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 THE HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION
 
 BT THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Sixty Years of an Agitator'* Life. 
 
 An Autobiography. With Portrait. 2 vols. 
 
 Large crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. Also Cheap 
 
 Edition, 2. 6d. net. 
 
 Bygones worth Remembering. 
 
 (Completing the above). With many Illus- 
 trations. 2 vols. Demy 8vo, cloth, 21s. 
 
 Public Speaking and Debate. 
 
 A Manual for Advocates and Agitators. 
 
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 London : T. FISHER UN WIN.
 
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 THE HISTORY OF 
 CO - OPERATION 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE 
 
 Author of 
 
 "SIXTY YEARS OF AN AGITATOR'S LIFE," "BYGONES 
 WORTH REMEMBERING," ETC. 
 
 REVISED AND COMPLETED 
 
 Our greatness will appear 
 Then most conspicuous, when great things of small, 
 Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse 
 We can create. Milton 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN 
 i, ADELPHI TERRACE. MCMVI
 
 no!, 
 i 
 
 Vol. I. Pioneer Period, 1812 to 1844. Published by Triibner in 1875. 
 Vol. II. Constructive Period, 1845 to 1878. Published by Trubner in 1879. 
 
 [All rights reserved.}
 
 Co 
 WENDELL PHILLJPS 
 
 WHOSE INTREPID ELOQUENCE 
 
 HAS EVER VINDICATED 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF THE SLAVE, BLACK OR WHITE, 
 
 IN BONDAGE TO PLANTER OR CAPITALIST, 
 
 THIS STORY OF PIONEER VICISSITUDES 
 
 IS DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE, 1906 
 
 Emerson begins a poem with the words, " God says, I am 
 tired of kings." Lest the reader should say he is tired of 
 prefaces, I make this one very short. 
 
 Other histories on this subject will be written, but what- 
 ever their merits may be, they cannot be written by any 
 one caring more for Co-operation than myself, or who has 
 been concerned in its career from the days of the Rochdale 
 Pioneers, or been personally conversant with the incidents and 
 persons who made the movement. I have known the motives 
 of those who have promoted it, of those who have retarded it, 
 and those who have withstood it, and for seventy years have 
 vindicated it against its adversaries. The story of this move- 
 ment is that of an eyewitness. 
 
 The Third Part of this work brings the History down to this 
 date, with brevity, but with sufficient explicitness to enable the 
 reader to understand the growth and trend of this new Order 
 of Labour. 
 
 Industrial Co-operation voluntary concert, with equit- 
 able participation and control among all concerned in any 
 enterprise is a definition that would now be accepted by 
 political economists and journalists. 
 
 G. J. H. 
 
 Eastern Lodge, 
 Brighton, 
 
 January, 1906. 
 
 vii
 
 [It is but consistent with the principle of Participation repre- 
 sented in this History that the Author should acknowledge his 
 indebtedness to his daughter, Mrs. Holyoake Marsh and his 
 amanuensis, Miss Amy Baum, for assiduous reading of the proofs, 
 when sustained attention by him was impossible and for sug- 
 gestions which familiarity with the subject enabled Mrs. Marsh 
 to make. G. J. H.]
 
 PREFACE TO VOL. I. OF 1875 
 
 My desire has been to write an account of the origin and 
 growth of Co-operation, of the literature which fostered it, 
 of the persons who aided it, the principles which directed it, 
 and the influence of Co-operation on the future welfare of 
 labour. To this end I have sought facts of all informed persons, 
 in England and America, saying to them that any books, 
 pamphlets, rules, placards, papers, letters relating to the early 
 Co-operative movements, or articles in reviews or periodicals 
 about it, of sermons preached against it, I should be glad to 
 hear of, to borrow, or to buy. Recollections of early meetings 
 for promoting it, names of persons who took part in founding 
 the early stores, or as promoters, managers, committee-men, 
 writers or lecturers in any place, and what became of the 
 persons themselves, would be welcome to me. I desired that 
 none would assume that I might know what they knew. I 
 wanted to be sure that I knew it. It was said of Hume that 
 his " History of England " would have been more accurate but 
 for the obligation he was under of sometimes imagining his 
 facts, from the difficulty of transporting himself to the book- 
 shelf, where means of their identity lay. For myself, being as 
 lithe as an Indian and resilient as an American, I might be 
 depended upon to get at any fact which came within reasonable 
 distance of me. 
 
 My wish has been to give particulars of the persons who 
 made the movement it being not enough to treat Co-opera- 
 tion as a bale of cotton, and discourse of its fineness and value 
 in the market. It concerns the reader to know who were the
 
 x PREFACE OF 1875 
 
 artificers of the ultimate fabric ; what were its pattern and 
 colour, its texture and durability. 
 
 Let no one fear to pester me with suggestions. Many 
 counsellors bring no perplexity, provided an author takes his 
 own wilful way in the end ; and he takes it with many 
 advantages, who has his eyes well open, knowing all that can 
 be said on the subject in hand. The real peril of the historian 
 is that he may paralyse his readers by tameness, or kill 
 curiosity by monotony. There are persons who have a well- 
 founded terror of making suggestions. We have ministers of 
 State who teach that persons with ideas are to be distrusted, 
 and it is not counted safe for any one with " notions " in his 
 mind to go about certain Government departments now. 
 
 In some cases, however, information transmitted has not 
 been very apparent, though worth all the trouble of decipher- 
 ing. All penmen are not gifted. A bird pattering out of an 
 inkpot over a page would be a rival writer to some corre- 
 spondents, who seem the natural and ready-made secretaries 
 of Secret Societies, since no expert of the most suspicious 
 Government known would be able to make much out of their 
 caligraphy. 
 
 It has, however, occurred to many correspondents, as it 
 did to Lord Palmerston, that the purpose of writing is to be 
 read, and that what is to be readable must be intelligible, and 
 they have practised the unappreciated art of plainness to my 
 great profit. My letter of inquiry inserted in the New York 
 Tribune brought many communications from that wide-awake 
 land. No case of any undecipherable caligraphy arose in 
 American letters ; they make things pretty plain out there. 
 
 Where suggestions have not been acted upon, the reader 
 must ascribe the error to that opinionativeness, phrase-love, 
 and general self-contentedness, with which Nature indulgently 
 endows some writers in lieu of other gifts. 
 
 While sitting at the Bolton Congress of 1872, when news 
 came of the death of Professor Maurice, and seeing with the 
 mind's eye the old familiar faces flitting, as it were, round the 
 hall the faces which have gone, as Bamford expresses it, 
 through the " Pass of Death," and greet us no more watching 
 the vacant places (growing more numerous every Congress) of 
 those who bore the heat and burden of the unregarded day of
 
 PREFACE OF 1875 xi 
 
 Co-operation whose buoyant, cheery voices we shall never 
 hear again I desired, more than before, to write some history 
 of that new power of industry which will grow mightier year 
 by year. 
 
 For loans of works of reference my acknowledgments are 
 due to Wm. Henry King Spark, of Skirsgil Park, Penrith, 
 for a valuable collection of books in his possession, collected, 
 bound, and annotated by Francis Place. Save for the dis- 
 cerning foresight and interest of Mr. Place in the welfare or 
 the working people, many of the most remarkable facts con- 
 cerning their social and political life would be now unknown ; 
 also to Mr. Thomas Allsop, of Redhill ; Mr. Truelove, of 
 London ; Mr. David Crossley, of Brighouse ; Mr. Melsom, 
 of Liverpool ; Mr. George Simpson, of Prospect House, 
 Mottram ; Mr. R. B. Reed, senr., of Winlaton ; and Mr. 
 Henry Slatter, of Tunbridge Wells, for the use of volumes, 
 pamphlets, and papers illustrative of my subject. 
 
 G. J. H. 
 
 Newcastle Chambers, 
 
 Essex Street, Temple Bar, London, 
 June, 1875.
 
 PREFACE TO VOL. II. OF 1879 
 
 In inscribing this volume to Mr. Bright, a representative of 
 my native town of Birmingham, my object was to acknowledge 
 how much the working class owed to him for maintaining in 
 hostile days the great principle of political and commercial 
 freedom, without which self-help is impossible to the people. 
 
 At that time I was not aware of what Abraham Greenwood 
 related years after, that one morning subsequent to the resolu- 
 tion being carried, putting an end to profit sharing in the 
 Spinning Mill of the pioneers, Mr. Bright met him in the 
 street, and suggested that the resolution should be recon- 
 sidered at another meeting. Mr. Bright had spoken at times 
 to his parliamentary friends of the great Partnership enterprise 
 in the Pioneer Mills of his townsmen, and regretted what had 
 taken place. Had the resolution been rediscussed, with the 
 knowledge of Mr. Bright's interest in it, the decision, I 
 believe, would have been different, and the fortune of labour 
 changed for the better by it. 
 
 Evil days befel me during the progress of the First Part. 
 Though I could see my way through my subject, I could not 
 see my subject when it was through. Fortunately for the 
 reader, Mr. Walter Morrison, to whose friendship I owed the 
 means of writing this History, had the kindness to see the 
 book through the press for me. Otherwise I might have 
 been afraid to recover my sight, lest I should come to read 
 my own pages. 
 
 Once I had a printer not deficient in care and intelligence 
 who would insert an enraging misconception of some 
 doubtful word I had written. I asked, " How came you to 
 think I meant that ? It is neither common sense, nor 
 theological sense, nor legal sense " (the most uncertain sense 
 known). "Well," he answered. "I thought so too, but I 
 supposed it one of your quaintnesses of expression." So I
 
 xiv PREFACE OF 1879 
 
 counselled the Co-operative Printers when sending them my 
 MS. to stop at any "quaintness" at which they stumbled. 
 In some places I am afraid they have betrayed me. The 
 previous volume met with more favour from critics, both in 
 Great Britain and America, than I expected. If this volume 
 fares as well, I shall be more than content ; for those who said 
 it " was not interesting " said it was " useful," and those who 
 said it " was not useful " thought it was " interesting." 
 
 Travelling to distant places of new co-operative enterprise, 
 seeing for myself the conditions under which they had been 
 made ; editing reports of Co-operative Congresses ; listening 
 to the speeches and daily conversation of the new race of co- 
 operators, in order to be sure what manner of men they were, 
 and to judge from what they said, what mastery they had of 
 its principles ; then writing controversial pamphlets in order 
 to elicit the views of adversaries and learn their quality and 
 reach of discernment ; taking part in discussions at store 
 meetings to discover what thoughts were uppermost and 
 what passions lay below, have been well rewarded. It would 
 be an abuse of the attention of the reader, to beguile him 
 with mere picturesque incidents, and conceal from him the 
 motives. The only useful history of a movement is a 
 history of its ideas. The animating idea which never slept 
 or slumbered, which moved the most diverse co-operators, 
 which was oft defeated, but never extinguished, covered with 
 ridicule, but never made ashamed, which returned again and 
 again to generous-minded, equity-loving men, was not 
 distrust of succeeding themselves by competition, but dislike 
 of it as the sole method of progress. Co-operation was born 
 of the feeling that at best unmitigated competition was war, 
 and though war had its bards and its heroic memories, there 
 was murder in its march ; and humanity was imposture, if 
 progress could not be accomplished by nobler means. What 
 an enduring truce is to war, Copartnership Co-operation is to 
 the never-ceasing conflict between Labour and Capital. It is 
 the Peace of Industry. 
 
 G. J. H. 
 
 Newcastle Chambers, 
 
 22, Essex Street, Temple Bar, London, 
 December I. 1878.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dedication . . . . . y 
 
 Prefaces ...... vii xiv 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Nature of Co-operation . . . .3 
 
 II. The Evil Days Before Co-operation Began . 7 
 
 III. The Utopianists who Foresaw Better Times . 1 5 
 
 IV. How Co-operation itself Began (18 10-1820) . 32 
 
 V. The Character of its Discoverer . . -43 
 
 VI. His Appeal to the People ... 54 
 VII. The Enthusiastic Period (1821-1830) . . 70 
 
 VIII. The Device of Labour Exchanges . , 104 
 
 IX. The Socialistic Period (1 831-1844) . . 115 
 
 X. The Lost Communities .... 163 
 
 XI. Some of the Principal Adversaries. . . 202 
 
 XII. Early Advocates . . . . 215 
 
 XIII. Forgotten Workers . , , . .252
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 
 CHAPTER PAG* 
 
 XIV. The Story of a Dead Movement . . 259 
 
 XV. Beginning of Constructive Co-operation . 266 
 
 XVI. The Discovery which Re-created Co-operation . 277 
 
 XVII. Career of the Pioneer Store . . 283 
 XVIII. Parliamentary Aid to Co-operation . . 289 
 
 XIX. Co-operation in Stormy Days . . 294 
 
 XX. Nature of Co-operative Principle . . 299 
 
 XXI. Distribution The Co-operative Store . 312
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 G. J. Holyoake ..... Frontispiece 
 Wendell Phillips .... Facing page i 
 Socialists' Institution Anti Corn Mill 33 
 
 Robert Owen . . . . . 43 
 
 Robert Owen's Grave . . 64 
 
 Toad Lane Store . . . . 283 
 
 VOL. I. X vi, la
 
 NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 i. Wendell Phillips was invited to our Co-operative Congress in 1876. 
 He was the greatest American orator in the perilous Anti-Slavery agitation 
 whenever equity to industry was in question. He was always spoken of in 
 America as the " noblest Roman of them all." His portrait is from a 
 photograph which he gave me in his own house in Boston but a short 
 time before his death. 
 
 2. The old Socialist Institution is the type of many of the earliest places 
 of meeting, and remains unchanged. Rochdale Co-operation began there. 
 (See ** History of the Rochdale Pioneers.") 
 
 3. At the end of the eighteenth century the Corn Mill of Hull charged 
 high prices ; to remedy this a few co-operators set up an Anti-Mill a mill 
 against mills. It is the earliest relic of Co-operation in England. 
 
 4. The portrait of Robert Owen is by his friend the elder Pickersgill, in 
 the days of Owen's early popularity. The original is in the possession of 
 William Tebb, of Rede Hall, Burstow. 
 
 5. The Toad Lane Store is where the Rochdale Pioneers commenced 
 business in 1844. A Swiss artist has delineated the Doffers from the mill 
 who assembled to ridicule the humble beginning.
 
 
 V. . /!'.' }>. 1.
 
 PART I 
 
 THE PIONEER PERIOD 
 
 i 8 i 2-1844 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 " Distribution should undo excess, 
 And each man have enough." King Lear. 
 
 It is the duty of him who pleads a cause, or solicits the atten- 
 tion of the public to any subject, to state distinctly what the 
 subject is if he knows it ; so that those who confer upon 
 him the favour of their attention at the outset may possess the 
 means of deciding whether or no they will continue it. 
 
 Dr. Furnivall could tell all about the origin of the term 
 Co-operation and when it first crept into our language. I find 
 less of it than I expected in quarters in which I have looked. 
 "The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana," 1845, says the French 
 have the word co-operer, the Spaniards co-operar y the Italians 
 co-operare, the Latin co-operare^ and derive it from co- and 
 operarij which simply means to work to labour together, to 
 endeavour for some common purpose. Sir Thomas More, 
 speaking of the Sacrament, mentions that " in certain respects 
 it doth nothing work, nor co-operat thereto." Crashaw, in his 
 " Sacred Poems," writes : 
 
 " Bring all your lutes and harps of heav'n and earth ; 
 Whate'er co-operates to the common mirth." 
 
 Hammond, in his " Sermons," was, so far as I am aware, the 
 first to use the word in the form with which we are now so 
 familiar. He says, " Men will see the original of all the 
 wealth, called such, immediately from God ; without any 
 co-operation of ours." Holland, in his " Plutarch," makes a
 
 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 quotation from Timotheus, the poet, in which a form of the 
 word which has never come into use, is employed : 
 
 " Both boldness stout and fortitude, 
 With mental discipline, 
 In war, which are co-operant, 
 With virtue doth combine." 
 
 In Boyle's Life there is given a pretty instance of the personal 
 form of the term : "And the success will perhaps invite many 
 more to be co-operators with the truth." 
 
 Co-operation, in the industrial sense of the word, means the 
 equitable division of profits with worker, capitalist, and con- 
 sumer, concerned in the undertaking. From the commence- 
 ment of human society Co-operation has been common in the 
 sense of two or more persons uniting to attain an end which 
 each was unable to effect singly. As society grew, crowds 
 were coerced into acting together by king or chief, who took 
 the profit. In modern days the capitalist has it. It is still 
 common to regard the labourer as being under great obligation 
 for mere subsistence, while he aids in creating the wealth of 
 his employer. The new Co-operation, of which I here write, 
 begins in mutual help, with a view to end in a common com- 
 petence. A co-operative society commences in persuasion, 
 proceeds by consent, seeks success by common efforts, incurs 
 risks, and shares losses, intending that all its members shall 
 proportionately share whatever benefits are secured. The 
 equality sought is not a mad equality of 
 
 " Equal division of unequal earnings," * 
 
 but an equitable award of gains proportionate to work done. 
 There is equality under the law when every man can obtain 
 justice, however low his condition or small his means; there is 
 equality of protection when none may assault or kill the 
 humblest person without being made accountable ; there is civil 
 equality when the evidence of all is valid in courts of justice, 
 
 1 Ebenezer Elliott wrote the best description in our language of what 
 communism is not. Elliott repeated it to me amid the charming hedgerows, 
 where he wrote his song of " The Wonders of the Lane " : 
 
 " What is a Communist ? One who hath yearnings 
 For equal division of unequal earnings, 
 Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing 
 To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling."
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATION 5 
 
 irrespective of speculative opinion ; there is equality of citizen- 
 ship when all offices and honours are open to merit ; there is 
 equality of taxation when all are made to contribute to the 
 support of the State according to their means ; and there is 
 equality in a co-operative society, when the right of every 
 worker, shareholder, or purchaser is recognised to a share of the 
 common profit, in the proportion to which he contributes to 
 it, in capital, or labour, or trade by hand or head. There 
 is no complete Co-operation where this equality is not the rule. 
 Co-operation, after being long declared innovatory and 
 impracticable, has been discovered to be both old and ordinary. 
 Mr. John Macdonell counts Jacob tending Laban's flocks 
 as a very early co-operator, he being a servant directly inte- 
 rested in the profits of his master. 1 Mr. Nasse has shown that 
 there existed agricultural communities in Europe in the Middle 
 Ages, and that there was a co-operative use of land in England 
 which it would be deemed revolutionary to propose now. It 
 is remembered now that Greek sailors in the Levant, American 
 sailors engaged in the whale fishery and China trade, the 
 Chinese traders in Manilla, the Cornwall lead miners, and the 
 lead and copper miners of Flintshire and Cumberland, have 
 long been either equal or partial participators in profits. The 
 Metayer system 2 is a familiar illustration with political econo- 
 mists. A modern author, who has written with discernment 
 of social theorists, says, "The words Co-operation and Co- 
 operative have been used by communist writers to denote that 
 all the members of a community are to work together for the 
 common benefit, instead of working, as at present, each on his 
 own account." 3 This explanation is on the line of truth, and 
 goes forward some distance upon it. 
 
 Co-operation turns toil into industry, which is labour 
 animated working willingly, knowing the reason why 
 because the profit of each, in proportion to his work, is 
 
 1 "Survey of Political Economy," chap. xv. p. 213. 
 
 2 " The principle of the Metayer system is that the labourer, or peasant, 
 makes his engagement directly with the landowner, and pays, not a fixed 
 rent, either in money or in kind, but a certain proportion of the produce, 
 or rather of what remains of the produce, after deducting what is con- 
 sidered necessary to keep up the stock. The proportion is usually, as the 
 name imports, one-half ; but in several districts in Italy it is two-thirds" 
 (Mill, " Political Economy," People's Edition, p. 183). 
 
 3 Charles Morrison, " Labour and Capital," p. in.
 
 6 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 secured to him. Co-operation leaves nobody out who works. 
 Those who do not know this do not understand Co-opera- 
 tion ; those who do know it and do not mean it, are traitors 
 to the principle. Those who mean it and do not take steps 
 to secure it, or are silent when others evade it, or do not 
 advocate it when occasion offers, are unseeing or supine. 
 Co-operation touches no man's fortune ; seeks no plunder ; 
 causes no disturbance in society ; gives no trouble to states- 
 men ; it enters into no secret associations ; it needs no trades 
 union to protect its interests ; it contemplates no violence ; it 
 subverts no order ; it envys no dignity ; it accepts no gift, nor 
 asks any favour ; it keeps no terms with the idle, and it will 
 break no faith with the industrious. It is neither mendicant, 
 servile, nor offensive ; it has its hand in no man's pocket, and 
 does not mean that any other hands shall remain long or com- 
 fortably in its own ; it means self-help, self-dependence, and 
 such share of the common competence as labour shall earn 
 or thought can win.
 
