, and had they bought from it all 

 the supplies which, with advantage to themselves, they might have 

 taken. The Wholesale Society transacts a large banking business, and 

 this its best advisers deem should be placed upon a separate footing, 

 with its special board of direction. Glasgow has a counterpart to the 

 great Manchester establishment the Glasgow Wholesale Society has 

 a connection of one hundred and thirty-seven Scottish societies, and 

 during 1879 did a business of $3,066,500. 



As instituted at Rochdale, and in scores of other towns and cities, 

 cooperation has been intended by its leaders not only to save to the 

 working-classes the sums commonly absorbed by the wastes, expenses, 

 and profits of ordinary retail trading ; it has been designed to train 

 workmen in thrift, in thoughtfulness for the future, and by the grad- 

 ual accumulation of capital to enable them either to become self -em- 

 ploying, or to own shares in the manufacturing or mining company 

 which may engage them. Some of the societies have provision for 

 building cottages for members out of the dividends credited to them. 

 At Derby and elsewhere hundreds of homes for workingmen have been 

 bought in this way. Cooperation has diffused much knowledge of 

 business, and interest in it, among classes who used formerly to know 



