226 



REPORT — 1861. 



drapery goods, clothing, shoes, and clogs." Yet this jitstaposition indicates a con- 

 fused sense of a very important truth, and one that gives to cooperation a far 

 hio-her value than seems at first sight to belong to it, namely, that the material or 

 financial progress is the basis and the measm-e of the intellectual and moral pro- 

 gress : for increased wealth implies an increased command over the necessaries of 

 life • it therefore implies more leisure ; and though this leisure may sometimes be 

 abused, it will, as a general ride, be rightly used, and especially by men who have 

 pm'chased it by industry and self-control. There have, no doubt, been cases in 

 which increased wealth has been attended with the most fiightfid moral dissolu- 

 tion and intellectual decay ; but this has arisen not from the wealth, but from the 

 excessive inequality of its distribution. But when the wealth of a society is equi- 

 tably distributed through the various classes that compose it — -when it is allowed, 

 feet, to take its natural and noi-mal course, then the material progi'ess be- 



m 



comes the instrument and the condition of every other kind of progi-ess. When, 

 therefore, we trace, as I shall now proceed to do, the financial history of the Roch- 

 dale Co-operative Society, we are roughly indicating, be it rememljered, the gene- 

 ral intellectual and moral progi-ess of its membei-s, of which, as I said before, the 

 material development is the measm-e. 



In the year 1843, when the " Rochdale Equitable Pioneers' Co-operative Store " 

 commenced, the New Poor Law had prevented the operatives of Rochdale from re- 

 garding parochial relief as a som-ce on which they might always rely in case of loss 

 of work, and of those periodical crises to which our manufacturing system has 

 always been liable. The recent failm-e of the Rochdale Savings' Bank, which had 

 been plundered to a fearfid extent by its accountant, had destroyed all faith in that 

 popular institution ; and the Rochdale operatives, who looked beyond the present 

 moment, seemed to have no alternative but that of hiding theii- little sa\dngs in an 

 old stocking, to be brought out of its place of concealment when the day of distress 

 arrived. It was imder these circumstances that twenty-eight Rochdale operatives 

 contributed a sovereign each, for the pm-pose of establishing a shop, at which they 

 inio"ht pm-chase genuine gi-oceries and other articles of ordinary consumption at a 

 moderate rate. It was an experiment which had often been tried before on a 

 laro^er scale, and apparently imder more favourable auspices ; but, from the causes 

 we have mentioned, the condition of the Rochdale operatives was desperate, and, 

 lilie brave men, they determined not to succimib, but to make another eflbrt and 

 hope for better days. 



The following Table, taken from their Almanack for the year 1861, gives a very 

 good view of the operations of the Rochdale Society from its commencement to the 

 close of last year : — 



Operations of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers' Co-operative Society, 

 from 1844 to 1860. 