 EVIL DAYS BEFORE CO-OPERATION BEGAN 7 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EVIL DAYS BEFORE CO-OPERATION BEGAN 
 
 " Defend me, therefore, Common Sense, say I, 
 From reveries so airy from the toil 
 Of dropping buckets into empty wells, 
 And growing old in drawing nothing up." Cowper. 
 
 Matters were at a very bad pass as they had often been 
 before with the working people in England when Co-opera- 
 tion began. There was a certain statute of Edward VI., 
 which set forth in its preamble " that partly by the foolish 
 pity and mercy of them which should have seen godly laws 
 executed" the poor and unemployed had become troublesome : 
 and therefore, in order that godliness might do its duty to 
 society, it was enacted that "If any person shall bring to two 
 justices of peace any runagate servant, or any other which 
 liveth idly or loiteringly by the space of three days, they shall 
 cause that idle and loitering servant or vagabond to be marked 
 with a hot iron on the breast with the mark of V, and adjudge 
 him to be slave to the same person that brought him for two 
 years after, who shall take the said slave and give him bread, 
 water, or small drink, and refuse him meat, and cause him to 
 work, by beating, chaining, or otherwise, in such work as he 
 shall put him unto, be it never so vile : and if he shall absent 
 himself from his said master, by the space of fourteen days, 
 then he shall be adjudged by two justices of peace to be 
 marked on the forehead, or the ball of the cheek, with a hot 
 iron, with the sign of an S, and further shall be adjudged to be 
 slave to his said master for ever." 
 
 In the days when this Act was passed, it was easy to see that 
 gentlemen knew what they were about ; and at the beginning
 
 8 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 of the last century there were worthy and worshipping persons, 
 who regretted, as many do still, the decay of vigour in the 
 governing classes. What they had come to in 1822 Francis 
 Place has recorded. 1 In that year a poor farrier had travelled 
 from Alnwick, in Northumberland, to London in search of 
 work. On the same day a shopman to a grocer long out 
 of employ arrived penniless from Shropshire. Both had come 
 up to London, and met, companions in destitution, in the pens 
 of Smithfield market, where they ventured to think they 
 might be allowed to sleep in the bed of beasts. They were 
 seized by constables and taken before a magistrate of the city. 
 Both begged to be discharged, and promised to make their 
 way home in the best way they could ; but to this humble 
 request the magistrate would not accede. He said " he was of 
 opinion that the prisoners were not justified in coming to town 
 without any prospect before them, for they must have known 
 that, in the present state of trade, no one would take them in, 
 nor would any one be justified in taking in a perfect stranger ; 
 but whether their conduct arose solely from ignorance or 
 not he considered was immaterial ; the magistrates could 
 not know the minds of the prisoners, and could make no 
 distinction." 
 
 The Lord Mayor agreed with the Alderman on the bench 
 who had delivered this decision, and who consulted him. 
 "The City magistrates," the Mayor said, "wish it to be known 
 in the country at large that in future they should feel them- 
 selves bound to send all to hard labour for the term enacted 
 (which was not less than one, and as much as three, months), 
 whether they were actuated by a vicious spirit of vagabondage, 
 or with whatever professed object or speculation they came to 
 town. In short, they would put the law in full force against 
 all who could not prove reasonable assurance or certainty of 
 employment as their motive for coming to London." Farriers 
 and shopmen unable to obtain employment in their own parish 
 were warned that they must stay there and perish. 
 
 In 1825 a dinner was given to Joseph Hume, M.P., in 
 
 Edinburgh, on which occasion Francis Jeffrey made a speech 
 
 in favour of the combination of workmen. The substance 
 
 of Mr. Jeffrey's speech occupies twenty-three pages octavo. 
 
 1 " Principles of Population."
 
 EVIL DAYS BEFORE CO-OPERATION BEGAN 9 
 
 Judging from the facility and persistence with which some 
 Scotch bailies who come to England on deputations speak, 1 
 this dinner may have lasted a week. The purport of Mr. 
 Jeffrey's speech was to explain the toast " Freedom of 
 Labour," which was expressed as follows : " Freedom of 
 Labour. But let the labourer recollect that in exercising his 
 own rights he cannot be permitted to violate the rights of 
 others." It was generous of Francis Jeffrey, himself a Whig 
 reviewer, to speak at all in defence of combination by work- 
 men ; 2 but at that time, and for years after, it was a perilous 
 business for the labourer to attempt to unite, or to be known 
 to be friendly with those who counselled him to do it. There 
 was no necessity to warn them not to abuse the power they 
 dare not use. 
 
 Now homilies are read to them against cultivating class 
 feeling. In the day of which I write, it was a great point to 
 get them to understand that they were a class at all. At 
 that time a very uncomfortable monitor of the people existed, 
 who attracted a large share of attention, and who gave the 
 poor a " bit of his mind," which they have not forgotten yet 
 the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus. This is what he said to 
 them, in deliberately chosen sentences, and in large type : 
 "There is one right which a man has been generally thought 
 to possess, which I am sure he neither can nor does possess 
 a right to subsistence when his labour will not fairly purchase 
 it." 3 "I firmly believe," he says, " that such persons, by the 
 laws of nature, which are the laws of God, have no claim to 
 support." Only the rich had the right to live. Malthus had 
 the ear of legislators, and he wrote for them ; and this is what 
 he said to them : " As a previous step to alteration in the poor- 
 law, which would contract or stop the increase of the relief to 
 be given, it appears to me that we are bound in justice and 
 honour formally to disclaim the right of the poor to support." 
 
 1 A Scotch deputation to Downing Street, headed by a Lord Provost of 
 Edinburgh, first caused me to notice this. The chief speaker was Robert 
 Chambers. He had been kept some years out of his well-earned dignity, 
 because he was suspected of writing the " Vestiges of the Natural History 
 of Creation " (it being unlawful to consider creation natural) ; yet I saw 
 him fasten on a Prime Minister, who was overdue in Parliament, but 
 could not extricate himself from that pertinacious visitor. 
 
 2 The Combination Laws were repealed the year before the speech 
 1824. 
 
 3 Essays, vol. iii. p. 154.
 
 io HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 " To this end," he continues, " I should propose a regulation 
 to be made declaring that no child born from any marriage, 
 taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of this 
 law, and no illegitimate child born two years from same date, 
 should ever be entitled to parish assistance." 1 
 
 This language informed the poor that they had better get 
 good information as to how things are going on in the world 
 before they come into it. He would logically interdict 
 " lying-in " houses as encouraging sexual improvidence he 
 would abolish hospital aid for diseases arising from poverty. 
 The St. Augustine tone prevailed in the churches. Piety 
 was not only dogmatic, it was insolvent. It dictated to men 
 their beliefs. The struggling, whom it could not help the 
 miserable, whom it could not save, it interdicted from thinking 
 for themselves. The workman was regarded as holding his 
 soul under a ticket-of-leave from the churches ; and men of 
 free thought in religion, or politics, or science were treated 
 as a criminal class. Common men were vassals the mitre 
 their souls the State their means. And, what was worse, 
 many of them had no more sense than to put themselves, like 
 dry sticks, under the cauldron of corruption. 
 
 Historical knowledge was a weak point of the people. 
 Those of them who were politicians believed that the history 
 of the world began with the French Revolution. Old Mid- 
 land politicians half believe now that liberty began with the 
 Birmingham Political Union of 1830. A stout Radical of 
 mark in Bradford, Squire Farrar, built himself a house early in 
 the last century, and over the door, cut in stone, still appears 
 the date of the declaration of American Independence ; and 
 there is a general impression in many quarters here, as well as 
 across the Atlantic, that the world recommenced at that 
 period. 
 
 However, without troubling much when the world began, 
 workmen were to be found who were bent on improving it. 
 Trades unionists were among the most active of this class. 
 We need not go far for an example which will sufficiently 
 illustrate their condition and their sense as well as their 
 spirit. 
 
 The wool combers and stuff weavers of Bradford published 
 1 Essays, vol. iii.
 
 EVIL DAYS BEFORE CO-OPERATION BEGAN u 
 
 in 1825 a notable statement of the workman's case in local 
 verse, which commences thus : 
 
 " Lads, pray what's the matter ? 
 Are you with master about to fight ? 
 ' Yes, sir, we are, and well we might, 
 For let us work hard as we will, 
 We're ne'er the better for it still.' " 
 
 Bradford men always had a stout, unyielding way of ex- 
 pressing dissatisfaction with their condition. So the Bradford 
 Homer proceeds to sound this note of battle, of which the 
 world has heard a good deal since. Answering the masters, 
 
 the poet sings : 
 
 " We are most willing 
 To work twelve pen'orth for a shilling. 
 But more we neither can nor will ; 
 We'd rather all. at once, stand still, 
 And form a union of our own 
 As men have done in many a town." 
 
 The verse of the stuff weavers' bard, it must be owned, is 
 a little woolly, but its texture is virile. 
 
 Things were not in a satisfactory state in England when 
 men like Southey and Coleridge thought of seeking in another 
 land more hopeful conditions of life. Southey's noble invoca- 
 tion to the wealthier classes, said 
 
 "Train up thy children, England. 
 Where hast thou mines but in their industry ? 
 Thy bulwarks where but in their breasts ? 
 
 O grief, then grief and shame, 
 If in this flourishing land there should be dwellings 
 Where the new-born babe doth bring unto its parents' soul 
 No joy ! where squalid poverty 
 Gives it the scanty bread of discontent." x 
 
 The rise of machinery was the circumstance that filled 
 the working class with despair. The capitalist able to use 
 machinery grew rich, the poor who were displaced by it were 
 brought in great numbers to the poor-house. A man so strong- 
 thinking as Horace Greeley had his mind inclined to protec- 
 tion by the misery he witnessed in his father's household, 
 when handloom weaving was superseded by merciless in- 
 ventions. Even Owen exclaimed, "We are pressed down by 
 
 1 It was a popular quotation long after, and is not untrue in 1905. 
 The Economist of 1S21 considered that " it deserved to be written in 
 diamonds."
 
 12 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the weight of inventions and improvements." * Indeed, in 
 1807, things were so hopeless for the people that Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld wrote that "they considered even depredators usefully 
 employed in lessening the inequalities of rank." 
 
 Goldsmith relates how he found the reflective shoemaker 
 who had but one regret, that by changing his street he had 
 abandoned a stall where a successor " had amassed a handsome 
 fortune," and died at last over his lapstone, " with seven 
 pounds, all in hard gold," stitched in the waistband of his 
 lucky breeches. 
 
 The introduction of machinery for years lowered wages, 
 and pushed the mass of the workmen with increased force 
 against the walls of the workhouse. Mr. Thompson, of 
 Cork, commenced an address, in 1826, to the distressed Spital- 
 fields weavers, thus : "All kinds of labour, agricultural and 
 manufacturing, are rapidly approaching their fated equality 
 the starvation price, the lowest that even in times of average 
 employment will support a miserable existence." If one 
 whom fortune had placed above want, and education above 
 prejudice, had these impressions, no wonder the poor desponded. 
 
 No wonder Social Reformers became world-sick. They 
 called this the " old " world, as though they had a new one on 
 hand. Mr. Charles Bray, the early friend of George Eliot, 
 wrote so late as 1844 to ask whether " commerce and the 
 mechanical arts do not really point to a declining age ? " All 
 the dismal facts of the day were brought to the front, as though 
 society had the small-pox and had never been vaccinated ; 
 whereas the great creature called society has " a pulse like a 
 cannon." True, there is "something the matter with its 
 head," since the rich could display themselves conspicuously in 
 the midst of a squalid people, as some one has said, like jewels 
 in the hair of a mendicant woman. 
 
 True, Carlyle is a grim and often a brutal preacher, but to 
 him is greatly owing the improved regard since shown for 
 craftsmen. He created " captains of industry," who thought 
 
 1 Mr. Owen's speech at the Holkham agricultural meeting, on his 
 health being proposed by Mr. Coke. Even landlords had their vicissitudes 
 in those days. Then Mr. Coke's land let at 15s. per acre ; a fall in the 
 value of produce might throw it out of cultivation, reducing it to 5s. per 
 acre, involving a loss of ^40,000 a year. Even then the owner would 
 probably not need to come upon the parish, while the weaver or mechanic 
 would.
 
 EVIL DAYS BEFORE CO-OPERATION BEGAN 13 
 
 of equity as well as gain. 1 The capitalist was a new feudal 
 lord more cruel than the king who reigned by conquest. The , 
 old feudal lord had some care for his vassal, and provided him 
 with sustenance and dwelling. The new lord of capital 
 charges himself with no duty of the kind, and does not even 
 acknowledge the labourer's right to live. His condition is no 
 affair of his employer. Thoughtfulness for the workman 
 might be manifested as an act of patronage, but not as an act 
 of duty or right. 
 
 Nevertheless there are few so poor or miserable in civilised 
 society as they would be in savage society. They may die 
 early of insufficient food and through an unhealthy dwelling 
 in a civilised town, but they would die earlier and suffer more 
 as savages ; while every one may find twenty chances of rising 
 to some sort of comfort, and even to riches, which would never 
 happen to one savage in ten thousand. 
 
 Sir Richard Burton, in his " Unexplored Syria," relates that 
 he went out to visit Mount Lebanon. Lured by writers, 
 whom he says had " Holy Land on the brain," he found life 
 there, though ages removed from the barbarian state, 
 such that he exclaims : " Having learned what it is, I should 
 far prefer the comfort of Spitalfields, the ease of the Seven 
 Dials, and the society of Southwark." Hoarded earning is the 
 beginning of progress. Capital is the handmaid of civilisation. 
 Lord Brabazon points out that " the higher the civilisation of 
 a country the more marked is the difference between rich and 
 poor." 2 This only means that as the refinements and luxuries 
 of the wealthy increase, the contrast grows greater between the 
 condition of rich and poor. This does not necessarily imply 
 that the condition of the poor is worse than it was. This 
 is hardly possible, seeing that in every age it is declared to 
 be as bad as it can be, and always worse than it ever was 
 before. Civilisation gives the poor, who are wise, a better 
 chance than the starvation stage. If a man is Lazarus it is 
 
 1 Yet he could applaud those who added pianoforte wire to the cats 
 with which they flogged working men and women of Jamaica. Men in 
 the negro condition, black and white, will one day have their turn of 
 power, and Mr. Carlyle's ferocious approval will invigorate many a cat, 
 and sharpen many a knife, for use on respectable backs and throats, 
 unless working people learn that fairness alone brings security. 
 
 2 Reports of the Condition of the Industrial Classes in Foreign 
 Countries.
 
 i 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 better for him to catch the crumbs falling from the table of 
 Dives than lie waiting for those which may drop from brother 
 Lazarus's table. 
 
 The sole sensible question for the poor to ask is, Can they 
 better themselves ? The French, demoralised by centralisation, 
 lacked the English habit of working for majorities and winning 
 them by agitation. The tradition of the camp in France was 
 their disqualification for progress by reason. It is showier, 
 swifter, and more natural to man to fight out a difference than 
 persuade men out of it. The peril and imprisonments which 
 resulted from political movements in England the first half or 
 the last century were occasioned by men who had been in the 
 army and wanted their associates to arm. 
 
 To live in a state in which capital can exist is an advance. 
 It is only in that stage that emancipation is possible. It is by 
 concert in industrial operations that wealth arises. A man 
 being one of the chief instruments in creating wealth, he ought 
 to get a reasonable share of it. This he may obtain, not by 
 taking it from those who have amassed it, which can only be 
 done by bloodshed, and waste, and by setting a precedent 
 which will expose him to similar attacks in his turn. One 
 remedy is by employing the economy of Co-operation to save 
 capital and entering into industrial partnerships to earn it. 
 This has been the lesson taught by co-operative thinkers, and 
 by them alone.
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 15 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS WHO FORESAW BETTER TIMES 
 
 "Now if . . . any one should propose anything that he had either read 
 in history or observed in his travels, the rest would think that the reputa- 
 tion of their wisdom would sink, and that their interests would be much 
 depressed if they could not run it down, ... as if this were a great 
 mischief, that any should be found wiser than his ancestors." Sir Thomas 
 More, Utopia. 
 
 " World-makers " seems a more relevant term than 
 Utopianists. Those conversant with the history of social 
 projectors will know that the phrase " world-making " is a fair 
 description of the ambitious schemes of most of them. 
 
 Co-operation in England was born of world-makers, and it 
 becomes more intelligible when its order of descent is seen. An 
 idea recurring from age to age, and among various peoples, 
 may be a pertinacious one, since experience shows that silly 
 ideas are more likely to recur than wise ones folly being ever 
 ready-made, while sense has to be acquired. But if it be 
 a matter of history that certain ideas, oft recurring and widely 
 agitating dissimilar peoples, have been mostly originated by 
 philosophers and only promoted by thinking people, the pre- 
 sumption is that there is something relevant to human needs 
 in such projects. Co-operative ideas have been of this 
 character. Men of sense and spirit want to know how it is 
 that knaves are born on the bank and honest men in the ditch. 
 Only the wise and bold venture on untried existence. Then 
 there have been in all ages classes of men who found things so 
 much to their advantage that they loudly recommended man- 
 kind not on any account to disturb them, knowing well that 
 men are never the same any more after they have once seen a 
 new thing.
 
 16 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 When Co-operation arose nearly everybody said it was 
 contrary to human nature. What was new to them they 
 concluded was new to humanity. 1 
 
 The sentiment of mine and thine, which now seems part of 
 human nature, was once an invention. " Even when agricul- 
 ture had been introduced," Herder remarks, " it cost some 
 pains to limit men to separate fields and establish the distinc- 
 tions of mine and thine." 2 Mr. James Mill says, in his 
 " History of British India," that " the different benefits 
 included under the idea of property, at different periods of 
 society, are not the offspring of nature but the creatures of 
 will chosen by society as that arrangement with which is, or is 
 pretended to be, the best for all." According to Aristotle, 
 there were nations who held the land in common and divided 
 the produce, and there were others who divided the land and 
 stored the produce in common. Minos, who, according to the 
 legend, aimed at establishing equality among the Cretans, 
 would not suffer any of them, whatever might be their rank, 
 to lead an indolent life. Persons of all classes sat at common 
 tables, partook of the same diet, and at the public expense. 
 These laws subsisted in force for nearly a thousand years a 
 long time for a scheme of life to last which would now be held 
 to be contrary to human nature. Lycurgus governed Sparta 
 as grandly as Minos did Crete. Obedience to the law, and the 
 dread of living for himself, were the earliest lessons imprinted 
 on the mind of a Lacedemonian ; and this education is reputed 
 to have endured four hundred years. This " dread " of a man 
 living for himself alone has been long extinct in modern 
 society. It is a true saying that it is liberty which is old ; it is 
 despotism which is new. Plato had the sagacity to foresee and 
 reason upon the danger of over-population, and considered it 
 would be impossible to preserve equality in any State without 
 regulating the number of the inhabitants a question society 
 has not made up its mind to look at yet. 
 
 The noblest body of Jews, unlike any others of which his- 
 tory has made mention, were the Essenes. They deemed 
 
 1 Like the Irish peasant whom Dr. King met, and asked whether he 
 would rather live upon wheaten bread or potatoes, answered, " Sir, I like 
 bread well enough once in a way, but potatoes are more natural " 
 
 (Co-operative Magazine, 1826). 
 a Herder, " Phil. Hist.," vol. 
 
 i. p. 372.
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 17 
 
 riches to consist in frugality and contentment ; nor had they 
 any slaves among them. All were free, and all in their turn 
 administered to others. Among them there was no house, 
 however private, which was not open to fraternal reception. 
 Nor were they enervated by their communistic principles. 
 Josephus attests the heroic fortitude with which they met 
 their sufferings in defence of their opinions and mode of life. 
 Jesus evidently thought well of their principles, and com- 
 mended them. But not himself foreseeing the rise of the 
 commercial and manufacturing systems of Europe, he left no 
 directions which approve themselves to practical men for 
 continuing a plan of life in which men should have " all things 
 in common." Indeed, political economists, with one consent, 
 ignore him in that great department of progress which is their 
 especial study. Nothing can be more disastrous to the strug- 
 gling poor than that a teacher of the highest repute among 
 them should bequeath to them plans of social life so crudely 
 stated that men should be contemptuously counted as "enthu- 
 siasts " who seek to reduce them to practice. 
 
