THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT AS IT 
HAS GROWN IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
Government and co-operation are in all things and 
eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, 
eternally and in all things the lazus of death. —Ruskin. 
The question is asked what is this cooperative 
movement about which so much is written and talked 
of, which in Europe has grown to such proportions. 
Is it a new trust or something similar? Yes, and no. 
In the sense that a trust is an association, combine 
or society for certain definite ends, usually private 
profit, the cooperative movement is not a trust, but 
high, began to consider if it were possible to devise 
some method of getting their food cheaper than they 
were paying for it in the ordinary way at the retail 
stores. By making inquiries they found that they 
could buy very many articles at a cheaper rate from 
the large merchants if they took large quantities at 
a time. Then they got together and bought jointly, 
say, a half chest of tea of 60 pounds and divided it 
among themselves in the home of one of their 
number. Finding that this method effected a con¬ 
siderable saving in the cost of goods to them, they 
went on increasing their purchases. Then they dis¬ 
covered that in dividing up goods in this way a loss 
to divide up this sum? That was the burning ques¬ 
tion. It may seem to us at this time such a childish, 
simple thing, but we have to remember that these 
men toiled all day at their looms and were not trained 
to deal with business matters. What they wanted to 
do was to do the right thing; it was justice they 
desired above all else. To divide this surplus equally 
they somehow felt rather than saw to be unjust, and 
for this reason: The member who had purchased 
largely because he had a large family, and the mem¬ 
ber who had only purchased a much lesser quantity, 
for he had only a smaller family to maintain, made 
the equal division unfair. It was quite true each had 
A RIVER VIEW IN A CENTRAL NEW YORK PASTURE. Fig. 397. 
as an associated effort of consumers and producers 
for mutual ends and the elimination of private profit 
it is a trust. 
This and the following articles are intended as a 
very plain and simple statement of the meaning and 
the method of the movement as it exists to-day. The 
writer has had inside experience in this great move¬ 
ment in Great Britain, and writes of those things he 
knows regarding its aims and methods. To begin 
at the beginning, it may be stated that some time 
during the first half of the last century, some mill 
workers, or as they are known over there, “Lanca¬ 
shire mill hands,” the heads of families, and realizing 
that their wages were so low—the price of food 
occurred, and it became a question how to meet this 
loss. Several ways were tried, but they finally de¬ 
cided that instead of dividing out the goods at the 
cost price they would divide them out at the price 
they were being sold in the neighboring retail stores. 
After doing this they found themselves confronted 
with another and a greater difficulty, and very curious 
to relate, a difficulty which nearly wiped out the 
effort and finished this new commercial enterprise. 
Their new difficulty was that instead of a loss they 
now had a good surplus, being the profit or the sum 
over what the goods had cost to them, that sum 
being equal to what they would have had to pay if 
they had bought in the usual way. How were they 
bought all he needed, but the need was not equal, 
therefore the division could not with justice rest 
upon an inequality. After a good deal of hard think¬ 
ing and practical reasoning they saw that the only 
just and fair way all around was to divide the 
amount in just the proportion of goods bought, for 
it was quite apparent that the large consumer of 
goods had by his larger consumption created a larger 
sum of the profit or surplus than the smaller con¬ 
sumer by his smaller consumption. It was this method 
of dividing the profit or surplus that really made 
the cooperative movement possible. Hence there grew 
up in time that well-known axiom of this great and 
mighty movement, that the only person entitled to the 
