524 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



This passage describes very correctly the 

 original conception of a cooperative society, and 

 has the merit of intending to devote the profits 

 of the distributive 6tore to productive industry, 

 and the self-employment of the members of the 

 societies. After a lapse of nearly fifty years 

 there is very little of this, the greater and more 

 important part of the plan, realized. The edu- 

 cated cooperator has always borne it in mind, and 

 it remains as the oldest tradition of cooperation, 

 that production and self-employment go together. 

 Still definitions came like ghosts, in very impal- 

 pable forms. Mr. Thompson, of Cork, the first 

 systematic writer on industrial communities, 

 never defined their object otherwise than to say 

 that " workmen should simply alter the direction 

 of their labor. Instead of working for they 

 know not whom, they should work for each 

 other." Such a definition could only be made 

 intelligible by details, and these Mr. Thompson 

 gave with so much elaboration that the reader 

 wished the plan had never been discovered. As 

 a student under Bentham, Mr. Thompson was 

 sure to mean something definite ; but the condi- 

 tions under which men shall " work for each 

 other " — an essential feature of cooperation — he 

 never otherwise brought into the compass of a 

 definition. After Mr. Thompson, during many 

 years, the definers were silent. The next writer 

 of any mark who gave thought to this question 

 was Miss Mary Hennell, who defined the " prin- 

 ciple of cooperation as including a common in- 

 terest in the produce." This was said chiefly of 

 cooperative communities rather than of coopera- 

 tive stores or workshops, which at that date had 

 fallen from sight, and were without form and 

 void ; but it includes the essential idea that the 

 produce is to fall to the producers. But how it 

 was to be brought into their possession was never 

 made generally plain. 



The practice of cooperation grew out of joint- 

 etock shopkeeping. At first a few persons with 

 means supplied capital for the business, with the 

 understanding that after interest was paid on 

 their capital the profits should be devoted to the 

 establishment of a community. The next con- 

 ception of it was that of prescribing that each 

 purchaser should be a member of the store, and 

 should subscribe a portion of the capital; the 

 profits, after paying interest, were to be kept 

 by the shareholders. At this point cooperation 

 stopped eighteen years. Nobody was known to 

 have any conception how it could be improved. 

 If everybody was a shareholder, and the share- 

 holders had all the profits, nobody could have 



more than all, and nobody was left out of the 

 division. There was no enthusiasm under this 

 arrangement, and yet there was no apparent 

 fault. In some cases there was great success. 

 Shareholders had ten and fifteen per cent, for 

 their money, which, to a member who could in- 

 vest a hundred pounds, was a satisfactory profit 

 to him. Nevertheless custom fell off, enthusiasm 

 in the store abated, and many were given up. 

 If any solitary cogitator proposed to divide prof- 

 its on purchases, it was said : " What is the good 

 of that ? If there are profits made, they appear 

 in the interest. You cannot increase them by 

 varying the mode of paying them." Yet all the 

 while this was the very thing that could be done. 

 There lay concealed and unseen the principle of 

 dividing profits upon purchases, which altered 

 the whole future of cooperation from that day. 

 A Glasgow artisan, who had been at the Orbis- 

 ton community of Abram Combe, Mr. Alexander 

 Campbell, proposed this plan to a cooperative 

 society in Scotland, in 1822, and advised its adop- 

 tion in a society in Cambuslang in 1829. But on 

 what grounds he rested his plan, or what advan- 

 tages he predicted for it, are not known. No 

 one appears to have been convinced to any sub- 

 stantial purpose. The plan made no way in Scot- 

 land, and is only to be found in practice at Melt- 

 bam Mills, England, in 1827. In 1844 Mr. Charles 

 Howarth rethought it out in Rochdale, 1 whence 

 it has spread over the earth. What conception 

 he formed of the new principle, or how he ex- 

 plained its operation as an improvement on the 

 interest on capital plan, has not appeared in any 

 records I have met with. One thing would strike 

 most persons when they thought of it — namely, 

 giving a profit to customers would increase them. 

 No doubt many had seen that under the interest 

 plan, while the shareholders who could subscribe 

 a hundred pounds got fifteen pounds, the poorer 

 member who could only put in one pound ob- 

 tained only three shillings ; yet the large share- 

 holder who received the fifteen pounds may not 

 have been a purchaser at all, while the poor mem- 

 ber, if he had a family, probably contributed fifty 

 pounds of capital to the business, if his purchases 

 amounted to one pound per week, and the two 

 shillings in the pound which on the average can 



1 Mr. Walter Sandereon, of Galashiels, informs me 

 (1875) that the principle was introduced into that town 

 about the same time by Mr. William Sanderson (founder 

 of the building society there), without any connection 

 with Rochdale. Came it from Cambuslang ? Mr. Wal- 

 ter Sanderson gives no details ; but he is a responsible 

 correspondent, and his word may be taken as to the 

 fact. 