 The " Utopia " had great influence on social thinkers. 
 Considering More's position, and the eminence of the persons 
 and interests which were satirised in his " Utopia," it was a 
 bold book. 1 What kind of book the " Utopia " is, and what 
 manner of man the brave author was, has been told by one 
 whose pen lends charm to the meanest fact and worthily 
 recounts the noblest. Mr. Ruskin says : " We have known 
 what communism is for our fathers knew it. . . . First, it 
 means that everybody must work for his dinner. That much, 
 perhaps, you thought you knew. The Chelsea farmer and 
 stout Catholic, born in Milk Street, London, three hundred 
 and ninety-one years ago, 1480, 2 planned a commune flowing 
 with milk and honey, and otherwise Elysian, and called it the 
 * Place of Well-being,' or Utopia. . . . Listen how matters 
 really are managed there." [It is Sir Thomas More who says 
 what follows.] "Consider how great a part of all other 
 nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who 
 
 1 Bishop Burnet says the tenderest part of the whole work is the repre- 
 sentation he gives of Henry the Seventh's Court, in which his disguise is 
 so thin that the matter would not have been much plainer if he had 
 named him. 
 
 2 " Fors Clavigera," Letter 7. 187 1. 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 1 8 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 are the half of mankind ; and if some few women are diligent 
 their husbands are idle. Then consider the great company of 
 idle priests, and of those that are called religious men ; add 
 to these all the rich men, chiefly those that have estates in 
 lands, who are called noblemen and gentlemen, together with 
 their families, made up of idle persons that do nothing but go 
 swaggering about. Reckon in with these all those strong and 
 lusty beggars that go about pretending some disease in excuse 
 for their begging ; and upon the whole account you will find 
 that the number of those by whose labours mankind is supplied 
 is much less than you did perhaps imagine. Then consider 
 how few of those that work are employed in labours that 
 men do really need ; for we, who measure all things by 
 money, give occasion to many trades that are both vain and 
 superfluous, and that serve only to support riot and luxury. 
 ... If all those who labour about useless things were set 
 to more profitable trades ; and if all that number that languish 
 out their life in sloth and idleness, of whom every one 
 consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work do, 
 were forced to labour, you may easily imagine that a small 
 proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either 
 necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind." He who said 
 this, Mr. Ruskin adds, " was one of the sternest Roman 
 Catholics of his stern time ; and at the fall of Cardinal 
 Wolsey became Lord High Chancellor of England in his 
 stead." 
 
 Sir Thomas More wrote in 15 16. One hundred and forty 
 years later 1656 Harrington dedicated his agrarian 
 " Oceana " to Cromwell. Hume considered it to be " a 
 work of genius and invention, and the most valuable model 
 of a commonwealth which had been offered to the public." 
 Cromwell thought there was mischief in it, and is stated to 
 have said that " what he had won by the sword he was 
 not going to be scribbled out of by Mr. Harrington." 
 
 One hundred and fifty years after his death any espousal of 
 his scheme brought persons into difficulties ; and His Majesty's 
 Attorney-General, in 1793, spoke of him in a very unpleasant 
 wav. When the abusive Attorney-General sat down, Erskinc 
 rejoined : " Yet this very Harrington, this low blackguard as 
 he is described, was descended (you may see his pedigree at
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 19 
 
 the Herald's office for sixpence) from eight dukes, three 
 marquises, seventy earls, twenty-seven viscounts, and thirty- 
 seven barons, sixteen of whom were knights of the Garter." 
 He was the most affectionate servant of Charles L, from whom 
 he never concealed his opinions, for it is observed by Wood 
 that the king greatly affected his company ; but when they 
 happened to talk of a commonwealth he could scarcely endure 
 it. "I know not," says Toland, "which most to commend 
 the king for trusting an honest man, though a republican, or 
 Harrington for owning his principles while he served a king." 
 At Charles's death the " Oceana " was written. It was seized 
 by Cromwell as a libel, and the way in which it was recovered 
 was remarkable. Harrington waited on Cromwell's daughter 
 to beg for his book, and on entering her apartment snatched up 
 her child. He said : "I know what you feel as a mother ; 
 feel, then, for me. Your father has got my child," meaning 
 the " Oceana." It was afterwards restored on her petition, 
 Cromwell answering, in his tolerant way, " Let him have 
 his book ; if my government is made to stand, it has nothing 
 to fear from paper shot." x 
 
 Forty years after Harrington's scheme of public life founded 
 on equipoise, came the proposal, by John Bellers, of a College 
 of Industry a remarkable instance of practical and co-operative 
 sagacity. It appeared in 1696, and was the first known 
 instance of a complete plan of an industrial community for 
 immediate adoption. Robert Owen, who received it from 
 Francis Place, had it printed in the old type in which it first 
 appeared. Bellers' scheme required ^18,000 in the money of 
 that time to carry it out. Had it been adopted by the states- 
 men to whom he addressed it, pauperism would have become 
 a tradition in England before this time. Like Mr. Owen, 
 Bellers appealed directly to the heads of the State, and prayed 
 the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled to give ear to 
 his plan, " by which the common people could be trained in 
 the art of taking care of themselves." He also addressed the 
 " thinking and public-spirited," who appear not to have been 
 more numerous in those days than now. He adopted for his 
 motto the wholesome words, " Industry brings plenty," and 
 
 1 Erskine's defence of Paine, before Lord Kenyon, 1793. This was the 
 occasion, according to Erskine, when Cromwell made the remark quoted.
 
 20 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the uncompromising intimations that "a sluggard should be 
 clothed with rags," and " he that will not work shall not eat." 
 Lest these sentiments should escape notice, Bellers placed them 
 on his title-page. His pamphlet was " printed and published 
 by T. Sowle, in White Hart Court, in Gracious Street, 
 London, 1696." Bellers began by quoting Lord Chief Justice 
 Hale, who said that " they that are rich are stewards of their 
 wealth " a doctrine which was thought very new when first 
 Sir John Sinclair and afterwards Mr. Thomas Drummond 
 preached it in the House of Commons. " The best account," 
 according to Lord Chief Justice Hale, " which the rich could 
 give of their wealth was to employ it in the reformation and 
 relief of those who want either money or wisdom ; " and 
 reminded them that " he who said, ' Am I my brother's 
 keeper ? ' was one of the worst of men." " The want of a due 
 provision," the Chief Justice said, " for the education and relief 
 of the poor in a way of industry is that which fills the gaols 
 with malefactors and the kingdom with idle persons. A sound, 
 prudent method for an industrious education of the poor will 
 give a better remedy against these corruptions than all the 
 gibbets and whipping-posts in the kingdom." Bellers himself 
 remarks that " it is the interest of the rich to take care of the 
 poor." He seems to have had an idea in his mind that there 
 were no poor, some of whose ancestors had not been rich, and 
 that there were none rich then, some of whose ancestors had 
 not been poor ; and that in the revolutions of society the 
 posterity of the rich might be poor again, and that it would be 
 good sense to put a stop to any more people becoming poor. 
 He insisted that an industrial college could produce all its 
 members required. The shopkeepers of this generation will 
 be astonished to learn that their original enemy was Bellers. 
 He enumerated persons and things of which he intended to 
 save the cost in his system : He named shopkeepers and all 
 their servants and dependents. Bad debts. (He was evidently 
 opposed to the credit system.) Saving the labour of many 
 women and children. Saving of much separate house room, 
 firing, and cooking. Securing that the land should be better 
 tilled by the labourers being owners. 
 
 The profits of the college were to be divided among the 
 shareholders, but the workers were to be guaranteed security
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 21 
 
 in and for all things necessary in health or sickness, single or 
 married, wife or children, and if the parents die early, the 
 children would be well educated and preserved from misery. 
 The workers as they grew older were to be abated one hour a 
 day of their work. Punishments were to be rather abatements 
 of food than stripes, and that those deserving of greater punish- 
 ments should be expelled. His plan for teaching languages 
 to the children contained the germ of that system which Mr. 
 Prendegast has since made famous, and Bellers proposed the 
 same abridgment of the hours of learning for children which 
 Sir Edwin Chadwick mercifully justified. Bellers proposed, as 
 Pestalozzi and Froebel have since done, " to raise the child's 
 love to what he should learn." Beating children to make 
 them learn he thought silly, and spoiled their natural parts. 
 " Understanding," he contended, "must rather be distilled as 
 children can take it, than be driven into them." He was for 
 giving them sensible employment, as he thought a silly employ- 
 ment left the mind silly. "A good education," he said, "though 
 with but a little estate, makes a happier man than a great 
 estate without it." 
 
 Bellers gave no account of himself as to who he was 
 what station he occupied from what reading or experience 
 he derived his thoughts, and nobody has asked ; but he was 
 clearly sensible and original. His scheme is worth consult- 
 ing by any community-maker, for it defines the number 
 and proportions of persons in every department of industry 
 who should be brought together. His was not a voluntary, 
 but a State scheme of co-operation, and the only one ever 
 proposed in England. He ended his proposal by answering 
 a number of objections which he considered might be brought 
 against it. One is : " Why should he propose to get the chief 
 share of the profit of the poor's labour, and not let them have 
 all the profit themselves, but give the larger portion to the 
 rich, who are to supply the funds to the college ? " His 
 answer is : " Because the rich have no other means of living 
 but by the labour of others ; as the landlord by the labour of 
 his tenants, and the tradesmen by the labour of the mechanics." 
 It did not much matter that Bellers gave the surplus to the 
 capitalists, seeing that he first made it a condition that everv 
 reasonable want of every member should be well provided for.
 
 22 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 His college of labour would have stood a good chance of 
 succeeding because it would have been governed. It was 
 no sentimental scheme in which those who set it going found 
 the capital, and those who used it did as they pleased. Belters' 
 college was a despotism founded on industrial justice i.e., free 
 participation by the workers in the advantages they created. 
 I learn, through the researches of Mr. W. E. A. Axon, that 
 John Belters was a member of the Society of Friends, the 
 father of Fettiplace Belters. John Belters died February 8, 1725, 
 and was buried in Bunhill Fields. 
 
 The reprint by Owen of Belters' book made a great 
 impression when it appeared, and was reproduced in periodicals. 
 There was another writer subsequent to this social-minded 
 Quaker one Morelly, a Frenchman, who wrote in the 
 eighteenth century. Mr. Owen was much influenced by 
 what he came to know of his views. Francis Place gave some 
 account of Morelly. Morelly was distinguished for the pre- 
 cision of his ideas and for the mathematical nature of his mind. 
 He said the " problem " of social reform was " to find that 
 state of things in which it should be impossible for any one 
 to be depraved or poor." No theorist ever expressed the work 
 to be done so well before, no social reformer has expressed it 
 better since. This is what social thinkers are always aiming 
 to bring about. 
 
 The Marquis of Mirabeau, in a letter dated 1762, made 
 mention of a family of the name of Pinon, living a few leagues 
 from the town of Thiers, in Auvergne, France, the head of 
 which, a farmer, having lived to see his sons marry, requested 
 them to continue a distinct tribe, and to maintain inviolably 
 the sacred bond of union, by community of wealth and property 
 amongst them. "After having been established, at this 
 period, above a century," says the marquis, " this amicable 
 institution has so greatly prospered, that the Pinons have not 
 only a family seat in the mountains, supplied with all the 
 conveniences of life, with elegant apartments for strangers 
 of the highest rank, who are treated with the most generous 
 hospitality, but they have also several villages appertaining 
 to them, whose clergy, lawyers, and other professional persons 
 are branches of the same stock. The necessary arts of life are 
 exercised in this tribe for the emolument of the whole; and
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 23 
 
 the superfluities sold at the adjacent fairs and markets, where 
 every one carries with him his family credentials. One 
 tradition of their origin is that an ancestor of great wealth and 
 a numerous progeny, well advanced in years, explained to 
 his children " that their splendid way of living must be greatly 
 diminished if, after his death, they should, as was customary, 
 divide his fortune into separate portions ; but that, if they 
 desired to be better economists than the rest of mankind, they 
 should live in the united state they had done under his roof." 
 
 The Pinon case is cited because its success was based on 
 secular reasons, which alone are of universal weight. Certain 
 Jesuits are credited with very great success in carrying out 
 arrangements of common life in Paraguay. But Jesuits do 
 not encourage self-dependence in life or thought, and when 
 their enfeebling paternalism ended, the population were 
 impotent and idealess as children. The noble aspiration after 
 truer and higher life, with all the perils, conflicts, and vicissi- 
 tudes it involves, is better than the softest, smoothest, sleekest, 
 and most steadfast stagnation. 
 
 The only instance in which social equality was the subject 
 of conspiracy occurred in Paris, 1796. Its great leader was 
 Babeuf. In those days a blind love of innovation prevailed, 
 not alone in France but in Europe, and was strongest in Paris. 
 Then hope and eagerness had the force of a passion. M. de 
 Talleyrand used to say " that only those who had lived near 
 the conclusion of the seventeenth century could realise the 
 worth of the world to man." Gracchus Babeuf was a young 
 man when the French Revolution occurred. Ardent, well- 
 informed, of penetrating mind, and able to write with clearness 
 and fire, he soon got himself into difficulties. Of what kind 
 nothing more need be said than that it was Marat who saved 
 him from the consequences of an order of arrest. At a later 
 period he obtained the post of secretary to a district adminis- 
 tration, and subsequently he got employment in the bureaux 
 of the old commune of Paris. Mrs. Wollstonecraft, who 
 knew Babeuf well, declared that " she had never seen anv 
 person who possessed greater abilities, or equal strength of 
 character." His plan was to establish a system of equality 
 by force needless in a country which has a free press, free 
 speech, and the right of public meetings. For these means
 
 24 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 of progress an Englishman would fight ; but, having won 
 them, he would count himself a fool if he could not make 
 his way with them. Babeuf was not a wild reformer in 
 the sense of not knowing what he wanted. He had a clear 
 and complete idea of what he would put in the place of that 
 he intended to supersede. His object was to establish a 
 despotism of justice and equality. Robespierre, on the other 
 hand, held that " without the people's consent none have a 
 right to thrust systems upon them ; but with their consent, 
 all systems should be equally accessible to them." To the 
 credit of the French Liberals many of them objected to violent 
 modes of attaining just objects. Certainly many of the aims 
 of the conspirators were good. They were for abolishing 
 mendicity as dishonouring to a free State, and for establishing 
 a system of education in common. They regarded ignorance 
 as a national danger. They were friendly to a policy of peace. 
 They adopted a doctrine of non-intervention. They would 
 not intermeddle with other nations, nor suffer other nations 
 to intermeddle with the affairs of France. There were to be 
 no idlers. " Nature," they said, " had imposed upon every 
 one the obligation to work." They kept no terms with those 
 who did nothing. Their words were: "They do nothing 
 for the country who do not serve it by some useful occupation, 
 and can exercise no rights in it." The common accusation 
 is that men of social convictions seek other people's property 
 whereas the fact is they seek to make everybody work. This 
 may be a very disagreeable passion ; but it is not laziness, nor 
 is it plunder. All the schemes of Utopians prove at bottom 
 to be schemes of work and wealth-making. Shopkeepers will 
 be interested to hear that Babeuf and his colleagues proposed 
 to retain retail dealers. They meditated censorship of the 
 press, which the Napoleon family afterwards put in execution. 
 But the conspirators had a ferocious thoroughness and vigour 
 for which Carlyle and other eminent friends of Governor 
 Eyre, of Jamaica, would very much esteem them. They 
 decreed on the day on which they commenced their insur- 
 rection, that " to give or execute in the name of the existing 
 Government ('tyranny' they called it) any order whatever 
 should be punished with instant death." Some were "to 
 be buried under the ruins of their palaces ; which ruins were
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 25 
 
 to be left in that state, as a monument to the latest posterity 
 of the just punishment inflicted on the enemies of equality." x 
 A dismal kingdom of equality France would have been with 
 these murderous ruins defacing it. 
 
 Babeuf and his compatriots failed through a traitor, 2 and 
 came to the block. They were brave men, neither afraid to 
 avow their designs nor die for their cause. Babeuf's last letter 
 to his wife contained some wise and lofty sentiments : " It 
 belongs," he said, " to the family of a martyr of liberty to give 
 the example of every virtue, in order to attract the esteem of 
 all good people. I would desire my wife to do all in her power 
 to give education to her children. I hope you will believe you 
 were always most dear to me. Speak often of me to Camille ; 
 tell him a thousand times I bore him tenderly in my heart. 
 Tell Caius as much when he will be capable of understanding 
 it. I knew no other way to render you happy than by pro- 
 moting the happiness of all. I have failed. I have sacrificed 
 myself ; it is for you as well as for liberty I die." 
 
 When the conspirators were sentenced, Babeuf and Darthe, 
 the chief leaders, stabbed themselves with their daggers, and 
 were dragged from the court by the gendarmes. Babeuf's 
 poignard broke, and a piece remained imbedded near his heart. 
 Both lived long enough to be beheaded next day, but their 
 courage never forsook them. Their bodies were flung into a 
 ditch. Some country people buried them. So ended the first 
 and last conspiracy for equality ! Its conduct justifies the 
 high repute for ability Babeuf won. It was a masterpiece of 
 organisation. Nothing was forgotten. Proclamations, songs, 
 manifestoes, decrees, laws, declarations of rights, were all pre- 
 pared for issue, conceived with sagacity, and written with 
 brevity, eloquence, and fire. The labour and secret discussions 
 
 1 This design shows that the petroleuse business, which got connected 
 with the honest and just aims of the communalist party in France, was no 
 new madness. Indeed, it would not be new in England. An English 
 Conservative lord some time ago had at his breakfast-table one whom I 
 knew to have acted in a plot to blow up London in 1848. It was a police- 
 agent's project, but the person in question fell in with it, and it took some 
 trouble to divert him from it. The said lord did not know of this little 
 affair. The enterprising patriot left the country but kept up a corre- 
 spondence with his noble friend. 
 
 2 This was Grisel, in whom they had confided, and who had flattered, 
 inflamed, and caressed them, as is the way of suspicious patriots. The 
 club of Babeuf assembled in the vaults of the Pantheon, and this Grisel 
 was the most open-mouthed scoundrel there.
 
 26 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 gone through were immense. Nothing is more astonishing 
 than the sublime confidence of the conspirators in human 
 nature, to believe that no traitor would betray plans to which 
 hundreds must have been privy. That only one was false 
 shows that equality must have been a noble inspiration. 
 Phillipo Buonarroti, a Florentine of high family, a reputed 
 descendant of Michael Angelo and his brillant powers and 
 daring services corroborated the belief was a colleague of 
 Babeuf, and afterwards published a history with documents 
 which he had the courage to preserve of the famous attempt 
 of Babeuf. Among them were the " Songs for the Streets," 
 which had not been overlooked. Equality had its Marseillaise 
 as well as Republicanism, though its notes got stifled with 
 daggers. I quote it as giving some idea of the aspirations of the 
 time. Let the reader remember that the French had found 
 no way out of the long oppression under which they and their 
 forefathers had lived save by insurrection ; that they believed 
 kingly luxury and tyranny to have been the causes of their 
 misery and subjection ; that the people had delivered them- 
 selves by the knife ; that they had never seen any other means 
 succeed ; that the philosophers had all pleaded for them in 
 vain ; that they were firmly convinced that before kings arose 
 equality, freedom, and means of subsistence were enjoyed by 
 all who toiled ; that everlasting emancipation from slavery and 
 want depended upon themselves alone ; and that one united, 
 uncompromising, and thorough blow would redress for ever the 
 wrongs of ages. Let the reader recall all this, and he is not 
 English if his blood is not stirred by the 
 
 BATTLE SONG OF THE CONSPIRATORS FOR EQUALITY. 
 
 By tyrant codes enthralled, by knaves borne down, 
 
 Man stoops to man, and villains wear the crown : 
 
 Where is the freeman's voice ? the warrior's steel ? 
 
 Shall we not stoutly fight, as well as keenly feel ? 
 
 Awake ! arise, at Liberty's command ! 
 
 Th' Aurora of our freedom is at hand 
 
 And slavery's night is o'er if we'll but bravely stand ! 
 
 Oh, Nature, or whatever power it be, 
 
 Which said to man, "Be happy and be free! " 
 
 Say by what strange mischance thy laws o'erthrown 
 
 Have yielded place to slavery and a throne. 
 
