CO-OPERATION IN THE UNION. 21 J 



toil, penury and suffering. Now, however, labor has the 

 power through the great principle of co-operation, to 

 fund its savings, and thus obtain capital for larger under- 

 takings. Air. Holyoake, writing on this subject, says: 

 'When I first knew Rochdale all the working people 

 needed relief. All who could get it had it, and the chief 

 fear of others was that the work-house might not be too 

 full when their turn came. Now, they subscribe to 

 relief funds, to hospitals, present fountains to the town, 

 and in all things give like gentlemen. It is co-operation 

 which has enabled them to do this.' 



"The annual report of the chief registrar of the 

 co-operative societies in Great Britain shows that .984 

 societies made official returns to the central board in 1885, 

 and that the membership of these societies in that year was 

 687,482, and that their sales for the year amounted to $425,- 

 616,425, or nearly $500,000,000. 



"Distributive co-operation, which pays on an average 

 a rebate on purchases from 10 to 14 per cent, and 5 per 

 cent, on capital invested, is well established in England 

 and is rapidly spreading. 'Leeds' has upwards of 20,000 

 members. It has so many branch stores, and is so contin- 

 ually erecting new ones, that they keep a staff of builders 

 who move from place to place as new stores have to be 

 built During the last twenty years the business done by 

 the working men there is estimated at over a thousand 

 million of dollars, and the profits of about one hundred 

 millions have gone into their own pockets. Out of the 

 retail stores has grown the wholesale, with its trading 

 capital of nearly $4,000,000. And now, productive 

 co-operation, with the men as their own employers, is 

 developing naturally from the 'seed-bed' of the dis- 

 tributive societies. The most prosperous cotton mills in 

 Great Britain are those run on co-operative principles. 

 The yearly co-operative congress of 1886, held in Man- 



