14 CO-OPEKATION IN DANISH AGRICULTUBE 



was, like several other shops which were started in the following 

 years in various towns, a philanthropic undertaking for the 

 purpose of supplying the poorer classes with goods at cost 

 price, and had no relation to nor influence on the later co- 

 operative movement. One society, among a few formed in 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century, deserves special 

 mention. It was formed in 1812 at Lennoxtown in Scotland, 

 and was registered in 1826 as a Friendly Society. In its rules 

 was provided that the annual surplus should be divided among 

 the members in proportion to their share capital, but with 

 this very important proviso, that if a member's total annual 

 purchases were of less value than his share capital, he should 

 not be entitled to a part of the surplus corresponding to his 

 share capital, but to a bonus corresponding to his purchases 

 during the year. We fmd here the germ of the celebrated 

 principle of the distribution of the surplus which was adopted 

 by the Rochdale pioneers, and has held its own ever since. 



These various undertakings, to which might be added 

 several small co-operative flour mills, the first in Hull, 1795, 

 remained small, had very httle influence, and caused no stir 

 and mostly died out. The man who brought the impulse to 

 a co-operative movement of lasting and growing effect, and 

 who therefore is called the father of voluntary co-operation, 

 is Robert Owen, born in Newton, Wales, in 1771. At the 

 age of nineteen he became a juanager of a cotton mill in 

 Manchester, and there ho became acquainted with the miser- 

 able condition of the mill hands. When he married the 

 daughter of a Scotch cotton manufacturer, and in 1797 took 

 over the mill in New Lanark, he managed so well that he soon 

 became very wealthy. His 2500 hands hved in bodily and 

 mental misery. Owen, firmly believing that the human 

 character is a product of the conditions lender which the in- 

 dividual Hves, resolved to improve the lot of the workmen 

 and their children by building schools, abolishing all public 

 houses, encouraging cleanliness, building better dweUings, 

 and by opening shops where good and cheap goods could be 

 bought for cash. These goods, purchased wholesale and sold 

 at cost price with the addition only of the cost of transport, 

 could be retailed at prices 25 per cent, lower than those hitherto 