 Is there not one will dare assert the cause 
 
 Of outraged manhood and thy broken laws ?
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 27 
 
 How long shall man quail 'neath the despot rule 
 
 Of a usurper or a king-born fool ? 
 
 Nations ! arise, at Liberty's command ! 
 
 Th' Aurora of your freedom is at hand ! 
 
 And slavery's night is o'er if you'll but bravely stand ! 
 
 In ancient times, when yet our race was young 
 Nor gold nor war the soul to madness stung 
 Each in the land possessed an equal share ; 
 No kingly luxury known, no gaunt despair. 
 Then peace and competence went hand in hand, 
 Unfear'd the assassin's knife, the foeman's brand 
 These days are ours again if we'll but bravely stand ! 
 
 In those bless'd days when man, of man the friend, 
 
 Nor yet had learn'd to borrow or to lend, 
 
 Nature on all alike her bounty poured ; 
 
 No starving wretch was seen, no pampered lord 
 
 Till fraud and priestcraft, by ambition led, 
 
 Taught man his kind to hate, his blood to shed ; 
 
 Then princes, subjects, masters, serfs were known, 
 
 And shuddering Freedom fled before a Throne ! 
 
 Nations ! arise, at Liberty's command ! 
 
 Th' Aurora of your freedom is at hand 
 
 And slavery's night is o'er if you'll but bravely stand ! 
 
 Where is the difference 'tween the serf and peer ? 
 
 Why meanly quail ye, then, with idiot fear ? 
 
 Bring front to front the oppressor and the oppressed ; 
 
 Wealth cannot strength impart, nor title steel the breast. 
 
 Lay on ! lay on ! the death-sigh of the brave 
 
 Be ours, and not the death-bed of the slave ! 
 
 Nations ! arise, at Liberty's command ! 
 
 Th' Aurora of your freedom is at hand 
 
 And slavery's night is o'er if you'll but bravely stand ! 
 
 The only English account of this disastrous conspiracy is the 
 translation of James Bronterre O'Brien, who rendered great 
 service when boldness and historical knowledge were very 
 important to the populace. He was one of the best-informed 
 of the Chartist leaders. His translation and comments on 
 Buonarroti's History are still cherished by a few surviving old 
 Chartists. Traditions of the camp contributed to disqualify 
 the French Liberals for seeking progress by reason. It is 
 showier, swifter seeming, to fight out a difference than to 
 reason men into the right. Reason is no doubt ineffective for 
 a time with those who do not understand how to manage a 
 weapon in the use of which they have not been drilled. Most 
 of the peril and imprisonments in England which occurred in 
 Chartist movements were occasioned by persons who had been 
 in the army. They said, "What is the use of reasoning when 
 you know you are in the right ? Why waste time in trying
 
 28 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 to convince those who know they are in the wrong ? " And 
 while their plodding comrades were holding meetings, they 
 were planning fights in the streets declaring an hour's drill 
 was worth a week of speeches. 
 
 Violence and spoliation are still charged against social 
 improvers. Judge Thomas Hughes relates in his "Memoir 
 of a Brother " how George Hughes said to him, " You, Tom, 
 don't want to divide other people's property ?" " No." "Then 
 why call yourselves Socialists ? " Tom answered, " It is only 
 fools who believe or say that a desire to divide other people's 
 property is the essence of Socialism." "That may be very 
 true," answered his shrewd brother George, " but if you are 
 called Socialists, you will never persuade English people that 
 this is not your object " (pp. 113, 114). 
 
 Godwin's political justice was regarded, next to the works of 
 Paine, as a text-book of working-class politicians. Published 
 1793, three years before Babeuf fell, it contained no sanction of 
 his desperate methods. It advocated equality as broadly as 
 Babeuf did ; but Godwin added these warning words : " As the 
 equality contemplated would be the result not of force, but of 
 the serious and deliberate conviction of the public at large, it 
 would be permanent." English partisans of equality declared 
 themselves in favour of peace, industry, economy, and reason. 
 
 Its historic policy was that of progress by persuasion. Among 
 our social innovators have been men who have cared nothing 
 for political freedom. Many have come among them and have 
 encouraged it, like Napoleon III., because they thought 
 social ideas would beguile them out of political aspirations. 
 The majority of them, however, have been men and women 
 steadfastly caring for political improvement not shrinking 
 from sacrifice or peril when it came ; but they put not change 
 upon issues of violence. 
 
 Considerant gives an interesting account of the fabrication 
 of Gruyere cheese in the Jura mountains : "The peasants rent 
 a small house, consisting of a workshop and dairy, with a 
 cellar. In the workshop they place an enormous copper, 
 destined to receive the milk of two hundred cows. A single 
 man suffices to make two or three cheeses of from sixty to 
 eighty pounds weight. These cheeses are placed in a cellar 
 to be salted and cured. Every day the quantity of milk
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 29 
 
 brought to the dairy is noted on two pieces of wood one for 
 the milker, the other for the manager. It is therefore known 
 exactly how much each family contributes. They can even 
 keep an account of the relative qualities of milk by means 
 of an aerometer. They sell wholesale to the merchants. 
 They deduct rent, fuel, and implements, pay the manager in 
 proportion to the general result, and divide the rest among the 
 families, proportionately to the value of their respective invest- 
 ments." It is clear that Gruyere should be the favourite cheese 
 of co-operators, as it is the first cheese made on their system. 
 If Protestants of historic taste take ox-tail soup (Huguenot 
 soup) because the Huguenots taught us to make it, co-operators 
 ought to eat Gruyere. 
 
 St. Simon, a member of an illustrious French family, born 
 in Paris in 1760, was one of the world-makers. He served in 
 several campaigns under Washington, but out of the ranks 
 he proposed no violence, nor did any, except when he came to 
 poverty and neglect he attempted to shoot himself. He, how- 
 ever, survived, regained his generous enthusiasm for human 
 improvement, and prided himself on being the apostle of 
 Industry a worthy species of apostle who have come rather late 
 in the world. He took no part in the destructive movement 
 of the French Revolution, but spent nearly all his fortune in 
 instituting " A Grand Establishment of Industry and a School 
 of Scientific Perfection." In 18 14 he published a scheme for 
 the "Reorganisation of Europe." In 1817 (a notable year, as 
 will appear in amother chapter), with English social aspirants, 
 St. Simon published his work on "Industry," upon the organi- 
 sation of which he never ceased to write. "Industry," he 
 declared, "was holy, for it serves to ameliorate the condition 
 of the poor." His system was known by the formula "To 
 each according to his capacity : to each capacity according to 
 its works" ; which meant that the community would expect 
 from each member the best he was able to do, and would reward 
 him according to what he did. The followers of St. Simon 
 acquired a grand way of speaking. "If Moses," they said, 
 " had promised men universal fraternity, Jesus Christ had pre- 
 pared it, St. Simon had realised it." His system attracted many 
 noble minds in France. St. Simon himself shared the common 
 fate of those who think for others more than for themselves,
 
 3 o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 and died poor and neglected in 1825. One disciple and two 
 or three friends were with him when he expired, to whom 
 his last exhortation was "Be of courage, and go forward 
 constantly." 
 
 In 1832 St. Simonian missionaries came to London to call 
 attention to their principles and plans. They described them- 
 selves as representing the holy religion of progress a very 
 good religion in its way, but it is one that never had many 
 followers. 
 
 Charles Fourier was the next French dreamer of social worlds 
 who attained great celebrity. He was born at Besancon, in 
 1772. He began his career in a way that gave no promise of 
 the sublime schemes of passional harmony he was destined to 
 amaze mankind with. His first literary effort was a poem on 
 the death of a pastrycook, which astonished the professors of 
 the college in which he was placed. He was hardly seven 
 years old when tarts inspired his muse. Though of poetical 
 temperament he was attached to business. His life was several 
 times in danger during the fearful times of the Revolution. 
 Notwithstanding that he was compelled to enter the army and 
 serve six years, his gentle and kind disposition never changed. 
 He believed the miseries of humanity to proceed from ignorance; 
 and held that pain, either physical or moral, was the sign of 
 error pleasure the sign of truth. He issued in 1808 a state- 
 ment of his views, under the title of "The Theory of the 
 Four Movements." His ultimate work of most mark was 
 " The New Industrial World " ; but it was not until Victor 
 Considerant became his disciple that his views began to 
 allure cultivated minds. Fourier founded Phalansteres, and 
 bewildered men more than St. Simon. His plans were as 
 boundless as the visions of the "Arabian Nights" his state- 
 ment of them as dry as mathematical rigour could make them; 
 his divisions and subdivisions were such that no Englishman 
 could hope to master them and live. Never were such 
 pomp and perplexity presented to working people before. If 
 Fourier had had his way nobody would have known the earth 
 again. If the disease of social reformers be world-making, 
 Fourier may be said to have had it in a very violent form. We 
 have had bad attacks of it in England, but nothing like what 
 Frenchmen have suffered from. Fourier ends his work on the
 
 THE UTOPIANISTS 31 
 
 future of man by the astounding remarks : " The duty of God 
 is to compose a social code, and reveal it to man. . . . The 
 duty of man is to search for the Divine code. . . . It is manifest 
 that human reason has not fulfilled its task. This neglect has 
 now been repaired, and the passional code discovered" 1 by 
 Fourier. His last work, " La Fausse Industrie," was published 
 in 1835. In 1837 he died, after the manner of his kind, sad 
 and dejected at the non-realisation of his grand and gracious 
 dreams. 
 
 These generous Utopianists put new ideas into the mind of 
 the world. They made it possible for new men to do more. 
 The careless verdict of the unregarding public was that they 
 had all discovered perpetual motion, but none of them could 
 get their machines to move. Before pioneers, for their 
 encouragement, stand the dying words of St. Simon, " Be of 
 courage, and go forward constantly." 
 
 1 " Social Destiny of Man."
 
 32 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW CO-OPERATION ITSELF BEGAN 
 
 " All around was dim, 
 Yet his face glowed with light revealed to him." 
 
 George Eliot, Jubal. 
 
 The originator of Co-operation was Robert Owen, born so far 
 back as 1771,3 year before Fourier. Nature was in one of her 
 adventurous moods at that period. In the four years from 1 769 
 to 1772 there appeared Napoleon, Wellington, Goethe, Owen, 
 and Fourier all historic men in their line : bane and antidote, 
 war and art, world-destroyers and world-makers. Robert 
 Owen was born May 14, 1 77 1, in Newtown, Montgomery- 
 shire. He was afterwards known as Robert Owen, of New 
 Lanark. Many will consider that he was not a proper person 
 to be brought forward in legitimate history. But history is 
 unceremonious. Its natural food is facts ; and when it gets 
 them it has no choice, no scruples, and no remorse. In Mr. 
 Owen's days few " proper persons " had the faculty of improve- 
 ment in them of the kind that the world most wanted, and 
 therefore a wilful Welshman took it into his benevolent and 
 fertile head to do what he could. And thus it came about 
 that Co-operation was a Welsh inspiration. 
 
 Mr. Owen was a very unusual man. By patience, industry, 
 sagacity, and kindness he raised himself to eminence and 
 opulence. His life illustrates how much knowledge a man of 
 observation may acquire without books. He attained distinc- 
 tion by two things the observance of truth in conduct and 
 experience in practice. He was known from the first as a 
 man of veracity and reflection. From being a draper's assistant 
 he became a manager of cotton mills at Manchester. He had 
 a large population of the working class under his direction in
 
 I 111. AVI I CORN Mill. Hill. 
 
 A II- I IN- I 
 
 >\. l;i ii 111 ' \1
 
 HOW CO-OPERATION ITSELF BEGAN 33 
 
 Manchester, from 1 79 1 to 1 799, and a still larger number for 
 many years afterwards at New Lanark, where, in 18 10, he 
 planned an Institution for the Formation of Character. He 
 built commodious schoolrooms (one of them 90 feet by 40 feet) 
 for the separate instruction from the time when as infants 
 they were able to walk alone until they were intelligent. No 
 school board with a town rate to aid it now would venture 
 upon erecting premises so spacious for little children. 1 These 
 proceedings being too far in advance for his partners, the 
 building was suspended when the walls were half up. In 
 1 8 14 he separated from these school- fearing colleagues, made 
 arrangements for new partners, and purchased the whole 
 establishment. Assent to his measures, for the improvement of 
 the* population and the finishing of the institution, were the 
 conditions on which he accepted his new allies into partnership. 
 The new institution was completed, fitted up, and furnished 
 in the year 18 15. On the first day of the following year, 
 January, 18 16, "The Institution" was formally opened, in 
 the presence of all the villagers with their children. The 
 assemblage exceeded two thousand in number. There were 
 present also the principal nobility and gentry in the neighbour- 
 hood, with some of the clergy of various denominations. The 
 parents present were astonished at being called upon to send 
 their children to school the very next day. This was the first 
 infant school ever established. Lord Brougham then Henry 
 Brougham visited it twice. It was by Mr. Owen's aid in 
 supplying them with teachers that Mr. Brougham, Mr. James 
 Mill, and others were able to open the first infant school set up 
 in England, in Brewer's Green, Westminster. The first 
 little scholars met there on the 14th of February, 1819. 2 Mr. 
 
 1 " Owen, like Plato, laid great stress on the value of singing, dancing, 
 and drill, as means of education, much to the horror of his Quaker partners. 
 Like Plato, he considered ease, graceful bearing, self-possession, and 
 politeness principal tests and objects of any system of education. Where 
 even now could you find such a school as the New Lanark, for rich 
 or poor, setting up these qualities as among its main and principal objects ? " 
 (Lecture on " Foreshadowings of Co-operation in Plato," by Walter 
 Morrison, M.P., Co-operative Institute, London, 1874.) 
 
 2 This school failed. Not satisfied with the moral training and instruc- 
 tive amusement, as at New Lanark, the managers sought prematurely to 
 develop the intellectual powers. The tender brain of the infant was over- 
 excited ; more harm than good was done ; and the system fell, in a measure, 
 into disrepute, until Frobel, in his " Kindergartens," brought back things 
 to a more rational way (R. D. Owen : Autobiography). 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 34 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Owen was incessant in translating his theories into practice. 
 It was in these skilfully-devised and long-continued arrange- 
 ments for uniting intelligence with industry, and industry with 
 working-class competence, that Co-operation was generated. 
 Mr. Owen acted on the principle that intelligence would prove 
 a good investment. It did prove so, and thus it came to pass 
 that the education of members has always been deemed a part 
 of the co-operative scheme among those who understood it. 
 
 Though Mr. Owen earned an honourable name for bene- 
 volence he was not a man who played at philanthropy. The 
 working people in his employ were in ignorance, viciousness, 
 and discomfort. Their great employer's object was to show 
 them how much could be done by mutual arrangement to 
 improve their condition and prospects. Mr. Owen's provisions 
 in the attractions of the schoolroom, in the appliances for 
 teaching, and the extent and quality of what was taught, have 
 not been excelled in the most generous state in America, and 
 it has never yet entered into the imagination of any English 
 minister to offer, or of any workpeople to ask for such in Great 
 Britain. The weavers and their wives at New Lanark who 
 witnessed this more than princely concern for their children's 
 welfare, knew that Mr. Owen meant them well, as was 
 manifest also in a thousand acts of thoughtfulness and respect- 
 ful treatment towards them. Had Mr. Owen lived in more 
 appreciative days he had been offered a baronetcy. However, 
 grateful workpeople offered him what he was prouder of, their 
 confidence and co-operation, and their will and skill were new 
 elements of profit in the workshop. Thus the foundations of 
 Co-operation were laid by Mr. Owen and his associated 
 capitalists by sharing with the labourers and their families a 
 portion of the common gain. The share falling to the 
 employers was greater than it otherwise could have been. 
 
 Mr. Owen, in his letter to the Times newspaper in 1834, 
 addressing his early friend, who had then become Lord Chan- 
 cellor Brougham, said : " I believe it is known to your lord- 
 ship that in every point of view no experiment was ever so 
 successful as the one I conducted at New Lanark, although it 
 was commenced and continued in opposition to all the oldest 
 and strongest prejudices of mankind. For twenty-nine years 
 we did without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers ;
 
 HOW CO-OPERATION ITSELF BEGAN 35 
 
 without a single legal punishment ; without any known poors' 
 rate ; without intemperance or religious animosities. We 
 reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the children 
 from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the adults, 
 diminished their daily labour, paid interest on capital, and 
 cleared upwards of 300,000 of profit." 
 
 Lord Brougham, in reply, stated in the Times, what he many 
 years afterwards repeated in the House in Lords, that Mr. 
 Owen was the originator of infant schools in England. Lord 
 Brougham said: "I have not the least hesitation in stating 
 that the infant school system never would, in all probability, 
 have been established but for Mr. Owen's Lanark schools. I 
 most distinctly recollect Mr. Mill (Mr. James Mill, father of 
 John Stuart Mill, was the person referred to), Sir C. Grey 
 (afterwards Chief Justice of Calcutta), and myself discussing 
 for some weeks what name we should give these new schools, 
 and . . . after rejecting various names, we fixed upon that of 
 Infant Schools. The thing as well as the name were equally 
 unknown till then in England." Mr. Owen added, in a 
 further letter to the Times, that in 1799 he purchased the New 
 Lanark mills for 60,000, and entered upon the premises on 
 the 15th of August of that year ; that he published a very full 
 and detailed account of the new institution, which included 
 the infant schools, in his third essay on the "Formation of 
 Character," and that a mutual friend of his and Lord Brougham 
 (Mr. James Mill) corrected the press for him. It was candid 
 in Mr. Owen to make this acknowledgment of the assistance 
 of Mr. Mill. 1 The reader is conscious of vigour and direct- 
 ness of statement in those essays greater than other works of 
 Mr. Owen's. 
 
 Owen instigated Fellenberg to commence an infant school 
 at Hofwyl, which subsequently uniting industry with education 
 became celebrated. The self-supporting Pauper Colonies of 
 Holland were owing to Owen's suggestion. He originated 
 the short-time agitation on behalf of children in factories; he 
 assisted Fulton with money to try his inventions in steam 
 navigation , he purchased the first bale of American Sea Island 
 cotton imported into England, foreseeing at once the future 
 
 1 Mr. Francis Place told me that he also was concerned in the revision 
 of the Owen MS,
 
 36 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 importance to the spinning trade of England of encouraging 
 the foreign supply of raw material. The great "Utopian" 
 (as persons call him who, following the bent of their own 
 faculties, believe nothing which is not commonplace) " had," 
 his son Dale Owen states, " been received respectfully, and 
 sometimes with distinction, by those highest in position : by 
 Lords Liverpool, Sidmouth, Castlereagh, and by Mr. Canning ; 
 by the Royal Dukes of York, Cumberland, Sussex, Cambridge, 
 and especially by the Duke of Kent (Queen Victoria's father) ; 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sutton), and by the Bishops 
 of London, St. David's, Durham, Peterborough, and Norwich. 
 Besides Bentham, his partner, he was more or less intimate 
 with Godwin, Ricardo, Malthus, Bowring, Francis Place, 
 Joseph Hume, James Mill, O'Connell, Roscoe, Clarkson, 
 Cobbett, Sir Francis Burdett, the Edgeworths, the statistician 
 Colquhoun, Wilberforce, Macaulay (father of the historian), 
 and Nathan Rothschild, the founder of the house. He had 
 received as guests at his own house at Braxfield, Princes John 
 and Maximilian of Russia, the Duke of Holstein-Oldenburg, 
 Baron Goldsmid, Baron Just (Saxon ambassador), Cuvier, 
 Brougham, Sir James Mackintosh, and Lord Stowell, father- 
 in-law of Lord Sidmouth. When he visited Paris he took 
 letters from the Duke of Kent to the Due d'Orleans (Louis 
 Philippe), and from the French ambassador to the French 
 minister ; and he was invited to the Visitor's Chair by the 
 French Academy. In Europe he made the acquaintance of 
 La Place, Humboldt, La Rochefoucauld, Camille Jourdain, 
 Pastor Oberlin, Pestalozzi, Madame de Stael, and many other 
 eminent persons." * 
 
 These illustrious intimacies show that Robert Owen carried 
 co-operative industry into good company, for the discussion 
 of this subject was the sole reason why eminent persons sought 
 Mr. Owen, or he sought them. 
 
