562 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



ization usually classed as cooperative, though whether all 

 are rightly so classed may be questioned. It must suffice 

 here to recognize such only of them as have arisen in Eng 

 land.* 



Conforming to the general process of evolution, the 

 germs of them were but vaguely cooperative; and they 

 foreshadowed the two different forms of cooperation, so 

 called, which have since differentiated. Swayed by a delu 

 sion like that which in times of scarcity leads mobs to smash 

 the windows of those who sell bread, working men, at the 

 close of the last century and beginning of this, ascribing the 

 distress they suffered to the proximate agents inflicting it 

 the millers and bakers against whom they made also the 

 probably just complaint that they adulterated flour, deter 

 mined to grind and bake for themselves. Mills were estab 

 lished at Hull, Whitby, Devonport, while baking-societies 

 were formed at Sheerness and in Scotland. In these cases, 

 though production and distribution were both carried on, 

 yet the mass of those who sought and reaped the benefits 

 were not themselves the workers in the mills or bakeries; 

 nor did they, as a body, occupy themselves in the business 

 of distributing the products. They simply, while trying to 

 secure good food, set up establishments for the purpose of 

 escaping from the payments made to the ordinary producer 

 and distributor. 



Twenty years later arose, first at Brighton and afterwards 

 elsewhere, &quot; union shops; &quot; which were stores of such com 

 modities as their working-class members chiefly needed: the 

 ultimate purpose, however, being the ambitious one of add 

 ing profit to capital until a sum sufficient for establishing 

 communistic societies had been raised. Presently, certain 



* For the facts contained in this and the following section, I am in 

 debted in part to the elaborate and picturesque History of Co operation in 

 England, by Mr. G. J. Holyoake, and in part to The Cooperative Movement 

 in Great Britain, by Miss Beatrice Potter (now Mrs. Sidney Webb), which, 

 being a compendious statement of essentials, has better served my purpose 



