CO-OPERATION IN THE UNION. 215 



The fixing of the rate of wages, the purchase of supplies, 

 the admission or dismissal of working members, and the 

 discipline of the establishment should be vested in the 

 hands of all the members, but the financial department, the 

 purchase and sales, should be in the hands of the actual 

 shareholders. 



4 * In the development of any great movement or social 

 tendency, a natural law produces four distinct stages; 

 first, the birth of the idea; second, its propagation by 

 missionary work; third, its embodiment in practical 

 forms; and, finally, the growth of these forms into 

 permanent institutions. In regard to co-operation in 

 this country, only the second stage has, in reality, 

 been reached. For although distributive societies 

 exist in various places, they are more the result 

 of individual energy and thought than any common 

 social impulse. But the thought the idea is in the 

 world, and it has come to stay. And there is this to be 

 remembered for encouragement to those seeking to develop 

 co-operative industry in the United States; fifty years ago, 

 co-operation, in the sense in which the word is now used, 

 was almost an unknown term now it is on the lips and in 

 the thoughts of millions. Forty years ago the principle 

 for the first time was being out-worked by twenty-eight 

 men in Rochdale, driven almost to desperation by want 

 and suffering, and with only faith in God and the 

 immutable laws of right to sustain them in their under- 

 taking, and the result of their labors stands before the 

 world to aid and inspire the action of others. The germ 

 planted by the men of Rochdale and nurtured by the 

 warmth and consecrated devotion of Kingsley, Maurice, 

 Owen, Neale, Holyoake and others, is bearing rich 

 fruit, and is destined to transform the existing indus- 

 trial system and bring in a new social order based upon 

 principles of equity. The work here in the United States 