 The gains and economies of Lanark Mill had taught that 
 the working class could, if they had sense to unite, make 
 something by shopkeeping. One oven, Mr. Owen pointed 
 out, might suffice to bake for one hundred families with little 
 more cost and trouble of attendance than a single household 
 took, and set free a hundred fires and a hundred domestic 
 1 Robert Dale Owen, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1873, PP- 735~6-
 
 HOW CO-OPERATION ITSELF BEGAN 37 
 
 cooks. One commodious washhouse and laundry * would save 
 one hundred disagreeable, screaming, steaming, toiling washing- 
 days in common homes. It was not far to go to infer that 
 one large well-stocked shop would, properly served, supply the 
 wants of a thousand families, and supersede twenty smaller 
 shops, and save to the customers all the cost of the twenty 
 shopmen and twenty shop rents and rates, in addition to the 
 economy in prices and advantage in quality in buying whole- 
 sale, in a degree small shops could not compass. 
 
 When Mr. Owen's plans for the reconstruction of society 
 first dazzled the imaginations of men, hope begat belief that 
 the day of great change was nigh. Many had a sense that 
 society was ravel and cruelty, as far as competition went. 
 But the formation of character was more arduous than was 
 thought. Science has taught men that the improvement of 
 mankind is an affair of a million influences and unknown time. 
 None now can tell the fascination of that vision of improve- 
 ment, in which progress was considered to be reduced to a 
 simple problem of State mechanism, of which all the conditions 
 had been discovered. 
 
 The tireless Newtown Utopian instituted a magnificent 
 publicity of his projects. He made speeches, held meetings, 
 published pamphlets and books, bought innumerable copies of 
 all newspapers and periodicals which gave any account of his 
 proceedings, and distributed them broadcast over the world. 2 
 The very day on which he opened his celebrated schools at 
 New Lanark for the formation of character he dispatched to 
 Lord Sidmouth the manuscript copy he had made of all he 
 said, so that the Government might have the earliest and most 
 authentic knowledge of what was going forward. Where a 
 great co-operative society now spends pounds in diffusing a 
 knowledge of its principles Mr. Owen spent thousands of 
 pounds. It was this wise, costly, and generous publicity that 
 led the public to attach value to the new social ideas. Mr. 
 Owen may be said to have impressed mankind with them ; 
 for he travelled all over Europe and made repeated visits to 
 
 1 These exist now. In Mr. Owen's days they were unknown and 
 unthought of. 
 
 2 He paid the full price for all newspapers he bought, and the price 
 was considerable then ; and he posted copies, among others, to every 
 clergyman in the kingdom. Mr. Pare found that Mr. Owen's payments 
 for papers amounted to ^4,000 in three months.
 
 38 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 America to personally spread the information of the new 
 system of society. Simultaneously with his efforts in Europe 
 he spent a fortune in America in endeavours to found com- 
 munities there, but up to 1820 no periodical was started to 
 advocate these views. 
 
 Things were so bad that few saw any hopes of amending 
 them. The conclusion of most who thought upon the subject 
 was that of the link-boy, who, when Pope, stumbling, cried 
 out, "God mend me," answered, "I think, sir, God had better 
 make a new one." Social reformers said it was better to make 
 the stumbling world over again. In the Economist of that day, 
 the first of the name, the editor, Mr. Mudie, was ready to 
 undertake the task, and thus announced the resolution to 
 which he had come : 
 
 "Though far from entertaining a very exalted opinion of 
 my own powers, yet from the mere conviction that the duty 
 ought to be performed by some one, however humble, I have 
 had the boldness to take upon my shoulders the burden of examining 
 the whole affairs and circumstances of mankind. The ponderous 
 load is greater than I could sustain, but that I feel a strength 
 beyond my own. Would that I possessed the power to call 
 around me on the instant the choicest spirits of the earth and 
 the air, that with a magic touch I could at once dissolve the 
 delusions of error and of prejudice, and, by the genii of the 
 lamp and the ring, transport mankind in a moment into that 
 new world of delights which is opening upon my enraptured 
 sight." l 
 
 The British public, who walk by faith on Sundays, walk by 
 sight only during week-days. In business they believe only 
 according to results. Those who had resolved to make a clean 
 sweep of existing institutions, found full employment for 
 disciples of this thorough-going school, and a broom party of 
 reformers was actually formed, who undertook to sweep error 
 and cart it away. 
 
 "Social Science," now well recognised, was then an un- 
 known term. Mr. Owen was the first public man to insist 
 that there might be a "science of society." 2 His doctrine 
 
 1 Economist, 182 1. 
 
 1 During a period of twenty years I well remember when the phrase 
 " social science " was regarded as much an indication of " something 
 being wrong " on the part of those who used it, as mentioning Sir C.
 
 HOW CO-OPERATION ITSELF BEGAN 39 
 
 was that by the wise use of material means men might make 
 society what it ought to be. In these happy and latitudinarian 
 days anybody may improve society who can, and society is 
 very glad when anybody gives signs of the capacity of doing it. 
 His services are accepted, and no questions are asked. But in 
 Robert Owen's days no one was allowed to attempt any good 
 unless he believed in the Thirty-nine Articles, 1 and down to 
 the year 1840 the Bishop of Exeter made things very unplea- 
 sant in the House of Lords to any persons detected doing it. 
 Our "pastors and masters" held then the exclusive patent for 
 improving the people, and though they made poor use of it, 
 they took good care that nobody infringed it. Improvement, 
 like the sale of corn, was a monopoly then, but we have free 
 trade in humanity now, though the business done is not very 
 great yet. The day at length came when the most ardent had 
 to pause. The world did not subscribe, and it was left to 
 chequeless enthusiasts to find funds to diffuse a knowledge of 
 the new views. It was then that certain practical-minded per- 
 sons advised the formation of co-operative stores, where money 
 might be made without subscribing it, and proposed that share- 
 holders should give their profits to a fund for propagandism. 
 
 The first journal in the interest of Co-operation was the 
 Economist of 1 82 1. It was thought in 1868 an act of temerity 
 to take the name of Social Economist as a title. 2 The Economist 
 was a title adopted by Mr. James Wilson, the founder of the 
 Economist newspaper, who was likely to have seen Mr. Owen's 
 publication, for there was much early knowledge of Co-opera- 
 tion in the house in Essex Street, where I used to see 
 formidable files, reaching to the ceiling, of unsold Economists, 
 before it became the organ of the commercial classes. The 
 first number of the co-operative Economist appeared on Satur- 
 day, January 27, 1821, price threepence. It was preceded by 
 
 Lyell's doctrine of the Antiquity of Man, or Darwin's Theory of 
 Evolution, afterwards became. We were all surprised when a National 
 Association was formed for the promotion of " Social Science " in which 
 prelates took part. 
 
 1 This was as modestly put as could be expected by a prelate of that 
 day. The Bishop of London said, " Mr. Owen's system was brought 
 forward by an individual who declared that he was not of one of the 
 religions hitherto taught. This alone was a sufficient reason for him to 
 disregard it " (Hampden in the " Nineteenth Century," p. 47, 1834). 
 
 - The Social Economist, edited by the present writer and Mr. E. O. 
 Greening.
 
 4 o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 a prospectus, as elaborate as an essay and as long as a pamphlet. 
 The title-page of the volume declared that " The Economist 
 was a periodical paper explanatory of the new system of society 
 projected by Robert Owen, Esq., and a plan of association for 
 the working classes." " Working people " was the better 
 phrase Francis Place used in his addresses to them. In the 
 very first number of this Economist mention was made of the 
 formation of a " Co-operative and Economical Society," which 
 is the earliest record I find of a name now so familiar to the 
 public ear. 
 
 The public had been told that human affairs were hence- 
 forth to be based on some new principle. There was a general 
 expectation that the public would soon hear of something to 
 their advantage. At length one day in the autumn of 1821, 
 the editor of the Economist broke in upon his readers in small 
 capitals, and said to them : 
 
 " The Secret is Out : it is unrestrained Co-operation, 
 on the part of all the members, for every purpose of social 
 life." x It was a very small, eager, active, manifold thing 
 which appeared in the name of Co-operation, then for the first 
 time distinctively named ; but during the next ten years 
 it spread wondrously over the land. 
 
 In the middle of January, 1821, a pamphlet was published 
 describing the Economical Society, at the Medallic Cabinet, 
 158, Strand, where the Economist itself was published. The 
 pamphlet was signed by Robert Hunt, James Shallard, John 
 Jones, George Hinde, Robert Dean, and Henry Hetherington. 
 It professed to be a report of the committee appointed at 
 a meeting of journeymen, chiefly painters, to take into 
 consideration certain propositions, submitted to them by Mr. 
 George Mudie, having for their object a system of social 
 arrangement calculated to effect essential improvements in 
 the condition of the working classes and of society at large. 
 They took as a motto words from Milton, which were very 
 appropriate to their purpose : 
 
 "Our greatness will appear 
 Then most conspicuous, when great things of small, 
 Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse 
 We can create." 
 
 Economist, August 27, 1821.
 
 HOW CO-OPERATION ITSELF BEGAN 41 
 
 This is the first co-operative society motto I have found. 
 
 The term Co-operation was used in the sense of com- 
 munism. From implying concert of life in community it 
 came to mean concert in shopkeeping. It was a great descent 
 from the imperial altitude of world-making to selling long- 
 sixteen candles and retailing treacle. Doubtless, if we only 
 knew it, the beginning of civilised society was not less absurd. 
 There were in all probability dreamers who stood on the verge 
 of savage life contemplating with satisfaction the future ot 
 civilisation, when men should abandon their reckless and 
 murderous habits and master methods of thrift and peace. 
 And when that new order began, now described as the dawn 
 of civilisation, there must have been persons with a fine sense 
 of contempt for those petty transactions of barter, out of which 
 capital and commerce grew, which have finally covered the 
 earth with palaces and raised private individuals to an 
 opulence surpassing that of monarchs. Had there been 
 leading articles, reviews, and political economists in those days, 
 how these dreamers who brought about modern society would 
 have been held up to derision and have been glad to hide 
 their abashed heads ! 
 
 Mr. Owen entertained the belief that " if the bad position 
 of men's affairs proceed not from necessity but from errors, 
 there is hope that when those errors are forsaken or corrected 
 a great change for the better may ensue." " It is compara- 
 tively of little avail," Mr. Owen was accustomed to say, " to 
 give to either young or old ' precept upon precept, and line 
 upon line,' unless the means shall be also prepared to train 
 them in good practical habits." These were the convictions 
 which gave him strength and made him useful. When pass- 
 ing by the new Royal Exchange, London, he, looking up at 
 it, said to a friend (Thomas Allsop) with him " We shall have 
 that one day. The old system must give way. It will come 
 down of its own weight." The course of progress in this 
 country is otherwise. Society does not come down. The 
 originator of Co-operation never foresaw that a minor part ot 
 his views was destined to obtain a strange ascendancy. Who 
 would have dreamed that flannel weavers, mechanics, and 
 shoemakers of Rochdale, in 1844, were founding a movement 
 the voice of which would pass like a cry of deliverance into
 
 42 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the camps of industry in many lands, and since cause shop- 
 keepers in every town and city of the British Empire to 
 scream with dread, cry to members of Parliament, and crowd 
 the offices of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, praying to be 
 rescued from the Red Sea of Co-operation, lest it should sub- 
 merge their huxtering. But Co-operation is more merciful than 
 the Egyptian waves, the Pharaohs of capital and competition 
 will be saved, although they have brought as co-operators 
 contend plagues of poverty upon the people. Co-operation, 
 Mr. Owen no more constructed than George Stephenson did 
 that railway system, which a thousand unforeseen exigencies 
 have suggested and a thousand brains matured. But, as 
 Stephenson made railway locomotion possible, so Owen set 
 men's minds on the track of Co-operation, and time and need, 
 faith and thought, have made it what it is.
 
 Z*T*s*^\ 
 
 rf$rU4^ H ^' 
 
 fa, t r . 43
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 43 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 
 
 "There is a way of winning more by love than fear ; 
 Force works on servile nature not the free : 
 He that's compelled to goodness may be good, 
 But 'tis but for that fit : where others, drawn 
 By softness and example, get a habit." Ben Jonson. 
 
 There cannot be an adequate record of the co-operative 
 movement without talcing into account the influence of Mr. 
 Owen's proceedings upon its fortunes. It was often involved 
 in theological conflicts. Mr. Owen was the chief cause of 
 this. He could not very well avoid giving battle to several 
 kinds of adversaries, and, being a Welshman, I have no doubt 
 he did it with good-will. 
 
 Robert Owen was the only Welshman I ever knew who 
 did not think Wales the world, and he no sooner compre- 
 hended that there was a wider world elsewhere than he acted 
 like one who had taken possession of it, and finding it in 
 disorder, suggested how it might be put straight. He was the 
 first publicist among us who looked with royal eyes upon 
 children. He regarded grown persons as being proprietors 
 of the world bound to extend the rites of hospitality to all 
 arrivals in it. He considered little children as little guests, to 
 be welcomed with gentle courtesy and tenderness, to be 
 offered knowledge and love, and charmed with song and 
 flowers, so that they might be glad and proud that they had 
 come into a world which gave them happiness, and only asked 
 of them goodness. Duke Bernard, of Saxe-Weimar said, with 
 admirable comprehensiveness, " Mr. Owen looked to nothing 
 less than to renovate the world, to extirpate all evil, to banish 
 all punishment, to *create like views and like wants, and to
 
 44 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 guard against all conflicts and hostilities." Finding pious 
 benevolence seeking progress by prayer, which did not bring 
 it, Mr. Owen boldly proposed to substitute for it scientific 
 benevolence, which seeks human improvement by material 
 methods. " Here," he said, if not in terms in theory, " is the 
 new path of deliverance, where no thought is lost, no effort 
 vain ; where the victory is always to the wise and the patient, 
 and the poor who believe will no longer be betrayed." We 
 know not now what courage it required to say this when Mr. 
 Owen said it. Gentlemen expected to provide the poor with 
 their religion. If they subscribed to any school this was their 
 chief object, for very little secular learning was imparted. In 
 Sunday schools spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic were 
 subordinated to the Catechism. Mr. Owen gave lessons in the 
 knowledge of the world in his schools. Both the clergy and 
 dissenting ministers regarded with jealousy any influence not 
 under their direction, and they made it difficult for social 
 improvers to do anything. 
 
 To teach common people the arts of self-help, the wisdom 
 of choosing their own opinions, and to believe only in that 
 religion which brought them actual deliverance from depend- 
 ence and want, was not a popular thing to do. Mr. Owen 
 had the fate of Paine before him. Paine excelled all politicians 
 in teaching principles. Ebenezer Elliott told me Paine was 
 the greatest master of metaphor he had known. Cobbett's 
 writings were vigorous wordiness, compared with Paine's 
 finished thoroughness. The pen of Paine did as much as the 
 sword of Washington to effect American independence. He 
 was one whose writings Pitt thought it worth while to study. 
 He was one of the founders of National Independence whom 
 Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin consulted. 
 
 Owen, like Paine, for protesting against Theology as an 
 obstruction to Humanity, suffered like penalty. From being 
 the associate of the first men of his time, he had to appeal to 
 working people to give effect to his views. 
 
 Mr. Owen was ready in public speech. Cambridge scholars, 
 utterly prejudiced against him, were struck with the dignity 
 of his bearing at the memorable meetings at the City or 
 London Tavern in 1817. After a lapse of fifty-six years 
 one of those present related that when Mr. Owen said, "all
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 45 
 
 the religions of the world were wrong," he thought him 
 beyond the rank of common men. He seemed to this hearer 
 to grow loftier in stature. The vast and various audience 
 listened as men breathless. Then they broke out into 
 tumultuous cheering at the courageous act of the speaker. 
 Indeed, I modify the terms in which that day has been spoken 
 of to me. Readers now would not understand the impression 
 made ; and for any purpose of persuasion it is useless to say 
 more than will seem probable to those addressed. Mr. Owen's 
 reputation for great wealth, the munificence of his known gifts, 
 his personal sincerity, his high connections, the novelty of his 
 views, all lent elements of popular interest to what he said 
 on subjects on which no gentleman, save he, ventured to say 
 anything. He had made himself the first Captain of Industry. 
 He had accomplished wonders never attempted before by any 
 manufacturer. Statesmen from every part of Europe had been 
 allured to New Lanark, and, for all any one knew, he might 
 be able to demonstrate what no statesman had deemed it 
 possible to compass. 
 
 The determination to make the formidable statement de- 
 scribed, at that particular time, his son relates, was come to 
 suddenly. Certain sectarian publications, seeing favourable 
 notices in the Times of his proceedings at his first and second 
 meeting in the London Tavern, began to call upon him to 
 make a declaration of his views on religion, which up to that 
 time he had withheld. Theological charges were made against 
 him. 1 He had, however, maintained a proud reticence. As 
 he enjoyed the personal respect of several eminent prelates 
 for the best educated are always the most tolerant Mr. Owen 
 could well afford to pass the lower sort by. As they were 
 capable of doing harm, Mr. Owen, who was brave and not 
 politic, defied them. It was the consciousness of this which 
 helped to move the wonder and enthusiasm of the densely 
 
 1 His son, Robert Dale, relates that he was with him during his exami- 
 nation by a committee of the House of Commons, when he gave evidence 
 on the condition of the factory children, and heard Sir George Philips put 
 questions to his father in an insolent tone as to his religious opinions. 
 Brougham, who was also on the committee, resented this irrelevant 
 offensiveness, and moved that the cross-examination in question be 
 expunged from the record, and it was done. If, however, a gentleman's 
 personal opinions could be attacked in a Parliamentary committee, the 
 reader can imagine what took place elsewhere.
 
 46 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 packed and excited audience, and of thousands outside trying 
 in vain to obtain admission. " What, my friends," he began, 
 " has hitherto retarded the advancement of your race to a high 
 state of virtue and happiness ? Who can answer that question ? 
 Who dares answer but with his life in his hand ? a ready and 
 willing victim to the truth and to the emancipation of the 
 world from its long bondage of error, crime, and misery. 
 Behold that victim ! On this day ! in this hour ! even now ! 
 shall those bonds be burst asunder, never more to reunite 
 while the world lasts ! " 
 
 This enthusiasm and pluck, moved the admiration alike of 
 those who approved, and those who dissented, from this 
 dangerous and impolitic speech. The consequences soon came 
 home to him. He had friends too powerful for his life to be 
 in danger ; but those who could save his life could not save his 
 influence. And in after years, at public meetings in the 
 provinces, his life was often in jeopardy, and he was only saved 
 by the intrepidity of working men, who protected him. The 
 Times soon wheeled into line against him the Conservative 
 and influential classes deserted him. Only the Duke of Kent 
 and Lord Brougham stood by him to the end. 1 
 
 From being a social reformer he had commenced to be a 
 religious reformer. An ominous meeting in the Rotunda of 
 Dublin in 1823 was fatal to his new world. Society set 
 its face against him, and the people were too poor to carry 
 his ideas out. The father of Queen Victoria stood true. He 
 said at one of Mr. Owen's meetings, two years after he had 
 denounced all religions, "If I understand Mr. Owen's 
 principles, they lead him not to interfere to the injury of any 
 sect ; but he claims for himself that which he is so desirous to 
 obtain for his fellow-creatures 'religious liberty and freedom 
 of conscience ' ; and these he contends for because his 
 experience compels him to conclude that these principles are 
 now necessary to secure the well-being and good order of 
 society." This is excellently put, and is really what Mr. 
 Owen meant. Being always a Theist, he was logically in 
 error in denouncing " all religions." His province was to 
 maintain, as the Duke of Kent puts it, "religious liberty and 
 freedom of conscience." 
 
 ' Vide Autobiography of Robert Dale Owen.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 47 
 
 In those alarmed days, when politicians and capitalists were 
 as terrified as shopkeepers at Co-operation, Mr. Owen counte- 
 nanced the discussion of a new question, which has strangely 
 passed out of the sight of history. Mr. James Mill had 
 written in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," as Malthus had 
 done before, that it was both desirable and profitable to limit 
 the families of the poor. Mill despised working people who 
 crowded the labour market with their offspring, and then com- 
 plained of the lowness of wages and the want in their homes. 
 Certainly a man or woman supplicating a relieving office^ 
 treated as a burden on the parish, and advised to emigrate, as 
 the needy shopkeeper assessed for poor-rates is, compelled to 
 begrudge the flesh on their bones is a humiliating business, so 
 shocking and deplorable that those who come to it had better 
 never have been born. Any legitimate remedy which the wit 
 of man could devise having this object would seem purity and 
 dignity by the side of this degradation. Community-makers 
 soon found that the inmates would come to certain ruin if the 
 houses were overrun with children, and they listened to the 
 Malthus and Mill warning. Mr. Owen, who always gave 
 heed to the philosophers, took steps to give effect to their 
 advice. No man had a better right than he to invent the 
 maxim he was fond of using " Truth without mystery, 
 mixture of error, or fear of man." He was not able to obtain 
 truth free from error ; but he was, beyond question, free from 
 the fear of man. 
 
