SS. THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVE MENT IN GREAT BRITAIN. The earliest examples of co-operative institutions are the corn mills and baking societies started in the closing years of the 18th century and the first decade of the 19th as a relief from the millers' monopoly and the exorbitant price of flour. At Hull, Whitby, Devonport, and sundry places in Scotland, mills and bakeries were worked successfully on a ready-money, cost price basis, but they had little effect on the sub sequent movement, though Sheerness and a few other societies still exist. The co-operative idea, as we know it, was evoked in the mind of Robert Owen by consideration of the antag onism of classes produced by the industrial revolution with its wide-spread misery among the factory operatives. Failing to persuade his fellow manufacturers to follow his example of humane treatment of his employees, and failing to obtain efficient factory legislation from the government, he devised the plan of organizing the workers into self-sufficient communities, owning and cultivating the land in common and producing commodities for their own use or for exchange with other communities. Two such colonies, at Orbiston in Lanarkshire (1826) and at Ralahine in Ireland (1830-34), nearly succeeded. His followers, who enthuiastically adopted his communist doctrines, started, from 1828 onwards, numerous associations for co operative trading, which employed their profits in setting their members to work at manufac ture on a small scale. To provide a market for the goods so made, Owen in 1832 opened his Equitable Labor Exchange at Gray's Inn in London, where persons leaving goods for sale received in exchange labor-notes based on the average time of production at six-pence per hour. In 1830 there were nearly 300 °Union with over 20,000 members, and between 1830 and 1835 seven Co-operative Congresses were held. But by 1835 the whole movement collapsed owing to want of legal status, the divergent interests of the members, and the fail ure of the labor-time principle. The enthusi asm of Owen's followers now overflowed into the Chartist movement.
-The second stage in the history of co-opera tion began in 1844 with the founding of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers by a group of Socialists, Chartists and Trade Union ists, who found the motive in the failure of a strike among the flannel weavers. Its objects were the sale of provisions, etc., the building and buying of houses for members, the employ ment of out-of-work members in manufacture, the purchase of an estate to be cultivated by members out of work or underpaid, °to establish a self-supporting home colony of united inter ests,' and to start a temperance hotel. Cash
payment and good quality were principles shared with the older movement, but the new departure on which the success of co-operation was to turn was the surrender of the attempt to sell at cost price. In lieu thereof Charles Howarth introduced the system of dividing profits upon purchases, and from that moment co-operation has never ceased to prosper. This system took the government of the society out of the hands of founders or shareholders and transferred it to the customers, that is to the general co-operative community. The rules for the organization of a Co-operative Society have remained substantially the same as those of the original Rochdale Society. To quote one ex ample: °The object of this society is to carry on the trade of dealers in food, fuel, clothes, and other necessaries, and manufacturers of the same; the trade of general dealers (whole sale and retail) ; including dealings of any de scription with land, and the trade of builders." Membership is free to all, and each member must hold a fixed minimum of one-pound shares, one to five, carrying interest at 4 or 5 per cent. The maximum investment is f200, and each member has one vote only, whatever his holding of shares. The quarterly general meeting of the society is the governing body, but the man agement is in the hands of the committee, gen erally elected for a year, half retiring each six months. The secretary is elected for a year by the general meeting, but is the servant of the committee, which appoints all the other officials and workpeople. The shares can be withdrawn but are not transferable and there fore have never more than their face value. The business of the store is transacted in the same way and at the same prices as ordinary shopkeepers, and after interest has been paid the profits are divided among the customer members in proportion to purchases. Metal tokens or paper checks registering the value of each purchase are given to the buyer, and are collected periodically and credited to him. Non-members are allowed half dividend. Out of the profits a bonus is sometimes paid to labor and grants made for educational and char itable purposes.