COOPERATIVES: EARLY PHASES 59 



who in 1844 had banded themselves together to form the Rochdale Society. 

 Cooperative ventures, although generally unsuccessful, had been tried on 

 this side of the Atlantic before the Rochdale group was organized, and at 

 least one, a group of Wisconsin cheese producers, is credited with having 

 achieved success as early as 1841 in the cooperative manufacture of cheese. 5 

 The Rochdale pioneers, important as they were in the history of coopera- 

 tives, were organized as urban consumers to economize on their purchases 

 and not as sellers of farm produce. The success of their system rested upon 

 two fundamental principles: (i) the acceptance of the prevailing market 

 price in the sale of goods to patrons, and (2) the distribution of profits to 

 members in proportion to the amounts of their purchases. Their program 

 was woven of the same fabric as those of the Owenites, the Chartists, and 

 the advocates of the Reform Bill of 1832. They were part and parcel of an 

 urban movement bent upon rectifying or bettering the unfavorable situa- 

 tion of the unemployed or poorly paid urban workers rather than a rural 

 movement seeking lower marketing costs and higher returns from 

 farming. 



The position of the Wisconsin cheese makers was more nearly typical 

 of the producers of the western Middle West. They cooperated not "be- 

 cause of poverty and want" but rather to increase their profits. 6 Indeed, 

 the farmers as producers and sellers and the consumers as purchasers and 

 utilizers tended inevitably to gravitate toward opposite sides of the bar- 

 gaining counter. The consumers, whether Rochdale pioneers or coopera- 

 tors of a less distinguished line, were interested in purchasing their com- 

 modities at the lowest possible price, while the farmers who had banded 



5. Steen, Cooperative Marketing, pp. 4, 156-57. Chapter 13 is entitled "America's 

 First Cooperators." See also Cooperation in Foreign Countries (68 Congress, 2 ses- 

 sion, Senate Document 171, serial 8397, Washington, 1925), p. xi. It was here re- 

 ported that "The cooperative is of such magnitude and importance . . . that it 

 challenges attention. More than 285,000 organizations in all parts of the world are 

 connected with it." The number of people represented by cooperatives was placed 

 at more than 30,000,000. 



6. George J. Holyoake, Self-Help by the People, The History of the Rochdale 

 Pioneers (London, 1900), pp. 2-3; Sydney R. Elliot, The English Cooperatives (New 

 Haven, Conn., 1937), pp. 6-40. See also Henry W. Brown, The Rochdale Pioneers; 

 The Story of the Toad Lane Store, 1844, and the Origin of the Cooperative Union, 

 1869 (1931); Robert A. Campbell, "Cooperation in Wisconsin," American Review 

 of Reviews, XLVII (April, 1913), p. 468. 