 This question concerned none save the poor, and he boldly 
 counselled them against supplying offspring to be ground up 
 alive in the mill of capital ; or be cast aside when the labour 
 market was glutted to fall into the hands of the constable or 
 the parish overseer. The subject was regarded by the public 
 then as the question of cremation was, which could never be 
 mentioned in iany periodical with tolerance. Cremation, to 
 the surprise of everybody now a question supposed to be 
 innured with the ashes of Shelley has become popular. 
 
 No notice of this curious episode in Mr. Owen's life occurs 
 in the biographies of him which have appeared since his death. 
 Mr. Sargant has brought together a variety of facts which it 
 must have taken considerable research and cost to accumulate. 
 Though Mr. Sargant's views arc antagonistic, he never
 
 48 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 calumniates, although he often fails to judge accurately ; but 
 as he is never dull, never indecisive, and often right in the 
 opinion he forms, he is an instructive writer to those who 
 incline to the side of the innovators. 
 
 Mr. Dale Owen might have given the world an incomparable 
 life of his father, such as otherwise we are not likely to see. 
 He had opportunities which no man, save he, possessed. For a 
 period of half a century almost every man in Europe and 
 America engaged in any forlorn hope of progress had communi- 
 cations at one time or the other with Mr. Robert Owen. 
 Robert Dale published a work casting limited light on his 
 father's career. His " Footfalls on the Boundary of Another 
 World " reads as though it were written by a man who had 
 left this. He has apparently given us from scant notes twenty- 
 seven years of autobiography in "Threading my Way," which, 
 however, serves to show how curious and valuable a history of 
 his father it would be in his power to write. 
 
 That I take to be the manliest reverence which praises 
 within the limits of truth. The flatterer is either a knave who 
 intends to impose upon you, or a patron who intends to befool 
 you, or a coward who applauds because he has not the courage 
 to condemn you, or a weak-eyed man who can only see one 
 thing at a time. Those are wise who avoid the men who by 
 wholesale praise hide from a man what he should be and keep 
 him what he is. Prefer the man who blows hot and cold to 
 him who blows all hot, because it is better to be invigorated 
 than to be stifled. Believing so, I speak frankly as well as 
 affectionately of Mr. Owen. 
 
 It is no part of my object to represent him other than he 
 was. Though he was an amiable, he was, doubtless, at times 
 a somewhat tiresome reformer. When he called a meeting 
 together, those who attended never knew when they would 
 separate. He was endowed with great natural capacity for 
 understanding public affairs, and was accustomed to give 
 practical and notable opinions upon questions quite apart from 
 his own doctrines. His society was sought as that of a man 
 who had the key of many State difficulties. Those know little 
 of him who suppose that he owed his distinction to his riches. 
 A man must be wise as well as wealthy to achieve the 
 illustrious friendships which marked his career. He had
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 49 
 
 personally an air of natural nobility about him. He had, as 
 the Daily News said, " an instinct to rule and command." In 
 youth and middle age he must have been an actor on the 
 political stage of no mean mark. He always spoke as " one 
 having authority." He had a voice of great compass, thorough 
 self-possession, and becoming action. Like many other men, 
 he spoke much better than he wrote. When he was but 
 twenty years of age he applied to Mr. Drinkwater for a 
 responsible position. He was told " he was so young." 
 "Yes," answered Mr. Owen, "that used to be said of me 
 several years ago, but I did not expect to have it brought 
 against me now." His boldness never deserted him. On one 
 occasion William Johnson Fox, the famous preacher and anti- 
 Corn Law orator, delivered a discourse in South Place Chapel 
 on Mr. Owen's co-operative system. Some of his remarks 
 being founded on a manifest misconception of it, Mr. Owen 
 who was present, rose before the final hymn was given out, and 
 addressed the congregation in a speech of great dignity and 
 propriety, and corrected the error of the orator. Though the 
 proceeding was most unusual, and would only have been 
 permitted in a place of worship where freedom of conscience 
 was not only maintained but conceded, Mr. Owen acquitted 
 himself so well that no one felt any sense of unseemliness in 
 what he did. 1 
 
 Mr. Owen was an apostle, not a rhetorician. He never 
 looked all round his statements (as Mr. Cobden did) to see 
 where the ignorant might misconstrue them, or the enemy 
 could come up and pervert them. He said " man was the 
 creature of circumstances " for thirty years before he added 
 the important words, " acting previous to and after his birth." 
 He had the fatal ideas of the New Testament that equality 
 was to be attained by granting to a community "all things in 
 common " at the commencement. Whereas equality is the 
 result, not the beginning. You must start with inequality 
 and authority, steering steadily towards self-government and 
 the accumulation of the common gains, until independence is 
 secured to all. Mr. Owen looked upon men through the 
 spectacles of his own good-nature. He seldom took Lord 
 
 1 Mr. David Dale, who was a shrewd, discerning man, once said to Mr. 
 Owen, "Thou needest to he very right, Robert, for thou art very positive." 
 
 VOL. i. 5
 
 50 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Brougham's advice " to pick his men." He never acted on 
 the maxim that the working class are as jealous of each other 
 as the upper classes are of them. The resolution he displayed 
 as a manufacturer he was wanting in as a founder of com- 
 munities. Recognising his capacity as a manufacturer, even 
 Allen, his eminent Quaker partner, wrote to him, "Robert 
 Owen, thou makest a bargain in a masterly manner ! " Sir 
 John, then Dr. Bowring, said that the only time Jeremy 
 Bentham ever made money was when he was a partner 
 of Mr. Owen. No leader ever took so little care as 
 Mr. Owen in guarding his own reputation. He scarcely 
 protested when others attached his name to schemes which 
 were not his. The failure of Queenwood was not chargeable 
 to him. When his advice was not followed he would say : 
 " Well, gentlemen, I tell you what you ought to do. You 
 differ from me. Carry out your own plans. Experience will 
 show you who is right." When the affair went wrong then 
 it was ascribed to him. Whatever failed under his name the 
 public inferred failed through him. Mr. Owen was a general 
 who never provided himself with a rear guard. While he 
 was fighting in the front ranks priests might come up and cut 
 off his commissariat. His own troops fell into pits against 
 which he had warned them. Yet he would write his next 
 dispatch without it occurring to him to mention his own 
 defeat, and he would return to his camp without missing his 
 army. Yet society is not so well served that it need hesitate 
 to forgive the omissions of its generous friends. To 
 Mr. Owen will be accorded the distinction of being a 
 philosopher who devoted himself to founding a Science of 
 Social Improvement a philanthropist who gave his fortune to 
 advance it. Association, which was but casual before his day, 
 he converted into a policy and taught it as an art. He 
 substituted Co-operation for coercion in the conduct of 
 industry the willing co-operation of intelligence certain of its 
 own reward, for sullen labour enforced by the necessity of 
 subsistence, seldom to be relied on and never satisfied. 
 
 Southey, who was a competent judge of public men in his 
 day, said : " I would class Owen in a triad as one of the three 
 men who have in this generation given an impulse to the 
 moral world, Clarkson and Dr. Bell are the other two.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 51 
 
 They have seen the firstfruits of their harvest ; so, I think, 
 would Owen ere this, if he had not alarmed the better part of 
 the nation by proclaiming opinions upon the most momentous 
 of all subjects. Yet I admire the man ; and readily admit 
 that his charity is a better plank than the faith of an intolerant 
 and bitter-minded bigot, who, as Warburton says, 'counter- 
 works his Creator, makes God after man's image, and chooses 
 the worst model he can find himself.' " Mr. Owen had an 
 accessible manner and a friendly face. There was a charm 
 that those who approached him always found in his mind. 
 Great or low, each felt assured, as the poet puts it 
 
 " There can live no hatred in thine eye." 
 
 The impression that Mr. Owen made upon workmen of his 
 time is best described by one who won for himself a distin- 
 guished name as a working-class poet Ebenezer Elliott. In 
 an address to him, sent by trade-unionists of Sheffield in 1834, 
 Elliott says : " You came among us as a rich man among the 
 poor and did not call us a rabble. This is a phenomenon new 
 to us. There was no sneer on your lips, no covert scorn in 
 your tone." That this distinction struck Elliott shows us 
 how working men were then treated. It was in reply to this 
 address that Mr. Owen made a remark which is an axiom in 
 the best political Liberalism of these days. He said "Injustice 
 is a great mistake." He saw that it was not merely wrong, 
 wicked, malevolent, hateful ; he believed that injustice did not 
 answer in business in fact, that it did not pay. This is 
 becoming understood now. Here and there we may hear a 
 wise employer say : " I cannot afford to pay my men badly." 
 There are co-operative productive societies which have not 
 quite learned this yet. Indeed, it has taken a long time for 
 employers to see that the workman, like the inanimate tools 
 he uses, can only be efficient when made of good material, is 
 of good temper, and kept in good condition. 
 
 A society in Sheffield, which has never been a sentimental 
 place, bore the sentimental name of the " Sheffield Regenera- 
 tion Society." Mr. Owen was in favour of a rule of eight 
 hours' labour ; he being a very early advocate of what is now 
 thought impossible. The Sheffield society did not believe that 
 the world could be regenerated in eight hours, and addressed
 
 52 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Mr. Owen for an explanation. The document was written 
 by Ebenezer Elliott, and was a good specimen of his prose 
 style. It had this passage : " Dr. Chalmers, though he bids 
 us die unmarried, does not really wish that the noble race of 
 Watt and Burns, Locke and Milton, should become extinct. 
 . . . William Cobbett, almost a great man, and once our only 
 champion [a phrase he afterwards used in his famous epitaph 
 on Cobbett x ], seems to be mystifying himself and trying to 
 mystify others on the all-important subject ; but we do not 
 call him either rogue or fool." Elliott ended by saying that 
 the appropriate epitaph for the great communist's tomb when 
 he arrived at one would be : 
 
 " In the land of castes Owen was a Man." 
 
 When Mr. Owen first proposed to his partners to institute 
 educational arrangements at their works he admitted that 
 there might be loss. Bentham, Allen, and other or his 
 partners resolved to run the risk, which in the end led to great 
 fame and profit. When the partners who opposed the outlay 
 retired the Lanark Mills were brought to the hammer. They 
 depreciated the property, spreading about reports that Mr. 
 Owen had ruined it, and that the business was not worth 
 ^40,000. They intended buying it themselves. But the 
 philanthropist had an eye to business, and sent his solicitor to 
 bid against them. The discontented partners bid in person, 
 and actually bid themselves upwards of ^110,000 for property 
 they had declared worth ^40,000 only. Mr. Owen bought 
 it for ^114,000. They knew that it was worth greatly 
 more, and regretted all their days their folly and their loss. 
 They had prematurely invited a large party of friends to a 
 congratulation banquet on the day of the sale, and they had to 
 play the part of hosts without appetite or exhilaration to 
 guests unable to console them. When the news reached the 
 Lanark workmen that Mr. Owen was to be their future 
 
 1 The reader may see that Elliott, when he came to write his epitaph 
 on Cobbett, must have recurred to this address. It was this : 
 
 " Our friend, when other friend we'd none ; 
 Our champion, when we had but one ; 
 Cursed by all knaves, beneath this sod 
 Bill Cobbett lies a Man by God."
 
 THE CHARACTER OF ITS DISCOVERER 53 
 
 master the place was illuminated. When Mr. Owen and 
 his new partners went down the workpeople and inhabitants 
 for miles round went out to greet them with music. The 
 horses were ungeared and, amid the acclamations of thousands, 
 they were drawn in triumph into the town. Mr. Owen's 
 Quaker partners with him were astounded. Never before 
 were followers of George Fox sharers in such a demonstration. 
 And few have been the employers who have been welcomed 
 back by their workpeople as Mr. Owen was. These facts 
 have had great influence in making employers genial and 
 considerate to persons in their mills, though none have 
 equalled the great founder of the system. These facts are 
 worth remembering by the new co-operative companies 
 continually forming, animated by the common notion that 
 niggardliness is economy and that shabbiness can bring 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Wesleyanism dotted the country with prayer-meetings 
 Chartism covered it with conspiring groups of worldly- 
 awakened men Socialism sought to teach industry power, 
 property its duty, and the working people how to struggle for 
 their improvement without anger or impatience. It was 
 Mr. Owen who was conspicuous in teaching them the golden 
 lesson of peace and progress. His heart was with that religion 
 which, though weak in creeds and collects, rendered humanity 
 service. No affluence corrupted him. When he saw gentle- 
 men of his acquaintance adding thousands to thousands and 
 acre to acre, and giving themselves up to the pride of family, 
 of title, of position, he himself plotted for the welfare of 
 mechanics and labourers. He found no satisfaction in the 
 splendour of courts so long as the hovel stood in sight. He 
 felt as Mr. Bright did who had a mightier power of expressing 
 the great aims which raise the stature of mankind, who said : 
 " I do not care for military greatness or renown : I care for 
 the condition of the people among whom I live. . . . Crown, 
 coronet, mitres, military displays, pomp of war, wide colonies, 
 and a huge empire are in my view all trifles light as air, unless 
 with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, 
 and happiness among the great body of the people."
 
 54 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 
 
 " There are some very earnest and benevolent persons who have never- 
 theless a hollow jingle in their goodness. They mistake their own 
 indifference for impartiality, and call upon men to renounce for 
 philanthropic purposes convictions which are as sincere, as salutary, 
 and often more important to public freedom than philanthropy itself." 
 G. J. H. 
 
 It was the year 1825 which saw co-operative views which 
 since 18 12 had been addressed by Mr. Owen to the upper 
 classes first taken up by the working class. In 18 17, as the 
 reader has already seen, he declared " all the religions of the 
 world to be founded in error " ; he alarmed the bishops and 
 clergy, many of whom were in sympathy with his views, and 
 had themselves intermittent compassion for the working class. 
 For twenty-three years their wrath endured. In 1840 
 Mr. William Pare, one of the earliest and ablest of Mr. 
 Owen's disciples, was compelled to resign the office he held 
 of Registrar of births, deaths, and marriages in Birmingham, 
 in consequence of its being made known to the Bishop of 
 Exeter that Mr. Pare sympathised with Mr. Owen's views. 
 
 Many of Mr. Owen's difficulties with theologians arose 
 through their not understanding him, and through Mr. Owen 
 not understanding that they did not understand him. His 
 followers were fond of quoting the lines : 
 
 " For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 It is not at all clear that a man has a fair chance ot getting
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 55 
 
 his life right while his creed is wrong. With all men creed 
 has a great deal to do with conduct. Pope's lines are the 
 doctrine of a latitudinarian without a conscience. But the 
 argument of Pope imposed on Mr. Owen, as it has done on 
 other excellent men. Mr. Owen was not himself indifferent 
 to conviction. His own conviction about the religion of 
 humanity was so strong that he paid no heed to any opinions 
 which contradicted it. An innovator may point out the 
 errors and mischiefs of a popular faith ; but he can never 
 command respect from adversaries unless he makes himself 
 master of their case and does justice to the equal honesty of 
 those sincerely opposed to him. Meaning nothing offensive 
 by it, Owen often displayed the common insolence of philo- 
 sophers the insolence of pity. It is irritating and uninstruc- 
 tive to earnest men to be looked down upon with compassion 
 on account of convictions acquired with anxiety and many 
 sacrifices. 
 
 " It is not our object," at other times Owen used to say, 
 " to attack that which is false, but to make clear that which is 
 true. Explaining that which is true convinces the judgment 
 when the mind possesses full and deliberate powers of judging." 
 The creed of Co-operation was that the people should mean 
 well, work well, secure to themselves the results of their 
 labour, and neither beg, nor borrow, nor steal, nor annoy. 
 Owen inconsistently denied men's responsibility for their 
 belief, and then said the new system did not contravene 
 religion. As religion was then understood it did. 
 
 In 1837 Mr. Owen, in his discussion with the Rev. J. H. 
 Roebuck, at Manchester, said "he was compelled to believe 
 that all the religions of the world were so many geographical 
 insanities." It was foolishness in followers to represent, as did 
 John Finch and Minter Morgan, that their views were those 
 of " true Christianity." Their business was simply to contend 
 that their views were morally true, and relevant to the needs or 
 the day, and rest there. Neither to attack Christianity nor 
 weakly attempt to reconcile social views to it would have been 
 a self-defensive and self-respecting policy. 
 
 Mr. Owen's theory of the motives or conduct was one 
 which could only commend itself to persons of considerable 
 independence of thought who were then a small minoritv.
 
 56 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 To incite men to action he relied on four considerations, 
 namely, that what he proposed was : 
 
 i. True ; 2. Right ; 3. Humane ; 4. Useful. 
 
 It was understood very early 1 that Co-operation was 
 proposed as a system of universal industry, equality of privi- 
 leges, and the equal distribution of the new wealth created. 
 This was an alarming programme to most persons, except 
 the poor. Many did not like the prospects of " universal 
 industry." The " distribution of wealth " in any sense did not 
 at all meet the views of others, and " equality of privilege " 
 was less valued. 
 
 Mr. Owen determined upon committing his schemes to the 
 hands of the people, for whom he always cared, and sought to 
 serve. Yet, politically, he was not well fitted to succeed with 
 them. Cobden said Lord Palmerston had no prejudices not 
 even in favour of the truth. Mr. Owen had no political 
 principles not even in favour of liberty. His doctrine was 
 that of the poet : 
 
 " For modes of government let fools contest, 
 That which is best administered is best " 
 
 a doctrine which has no other ideal than that of a benevolent 
 despotism, and has no regard for the individual life and self- 
 government ot the people. Mr. Owen was no conscious 
 agent of the adversaries of political rights. He simply did 
 not think rights of any great consequence one way or the 
 other. There never was any question among Liberal politicians 
 as to the personal sincerity of Mr. Owen. Jeremy Bentham, 
 James Mill, Francis Place were his personal friends, who were 
 both social and political reformers, and valued Mr. Owen 
 greatly in his own department, which was social alone. 2 
 
 The French social reformers, from Fourier to Comte, have 
 held the same treacherous tone with regard to political freedom. 
 Albert Brisbane, who published the " Social Destiny of Man," 
 
 1 Co-operative Miscellany, No. 2, 1830. 
 
 2 In his account of the Shakers in the Economist of June 2, 1821, Mr. 
 Mudie said, " They never meddle with public affairs not even voting at 
 an election," and described as "a few singularities" this base abandon- 
 ment of the country to whomsoever might bestride it to patriots who 
 might care for it, or knaves who might despoil it of honour or freedom, 
 while the unheeding Shakers took care of their petty conscience and 
 comfort.
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 57 
 
 himself a determined Fourierite, announced on his title-page, 
 "Our evils are social not political" giving a clean bill of 
 health to all the knaves who by political machination diverted 
 or appropriated the resources of the people. "Our most 
 enlightened men," he contemptuously wrote, " are seeking in 
 paltry political measures and administrative reforms for means 
 of doing away with social misery." Tamisier more wisely 
 wrote when he said, " Political order has alone been the 
 object of study, while the industrial order has been neglected." 
 Because social life had been neglected for politics, it did not 
 follow that political life was to be neglected for social. This 
 was merely reaction, not sense. 
 
 Another dangerous distich then popular with social reformers 
 was the well-known lines Tory Dr. Johnson put into a poem 
 of Goldsmith : 
 
 " How small of all that human hearts endure 
 That part which laws or kings can cause or cure." 
 
 Goldsmith knew nothing of political science. The cultivated, 
 generous-hearted, sentimental piper was great in his way. He 
 foresaw not England made lean and hungry by corn laws ; or 
 Ireland depopulated by iniquitous laws ; or France enervated 
 and cast into the dust by despotism ; but social reformers of 
 Mr. Owen's day had means of knowing better. It was not 
 their ignorance so much as their ardour that misled them. 
 The inspiration of a new and neglected subject was upon 
 them, and they thought it destined to absorb and supersede 
 every other. The error cost them the confidence of the 
 best men of thought and action around them for many 
 years. 
 
 Mr. Owen's own account of the way in which he sought 
 to enlist the sympathies of the Tories of his time with his 
 schemes is instructive. They were, as despotic rulers always 
 are, ready to occupy the people with social ideas, in the hope 
 that they will leave political affairs to them. How little the 
 Conservatives were likely to give effect to views of sound 
 education for the people, irrespective of religious or political 
 opinion, we of to-day know very well. 
 
 " I have," says Mr. Owen, " attempted two decisive 
 measures for the general improvement of the population.
 
 58 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 The one was a good and liberal education for all the poor, 
 without exception on account of their religious or political 
 principles ; to be conducted under a board of sixteen com- 
 missioners, to be chosen by Parliament, eight to be of the 
 Church of England and the remainder from the other sects, in 
 proportion to their numbers, the education to be useful and 
 liberal. This measure was supported, and greatly desired, by 
 the members of Lord Liverpool's administration ; and con- 
 siderable progress was made in the preliminary measures 
 previous to its being brought into Parliament. It was very 
 generally supported by leading members of the aristocracy. 
 It was opposed, however, and, after some deliberation, stopped 
 in its progress by Dr. Randolph, Bishop of London, and by 
 Mr. Whitbread. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
 several other dignitaries of the Church, were favourable to it. 
 The declared opposition, however, of the Bishop of London 
 and of Mr. Whitbread, who it was expected would prevail 
 upon his party to oppose the measure, induced Lord Liverpool 
 and his friends who, I believe, sincerely wished to give the 
 people a useful and liberal education to defer the subject to a 
 more favourable opportunity. 
 
 " The next measure was to promote the amelioration of the 
 condition of the productive classes by the adoption of superior 
 arrangements to instruct and employ them. I had several 
 interviews with Lord Liverpool, Mr. Canning, and other 
 members of the Government, to explain to them the outlines 
 of the practical measures which I proposed. They referred 
 the examination of the more detailed measures to Lord 
 Sidmouth, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, 
 and I had many interviews and communications with him 
 upon these subjects. 
 
 "I became satisfied that if they had possessed sufficient 
 power over public opinion they would have adopted measures 
 to prevent the population from experiencing poverty and 
 misery ; but they were opposed by the then powerful party 
 of the political economists. 
 
 "The principles which I have long advocated were sub- 
 mitted for their consideration, and at their request they were 
 at first printed but not published. They were sent, by the 
 permission of the Government, to all the Governments of
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 59 
 
 Europe and America ; and upon examination by statesmen 
 and learned men of the Continent were found to contain no 
 evil, but simple facts and legitimate deductions. In one of my 
 last interviews with Lord Sidmouth, he said : * Mr. Owen, I 
 am authorised by the Government to state to you that we 
 admit the principles you advocate to be true, and that if 
 they were fairly applied to practice they would be most 
 beneficial ; but we find the public do not yet understand 
 them, and they are therefore not prepared to act upon them. 
 When public opinion shall be sufficiently enlightened to 
 comprehend and to act upon them we shall be ready and 
 willing to acknowledge their truth and to act in conformity 
 with them. We know we are acting upon erroneous prin- 
 ciples ; but we are compelled to do so from the force of 
 public opinion, which is so strongly in favour of old- 
 established political institutions.' To a statement so candid 
 I could only reply, c Then it becomes my duty to endeavour 
 to enlighten the people and to create a new public opinion.'" 1 
 If Lord Sidmouth believed what he said, in the sense in which 
 Mr. Owen understood him, he dexterously concealed, in all 
 his public acts and speeches, his convictions from the 
 world. 
 
 It was happily no easy thing even for Mr. Owen to win 
 the confidence of the working-class politicians. They honour- 
 ably refused to barter freedom for comfort, much as they 
 needed an increase of physical benefits. We had lately a 
 curiously-devised Social and Conservative Confederation, the 
 work of Mr. Scott-Russell, in which the great leaders of the 
 party always opposed to political amelioration were to lead 
 the working class to the attainment of great social advantages, 
 and put them "out in the open," as Sir John Packington said, 
 in some wonderful way. Several well-known working-class 
 leaders, some of whom did not understand what political con- 
 viction implied, and others who believed they could accept this 
 advance without political compromise, entered into it. There 
 were others, as Robert Applegarth, who felt that it was futile 
 to put their trust in political adversaries to carry out their social 
 schemes and then vote against them at elections, and so deprive 
 their chosen friends of the power of serving them. Twelve 
 1 British Co-operator, p. 154.
 
 6o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 names of noblemen, the chief Conservatives in office, were 
 given as ready to act as the leaders of the new party. Mr. 
 Robert Applegarth caused the names to be published, when 
 every one of them wrote to the papers, denying any authority 
 for connecting them with the project. 
 
 Mr. Owen's early followers were looked upon with distrust 
 by the Radical party, although he numbered among his active 
 disciples invincible adherents of that school ; but they saw in 
 Mr. Owen's views a means of realising social benefits in which 
 they, though Radicals, were also interested. Mr. Owen looked 
 on Radicals and Conservatives alike as instruments of realising 
 his views. He appealed to both parties in Parliament with the 
 same confidence to place their names upon his committee. He 
 went one day with Mrs. Fry to see the prisoners in Newgate. 
 The boys were mustered at Mrs. Fry's request for his in- 
 spection. Mr. Owen published in the newspapers what he 
 thought of the sight he beheld. He exclaimed : " A collection 
 of boys and youths, with scarcely the appearance of human 
 beings in their countenances ; the most evident sign that the 
 Government to which they belong had not performed any part 
 of its duty towards them. For instance : there was one boy, 
 only sixteen years of age, double ironed ! Here a great crime 
 had been committed and a severe punishment is inflicted, 
 which under a system of proper training and prevention would 
 not have taken place. My Lord Sidmouth will forgive me, 
 for he knows I intend no personal offence. His dispositions 
 are known to be mild and amiable x ; but the chief civil 
 magistrate of the country, in such case, is far more guilty than 
 the boy ; and in strict justice, if a system of coercion and 
 punishment be rational and necessary, he ought rather to 
 have been double ironed and in the place of the juvenile 
 prisoner." 
 
 When Mr. Owen applied personally to Lord Liverpool, 
 then Prime Minister, for permission to place his name with 
 the leading names of members of the Opposition, to investi- 
 gate his communistic plans, Lord Liverpool answered : " Mr. 
 Owen, you have liberty to do so. You may make use of 
 our names in any way you choose for the objects you have 
 in view, short of committing us as an administration." The 
 
 1 Had this been true, his name would not have been hateful to this day.
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 61 
 
 next day Mr. Owen held a public meeting. " I proposed," 
 Mr. Owen has related, " that these important subjects should 
 be submitted for consideration to the leading members of the 
 administration and of the Opposition ; and for several hours 
 it was the evident wish of three-fourths of the meeting that 
 this question should be carried in the affirmative. But as it 
 was supposed by the Radical reformers of that day that I was 
 acting for and with the ministry, they collected all their 
 strength to oppose my measures ; and finding they were 
 greatly in the minority, they determined to prolong the 
 meeting by opposing speeches, until the patience of the friends 
 of the measure should be worn out. Accordingly, the late 
 Major Cartwright, Mr. Alderman Waithman, Mr. Hunt, 
 Mr. Hone, and others, spoke against time, until the principal 
 parties retired, and until my misguided opponents could bring 
 up their numerous supporters among the working classes, who 
 were expected to arrive after they had finished their daily 
 occupations ; and at a late hour in the day the room became 
 occupied by many of the friends and supporters of those gentle- 
 men, who well knew how to obtain their object at public 
 meetings by throwing it into confusion." 1 The wonderful 
 committee Mr. Owen proposed comprised all the chief public 
 men of the day, who never had acted together on any question, 
 and unless the millennium had really arrived of which there 
 was no evidence before the meeting it was not likely that 
 they would. This was the resolution submitted to the 
 meeting : "That the following noblemen and gentlemen be 
 appointed on the committee, with power to add to their 
 number : 
 
 The First Lord of the Treasury. The Duke of Sussex. 
 
 The Lord Chancellor. The Duke of Richmond. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel, the Secretary oi The Earl of Winchelsea. 
 
 State. The Earl of Harewood. 
 
 Sir George Murray. The Marquis of Lansdowne. 
 
 Sir Henry Hardinge. Lords Grosvenor and Holland. 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Eldon. 
 
 The Attorney and Solicitor General. Lord Sidmouth. 
 
 The Master of the Mint. Lord Radnor. 
 
 The Secretary of War. Lord Carnarvon. [York. 
 
 The President of the Board of The Archbishops of Canterbury and 
 
 Trade. The Bishops of London and Peter- 
 
 The First Lord of the Admiralty. borough. 
 
 British Co-opcralor, p. 152.
 
 62 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Deans of Westminster and York. Mr. O'Connell. 
 
 Cardinal Wild and Dr. Croly. Mr. Charles Grant. 
 
 William Allen and Joseph Foster. Mr. Wilmot Horton. 
 
 Mr. Rothschild and Mr. J. L. Gold- Mr. Huskisson. 
 
 smid. Lord Palmerston. 
 
 Lord Althorp. Mr. J. Smith. 
 
 Mr. Brougham. Lord Nugent. 
 
 Sir J. Graham. The Hon. G. Stanley. 
 
 Sir Henry Parnell. Lord Milton. 
 
 Mr. Spring Rice. Sir R. Inglish. 
 
 Lord John Russell. Sir Francis Burdett. 
 
 Sir John Newport. Mr. William Smith. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh. Mr. Warburton. 
 
 Mr. Denman. Mr. Hobhouse. 
 
 Mr. Alexander Baring. Dr. Birkbeck. 
 
 Mr. Hume. Mr. Owen." 
 
 There was this merit belonging to the proposal, that such 
 an amazing committee was never thought possible by any 
 other human being than Mr. Owen. Ministers were to 
 forsake the Cabinet Councils, prelates the Church, judges the 
 courts ; the business of army, navy, and Parliament was to be 
 suspended, while men who did not know each other, and who 
 not only had no principles in common, but did not want to 
 have, sat down with heretics, revolutionists, and Quakers, 
 to confer as to the adoption of a system by which they were 
 all to be superseded. It was quite needless in Major Cart- 
 wright and Alderman Waithman to oppose the mad motion, 
 such a committee would never have met. 
 
 Mr. Owen was never diverted, but went on with his 
 appeal to the people. He had the distinction of being the 
 gentleman of his time who had earned great wealth by his 
 own industry, and yet spent it without stint in the service 
 of the public. It is amusing to see the reverence with which 
 the sons of equality regarded him because he was rich. His 
 name was printed in publications with all the distinction of 
 italics and capitals as the Great Philanthropist Owen ; and 
 there are disciples of his who long regarded the greatness 
 of Co-operation as a tame, timid, and lingering introduction 
 to the system of the great master whom they still cite as 
 a sort of sacred name. It was a very subdued way of speaking 
 of him to find him described as the " Benevolent Founder 
 of our Social Views." 
 
 Long years after he had " retired from public life " his 
 activity far exceeded that of most people who were in it, as 
 a few dates of Mr. Owen's movements will show. On
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 63 
 
 July 10, 1838, he left London for Wisbech. On the three 
 next nights he lectured in Lynn, the two following nights 
 in Peterborough. On the next night at Wisbech again. 
 The next night he was again in Peterborough, where, after 
 a late discussion, he left at midnight with Mr. James Hill, the 
 editor of the Star in the East, in an open carriage, which did 
 not arrive at Wisbeach till half-past two. He was up before 
 five o'clock the same morning, left before six for Lynn, to 
 catch the coach for Norwich at eight. After seeing deputa- 
 tions from Yarmouth he lectured in St. Andrew's Hall at night 
 and the following night, and lectured five nights more in 
 succession at March, Wisbech, and Boston. It was his 
 activity and his ready expenditure which gave ascendancy 
 to the social agitation, both in England and America, from 
 1820 to 1844. 
 
 Robert Owen died in his 88th year, on the 17th of November, 
 1858, at Newtown, Montgomeryshire the place of his birth. 
 His wish was to die in the house and in the bedroom in which 
 he was born. But Mr. David Thomas, the occupant of the 
 house, was unable so to arrange. Mr. Owen went to the 
 Bear's Head Hotel, quite near, and since rebuilt. He was 
 buried in the grave of his father in the spacious ground of the 
 Church of St. Mary. Mr. David Thomas and Mr. James 
 Digby walked at the head of the bearers. The mourners 
 were : 
 
 Mr. George Owen Davies. Mr. Robert Dale Owen. 
 
 Mr. William Cox. Mr. William Pare. 
 
 Mr. W. H. Ashurst. Col. H. Clinton. 
 
 Mr. Edward Truelove. Mr. G. J. Holyoake. 
 
 Mr. Francis Pears. Mr. Robert Cooper. 
 
 Mr. William Jones. Mr. Law. 
 
 Mr, George Goodwin. Mr. Pryce Jones. 
 
 There was quite an honouring procession the Rev. John 
 Edwards, M.A., who read the burial service, medical gentle- 
 men, magistrates, Mr. Owen's literary executors, deputations 
 of three local societies, and, very appropriately, twelve infant 
 school children seeing that Mr. Owen was the founder of 
 infant schools. 
 
 After the funeral, Mr. Robert Dale Owen came into the 
 hall of the "Bear's Head" with a parting gift to me of the Life
 
 64 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 of his father, in which he had inscribed his name and mine. 
 While paying my account at the office window, I placed them 
 on a table near me, but on turning to enter the London coach 
 with other visitors I found the books were gone. Though 
 I at once made known my loss, nothing more was heard of 
 them until forty-four years later, July 24, 1902, 1 when a large 
 delegation of co-operators from England and Scotland assembled 
 to witness the unveiling of the handsome screen erected by 
 them, to surround the tomb of Mr. Owen, on which occasion 
 I delivered the following address : 
 
 We come not " to bury Csesar " but to praise him. It 
 is now recorded in historic pages that " Robert Owen was 
 the most conspicuous figure in the early part of the last 
 century." 2 We are here at the commencement of another 
 century to make the first commemoration that national grati- 
 tude has accorded him. 
 
 Being the last of the "Social Missionaries" appointed in 
 1 84 1 to advocate Mr. Owen's famous "New Views of 
 Society," and being the only survivor of his disciples who, 
 forty-four years ago, laid his honoured bones in the grave 
 before us, the distinction has been accorded to me of unveiling 
 this Memorial. As the contemporaries of a public man are 
 the best witnesses of his influence, or his eminence, we may 
 recall that Southey described him as " one of the three great 
 moral forces " of his day. There is a rarity in that praise, for 
 there are still a hundred men of force to one of " moral " 
 force. 
 
 Do we meet here to crown the career of a man unremark- 
 able in the kingdom of thought, or without the genius of 
 success ? It is for us to answer these questions. It is said 
 by parrot-minded critics that Owen was "a man of one idea," 
 whereas he was a man of more ideas than any public man 
 England knew in his day. He shared and befriended every 
 new conception of moment and promise, in science, in educa- 
 tion, and government. His mind was hospitable to all projects 
 
 1 The mistress of a shop in Newtown where pledges were taken in, 
 hearing my name among the arrivals, and remembering she had seen 
 it on the title-page of a book in her possession, kindly sent me word that 
 she would have pleasure in restoring it to me, which she did. 
 
 2 " Robert Owen," by Leslie Stephen, Nat. Diet. Biog.
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 65 
 
 of progress ; and he himself contributed more original ideas for 
 the conduct of public affairs than any other thinker of his 
 generation. It was not the opulence of his philanthropy, but 
 the versatility of his ideas and interests, which led members 
 of our Royal Family to preside at public meetings for him, 
 brought monarchs to his table, and gave him the friendship 
 of statesmen, of men of science and philosophy, throughout 
 Europe and America. No other man ever knew so many 
 contemporaries of renown. 
 
 Because some of his projects were so far reaching that they 
 required a century to mature them, onlookers who expected 
 them to be perfected at once, say he " failed in whatever he 
 proposed." While the truth is he succeeded in more things 
 than any other man ever undertook. If he made more 
 promises than he fulfilled, he fulfilled more than any other 
 public man ever made. Thus, he was not a man of " one 
 idea" but of many. Nor did his projects fail. The only 
 social community for which he was responsible was that of 
 New Harmony, in Indiana ; which broke up through his too 
 great trust in uneducated humanity a fault which only the 
 generous commit. The communities of Motherwell and 
 Orbiston, of Manea, Fen, and Queenwood in Hampshire were 
 all undertaken without his authority, and despite his warning 
 of the inadequacy of the means for success. They failed, as he 
 predicted they would. Critics, skilled in coming to conclusions 
 without knowing the facts, impute these failures to him. 
 
 The Labour Exchange was not Mr. Owen's idea, but he 
 adopted it, and by doing so made it so successful that it was 
 killed by the cupidity of those who coveted its profits. He 
 maintained when nobody believed it that employers who did 
 most for the welfare of their workpeople, would be the greatest 
 gainers. Owen did so, and made a fortune by it. Was not 
 that success ? 
 
 A co-operative store was a mere detail of his factory 
 management. Now they overrun the world. Have they 
 not succeeded ? We Co-operators can answer for that. 
 
 He bought and worked up the first bale of cotton imported 
 into England, thus practically founding the foreign cotton trade. 
 Will any one say that has not answered ? 
 
 He was the first to advocate that eight hours a day in the 
 
 vol. 1. 6
 
 66 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 workshop was best for industrial efficiency. The best employers 
 in the land are now of that opinion. He did not fail there. 
 
 Who can tell the horrors of industry which children suffered 
 in factories at the beginning of the last century ? Were not 
 the Factory Acts acts of mercy ? The country owed them to 
 Robert Owen's inspiration. They saved the whole race of 
 workers from physical deterioration. Were these Acts failures ? 
 Millions of children have passed through factories since Owen's 
 day, who, if they knew it (and their parents, too) have reason 
 to bless his name. 
 
 He was the first who looked with practical intent into the 
 kingdom of the unborn. He saw that posterity the silent but 
 inevitable master of us all if left untrained may efface the 
 triumphs, or dishonour, or destroy the great traditions of our 
 race. He put infant schools into the mind of the world. Have 
 they been failures ? 
 
 He, when it seemed impossible to any one else, proposed 
 national education for which now all the sects contend. Has 
 that proposal been a failure ? In 187 1, when the centenary of 
 Owen's birth came round, we asked Prof. Huxley to take the 
 chair. He wrote, in the midst of the struggle for the School 
 Board Bill, saying : " It is my duty to take part in the 
 attempt which the country is now making, to carry into effect 
 some of Robert Owen's most ardently-cherished schemes. I 
 think that every one who is compelled to look closely into the 
 problem of popular education must be led to Owen's conclusions 
 that the infants' school is, so to speak, the key of the position. 
 Robert Owen," Huxley says, " discerned this great fact, and 
 had the courage and patience to work out his theory into a 
 practical reality. That " (Huxley declares) "is his claim if 
 he had no other to the enduring gratitude of the people." 
 
 Huxley knew that Owen was not a sentimental, speculative, 
 or barren reformer. He was for submitting every plan to 
 experiment before advising it. He carried no dagger in his 
 mouth, as many reformers have done. He cared for no cause 
 that reason could not win. There never was a more cautious 
 innovator, a more practical dreamer, or a more reasoning 
 revolutionist. 
 
 Whatever he commended he supported with his purse. It 
 was this that won for him confidence and trust, given to no
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 67 
 
 compeer of his time. When 80,000 working men marched 
 from Copenhagen Fields to petition the Government to release 
 the Dorchester labourers, it was Mr. Owen they asked to go 
 with them at their head. 
 
 It was he who first taught the people the then strange truth 
 that Causation was the law of nature on the mind, and unless 
 we looked for the cause of an evil we might never know the 
 remedy. Every man of sense in Church and State acts on this 
 truth now, but so few knew it in Owen's day that he was 
 accused of unsettling the morality of the world. It was the 
 fertility and newness of his suggestions, as a man of affairs, that 
 gave him renown, and his influence extends to us. This 
 Memorial before us would itself grow old were we to stay to 
 describe all the ideas the world has accepted from Owen. I 
 will name but one more, and that the greatest. 
 
 He saw, as no man before him did, that environment is the 
 maker of men. Aristotle, whose praise is in all our Universities, 
 said " Character is Destiny." But how can character be made ? 
 The only national way known in Owen's day was by prayer 
 and precept. Owen said there were material means, largely 
 unused, conducive to human improvement. Browning's prayer 
 was " Make no more giants, God ; but elevate the race at 
 once." This was Owen's aim, as far as human means might 
 do it. Great change can only be effected by unity. But 
 
 " Union without knowledge is useless ; 
 Knowledge without union is powerless." 
 
 Then what is the right knowledge ? Owen said it consisted 
 in knowing that people came into the world without any 
 intention of doing it ; and often with limited capacities, and 
 with disadvantages of person, and with instinctive tendencies 
 which impel them against their will, disqualifications which 
 they did not give themselves. He was the first philosopher who 
 changed repugnance into compassion, and taught us to treat 
 defects of others with sympathy instead of contempt, and to 
 remedy their deficiency, as far as we can, by creating for them 
 amending conditions. Dislike dies in the heart of those who 
 understand this, and the spirit of unity arises. Thus instructed 
 good-will becomes the hand-maid of Co-operation, and Co-opera- 
 tion is the only available power of industry. Since error arises
 
 68 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 more from ignorance of facts than from defect of goodness, the 
 reformer with education at command, knows no despair of the 
 betterment of men. This was the angerless philosophy of 
 Owen, which inspired him with a forbearance that never 
 failed him, and gave him that regnant manner which charmed 
 all who met him. We shall see what his doctrine of environ- 
 ment has done for society, if we notice what it began to do in 
 his day, and what it has done since. 
 
 Men perished by battle, by tempest, by pestilence. Faith 
 might comfort, but it did not save them. In every town nests 
 of pestilence coexisted with the Churches, which were concerned 
 alone with worship. Disease was unchecked by devotion. 
 Then Owen asked, " Might not safety come by improved 
 material condition ? " As the prayer of hope brought no reply, 
 as the scream of agony, if heard, was unanswered, as the priest, 
 with the holiest intent, brought no deliverance, it seemed 
 prudent to try the philosopher and the physician. 
 
 Then Corn Laws were repealed, because prayers fed nobody. 
 Then parks were multiplied, because fresh air was found 
 to be a condition of health. Alleys and courts were first 
 abolished, since deadly diseases were bred there. Streets were 
 widened, that towns might be ventilated. Hours of labour were 
 shortened, since exhaustion means liability to epidemic con- 
 tagion. Recreation was encouraged, as change and rest mean 
 life and strength. Temperance thought of as self-denial 
 was found to be a necessity, as excess of any kind in diet, or 
 labour, or pleasure means premature death. Those who took 
 dwellings began to look, not only to drainage and ventilation, 
 but to the ways of their near neighbours, as the most pious 
 family may poison the air you breathe unless they have sanitary 
 habits. 
 
 Thus, thanks to the doctrine of national environment which 
 Owen was the first to preach Knowledge is greater ; Life is 
 longer ; Health is surer; Disease is limited ; Towns are sweeter; 
 Hours of labour are shorter ; Men are stronger ; Women are 
 fairer ; Children are happier ; Industry is held in more honour, 
 and is better rewarded ; Co-operation carries wholesome food 
 and increased income into a million homes where they were 
 unknown before, and has brought us nearer and nearer to that 
 state of society which Owen strove to create in which it shall
 
 HIS APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 69 
 
 be impossible for men to be depraved or poor. Thus we 
 justify ourselves for erecting this Memorial to his memory, 
 which I am about to unveil. 
 
 The town has erected a Public Library opposite the house in 
 which Mr. Owen was born, to which the Co-operators 
 subscribed j 1,000. One part of the Library bears the name 
 of Owen's Wing.
 
 7 o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD. 182O-183O 
 
 "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, 
 When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
 Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes 
 He stared on the Pacific ; and his men 
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, 
 Silent upon a peak in Darien." Keats. 
 
 The enchanted wonder which Keats describes on first finding 
 in Chapman's Homer the vigorous Greek texture of the great 
 bard, was akin to that " wild surmise " with which the despair- 
 ing sons of industry first gazed on that new world of Co- 
 operation then made clear to their view. 
 
 To the social reformers the world itself seemed moving in 
 the direction of social colonies. Not only was America under 
 way for the millennium of co-operative life even prosaic, 
 calculating, utilitarian Scotland was setting sail. France had 
 put out to sea years before under Commander Fourier. A 
 letter arrived from Brussels, bearing date October 2, 1825, 
 addressed to the "Gentlemen of the London Co-operative 
 Society," telling them that the Permanent Committee of the 
 Society of Beneficence had colonial establishments at Wortzel 
 and at Murxplus Ryckewvorsel, in the province of Antwerp, 
 where 725 farmhouses were already built ; that 76 were 
 inhabited by free colonists ; and that they had a contract with 
 the Government for the suppression of mendicants, and had 
 already 455 of those interesting creatures collected from the 
 various regions of beggardom in a depot, where 1,000 could 
 be accommodated. No wonder there was exultation in Red 
 Lion Square when the slow-moving, dreamy-eyed, much- 
 smoking Dutch were spreading their old-fashioned canvas in
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 71 
 
 search of the new world. From 1820 to 1830 Co-operation 
 and communities were regarded by the thinking classes as a 
 religion of industry. Communities, the form which the religion 
 of industry was to take, were from 1825 to 1830 as common 
 and almost as frequently announced as joint-stock companies 
 now. In 1826 April brought news that proposals were issued 
 for establishing a community near Exeter to be called the 
 Devon and Exeter Co-operative Society. Gentlemen of good 
 family and local repute, who were not, as some are now, afraid 
 to look at a community through one of Lord Rosse's long- 
 range telescopes, gave open aid to the proposal. Two public 
 meetings were held in May, at the Swan Tavern. The Hon. 
 Lionel Dawson presided on both occasions. Such was the 
 enthusiasm about the new system that more than four hundred 
 persons were willing to come forward with sums of ^5 to 
 _iO ; one hundred others were prepared to take shares at 
 ^25 each ; and two or three promised aid to the extent of 
 ^2,000. Meetings in favour of this project were held at 
 Tiverton, and in the Mansion House, Bridgewater. The zeal 
 was real and did not delay. In July the promoters bought thirty- 
 seven acres of land within seven miles of Exeter. A gardener, a 
 carpenter, a quarrier (there being a stone quarry on the estate), 
 a drainer, a well-sinker, a clay temperer, and a moulder were 
 at once set to work. 
 
 The Metropolitan Co-operative Society, not to be behind 
 when the provinces were going forward, put forth a plan for 
 establishing a community within fifty miles of London. Shares 
 were taken up and ^4,000 subscribed in 1826. There was a 
 wise fear of prematurity of proceeding shown, and there was 
 also an infatuation of confidence exhibited in many ways. 
 However, the society soberly put out an advertisement to 
 landowners, saying, "Wanted to rent, with a view to purchase, 
 or on a long lease, from 500 to 2,000 acres of good land, in 
 one or several contiguous farms ; the distance from London 
 not material if the offer is eligible." Information was to be 
 sent to Mr. J. Corss, Red Lion Square. Four years earlier 
 Scotland, a country not at all prone to Utopian projects not 
 likely to pay, entertained the idea of community before 
 Orbiston was named. The Economist announced that the 
 subscriptions for the formation of one of the new villages at
 
 72 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Motherwell, though the public had not been appealed to, 
 amounted to jTio^ooo. 1 
 
 Eighteen hundred and twenty-six was a famous year for 
 communistic projects. A Dublin Co-operative Society was 
 formed on the 28th of February, at a meeting held at the 
 Freemasons' Tavern, Dawson Street, Dublin. Captain O'Brien, 
 R.N., occupied the chair. The Dublin Co-operative Society 
 invited Lord Cloncurry to dine with them. His lordship 
 wrote to say that he was more fully convinced than he was 
 four years ago, of the great advantage it would be to Ireland 
 to establish co-operative villages on Mr. Owen's plan, and 
 spoke of Mr. Owen in curious terms as the " benevolent 
 and highly-respectable Owen." This was nine years after 
 Mr. Owen had astounded mankind by his London declaration 
 " against all the religions of the world." 2 
 
 Two years before the Economist appeared, as the first serial 
 advocate of Co-operation, pamphleteers were in the field on 
 behalf of social improvement. Mr. Owen certainly had the 
 distinction of inspiring many writers. One " Philanthropos " 
 published in 18 19 a powerful pamphlet on the "Practicability 
 of Mr. Owen's plan to improve the condition of the lower 
 classes." It was inscribed to William Wilberforce (father of 
 the Bishop of Winchester), whom the writer considered to 
 be "intimately associated with every subject involving the 
 welfare of mankind," and who "regarded political measures 
 abstractedly from the individuals with whom they originated." 
 Mr. Wilberforce, he said, had shown that " Christianity steps 
 beyond the narrow bound of national advantage in quest of 
 universal good, and does not prompt us to love our country at 
 the expense of our integrity." 3 
 
 The Economist was concluded in January, 1822. It was 
 of the small magazine size, and was the neatest and most 
 business-looking journal issued in connection with Co-operation 
 for many years. After the 32nd number the quality and 
 taste of the printing fell off some irregularity in its issue 
 occurred. Its conductor explained in the 51st number that 
 its printing had been put into the hands of the Co-operative 
 
 1 Economist. No. 27, July, 1821. 
 
 2 Co-operative Magazine, 1826, p. 147. 
 
 5 These were Bishop Watson's words adopted by " Philanthropos."
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 73 
 
 and Economical Society, "and that it would continue to be 
 regularly executed by them." After the 52nd number the 
 Economist was discontinued, without any explanation being 
 given. It was bound in two volumes, and sold at 7s. each 
 in boards. Many numbers purported to be "published every 
 Saturday morning by Mr. Wright, bookseller, No. 46, Fleet 
 Street, London, where the trade and newsmen may be supplied, 
 and where orders, communications to the editor, post paid, are 
 respectfully requested to be addressed." Early numbers bore 
 the name of G. Auld, Greville Street. With No. 22 the 
 names appear of J. and C. Adlard, Bartholomew Close. With 
 No. 32 the imprint is "G. Mudie, printer" no address. 
 After No. 51 the intimation is "Printed at the Central 
 House of the Co-operative and Economical Society, No. 1, 
 Guilford Street East, Spafields." 
 
 Twelve years later, when the Gazette of the Exchange Bazaars 
 was started, a fly-leaf was issued, which stated, "This work 
 will be conducted by the individual who founded the first of 
 the co-operative societies in London, 1820, and who edited 
 the Economist, in 182122, the Political Economist and Universal 
 Philanthropist, in 1823, the Advocate of the Working Classes, in 
 1826-27 ; and who has besides lectured upon the principles 
 to be discussed in the foithcoming publication (The Exchange 
 Bazaars Gazette), in various parts of Great Britain. He enters 
 on his undertaking, therefore, after having been prepared for 
 his task by previous and long-continued researches." Mr. 
 Owen never thought much of co-operative societies, regarding 
 grocers' shops as ignominious substitutes for the reconstruc- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 The dedication of the Economist was as follows : 
 "To Mr. John Maxwell, Lord Archibald Hamilton, Sir 
 William de Crespigny, Bart., Mr. Dawson, Mr. Henry 
 Brougham, Mr. H. Gurney, and Mr. William Smith, the 
 philanthropic members of the House of Commons, who, on 
 the motion of Mr. Maxwell, on the 26th of June, 1821, for 
 an address to the throne, praying that a commission might be 
 appointed to investigate Mr. Owen's system, had the courage 
 and consistency to make the motion ; this volume is inscribed 
 in testimony of heartfelt respect and gratitude by The 
 Economist."
 
 74 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 The earliest name of literary note connected with Co- 
 operation was that of Mr. William Thompson. He was 
 an abler man than John Gray. Though an Irishman, he was 
 singularly dispassionate. He possessed fortune and studious 
 habits. He resided some years with Jeremy Bentham, and 
 the methodical arrangement of his chief work, the " Distribu- 
 tion of Wealth," betrays Bentham's literary influence. This 
 work was written in 1822. In 1825 he published "An Appeal 
 of one-half the human race Women against the pretensions 
 of the other half Men." It was a reply to James Mill to a 
 paragraph in his famous "Article on Government." Mr. 
 Thompson issued, in 1827, "Labour Rewarded," in which 
 he explained the possibility of conciliating the claims of labour 
 and capital and securing to workmen the " whole products of 
 their exertions." This last work consisted of business-like 
 " Directions for the Establishment of Co-operative Com- 
 munities." These "directions" were accompanied by elaborate 
 plans and tables. A moderate number of pioneers might, 
 with that book in their hand, found a colony or begin a new 
 world. He consulted personally Robert Owen, Mr. Hamilton 
 (whom he speaks of as an authority), Abram Combe, and 
 others who had had experience in community-making. Jeremy 
 Bentham's wonderful constitutions, which he was accustomed 
 to furnish to foreign states, were evidently in the mind of his 
 disciple, Mr. Thompson, when he compiled this closely-printed 
 octavo volume of nearly three hundred pages. He placed on 
 his title-page a motto from Le Producteur : "The age of Gold, 
 Happiness, which a blind credulity has placed in times past is 
 before us." The world wanted to see the thing done. It 
 desired, like Diogenes, to have motion proved. In practical 
 directions for forming communities exhaustive instructions 
 were precisely the things needed. Where every step was new 
 and every combination unknown, Thompson wrote a book 
 like a steam engine, marvellous in the scientific adjustments 
 of its parts. His "Distribution of Wealth" is the best 
 exposition to which reference can be made of the pacific and 
 practical nature of English communism. He was a solid but 
 far from a lively writer. It requires a sense of duty to read 
 through his book curiositv is not sufficient. Political econo- 
 mists in Thompson's day held, as Mr. Senior has expressed it,
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 75 
 
 that " It is not with happiness but with wealth that I am con- 
 cerned as a political economist." Thompson's idea was "to 
 inquire into the principles of the distribution of wealth most 
 conducive to human happiness." His life was an answer to those 
 who hold that Socialism implies sensualism. For the last 
 twenty years of his life he neither partook of animal food nor 
 intoxicating drinks, because he could better pursue his literary 
 labours without them. He left his body for dissection a bold 
 thing to do in his time a useful thing to do in order to break 
 somewhat through the prejudices of the ignorant against 
 dissection for surgical ends. Compliance with his wish 
 nearly led to a riot among the peasantry of the neighbour- 
 hood of Clonnkeen, Rosscarbery, County of Cork, where he 
 died. 
 
 Another early and memorable name in co-operative history 
 is that of Abram Combe. It is very rarely that a person of 
 any other nationality dominates the mind of a Scotchman ; 
 but Mr. Owen, although a Welshman, did this by Abram 
 Combe, who, in 1823, published a small book named "Old 
 and New Systems" a work excelling in capital letters. 
 This was one of Mr. Combe's earliest statements of his 
 master's views, which he reproduced with the fidelity which 
 Dumont showed to Bentham, but with less ability. There 
 were three Combes George, Abram, and Andrew. All were 
 distinguished in their way, but George became the best known. 
 George Combe was the phrenologist, who made a reputation by 
 writing the " Constitution of Man," though he had borrowed 
 without acknowledgment the conception from Gall and Spurz- 
 heim, especially Spurzheim, who had published an original 
 little book on the " Laws of Human Nature " ; but to George 
 Combe belonged the merit which belonged to Archdeacon 
 Paley with respect to the argument from design. Combe 
 restated, animated, and enlarged into an impressive volume 
 what before was fragmentary, slender, suggestive, but without 
 the luminous force of illustrative facts and practical applications 
 which Combe supplied. The second brother, Dr. Andrew 
 Combe, had all the talent of the family for exposition, and his 
 works upon physiology were the first in interest and popularity 
 in their time ; but Abram had more sentiment than both the 
 others put together, and ultimately sacrificed himself as well
 
 76 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 as his fortune in endeavours to realise the new social views in 
 practice. 
 
 In 1824 Robert Dale Owen (Mr. Owen's eldest son) 
 appeared as an author for the first time. His book was entitled 
 "An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark." 
 It was published by Longman & Co., London, written at New 
 Lanark, 1823. It was dedicated to his father. The author 
 must have been a young man then. 1 Yet his book shows 
 completeness of thought and that clear and graceful expression 
 by which, beyond all co-operative writers, Robert Dale Owen 
 was subsequently distinguished. His outline is better worth 
 printing now than many books on New Lanark which have 
 appeared ; it gives so interesting a description of the construc- 
 tion of the schools, the methods and principles of tuition 
 pursued. The subjects taught to the elder classes were the 
 earth (its animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms), astronomy, 
 geography, mathematics, zoology, botany, mineralogy, agri- 
 culture, manufactures, architecture, drawing, music, chemistry, 
 and ancient and modern history. The little children were 
 occupied with elementary education, military drill, and dancing, 
 at which Mr. Owen's Quaker partners were much discomfited. 
 The schoolrooms were picture galleries and museums. 
 Learning ceased to be a task and a terror, and became a 
 wonder and delight. The reader who thinks of the beggarly 
 education given by this wealthy English nation will feel 
 admiration of the princely mind of Robert Owen, who gave 
 to the children of weavers this magnificent scheme of 
 instruction. No manufacturer has arisen in England so great 
 as he. 
 
 The London Co-operative Society was formally commenced 
 in October, 1824. It occupied rooms in Burton Street, Burton 
 Crescent. This quiet, and at that time pleasant and suburban, 
 street was quite a nursery-ground of new-born principles. 
 Then, as now, it had no carriage way at either end. In the 
 house at the Tavistock Place corner, lived for many years 
 James Pierrepoint Greaves, the famous mystic. As secluded 
 Burton Street was too much out of the way for the convenience 
 of large assemblages, the discussions commenced by the society 
 
 1 His Autobiography, since published, states that his age was 
 twenty-two, and that this was his first work.
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 77 
 
 there, were transferred to the Crown and Rolls Rooms, in 
 Chancery Lane. Here overflowing audiences met political 
 economists seem to have been the principal opponents. Their 
 chief argument against the new system, was the Malthusian 
 doctrine against " the tendency of population to press against 
 the means of subsistence." 
 
 In the month of April, 1825, the London Co-operative 
 Society hired a first-floor in Picket Street, Temple Bar, for 
 the private meetings of members, who were much increasing 
 at that time. In November of the same year, 1825, the 
 society took the house, No. 36, Red Lion Square. Mr. J. 
 Corss was the Secretary. The London Co-operative Society 
 held weekly debates. One constant topic was the position 
 taken by Mr. Owen that man is not properly the subject of 
 praise or blame, reward or punishment. It also conducted 
 bazaars for the sale of goods manufactured by the provincial 
 societies. 
 
 At New Harmony, Indiana, David Dale Owen, writing to 
 his father, related that they had had debates there, and Mary 
 and Jane, daughters or daughter-in-laws of Mr. Owen, both 
 addressed the meetings on several occasions. After all the dis- 
 courses opportunity of discussion and questioning was uniformly 
 and everywhere afforded. 
 
 The second serial journal representing Co-operation appeared 
 in America, though its inspiration was English. It was the 
 New Harmony Gazette. Its motto was : " If we cannot recon- 
 cile all opinions let us endeavour to unite all hearts." 
 
 The recommencement of a co-operative publication in 
 England took place in 1826. The first was entitled the 
 Co-operative Magazine and Monthly Herald, and appeared 
 in January. It was "printed by Whiting and Branston, 
 Beaufort House, Strand," and "published by Knight and 
 Lacey, Watt's Head, Paternoster Row." It purported to be 
 "sold by J. Templeman, 39, Tottenham Court Road ; and 
 also at the office of the London Co-operative Society, 36, Red 
 Lion Square." The second number of this magazine was 
 published by Hunt and Clark, Tavistock Street. A change in 
 the publisher occurred very early, and additional agents were 
 announced as J. Sutherland, Calton Street, Edinburgh ; R. 
 Griffin & Co., Hutchinson Street, Glasgow ; J. Bolstead,
 
 78 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Cork ; and A. M. Graham, College Green, Dublin. The 
 third number announced a change in the Cork publisher ; J. 
 Loftus, of 107, Kirkpatrick Street, succeeded Mr. Bolstead, 
 and a new store, the " Orbiston Store," was for the first time 
 named. 1 The co-operative writers of this magazine were not 
 wanting in candour even at their own expense. Mr. Charles 
 Clark relates "that while one of the New Harmony philosophers 
 was explaining to a stranger the beauties of a system which 
 dispensed with rewards and punishments, he observed a boy 
 who approved of the system busily helping himself to the finest 
 plums in his garden. Forgetting his argument, he seized the 
 nearest stick at hand and castigated the young thief in a very 
 instructive manner." 2 
 
 The worthy editor of the Co-operative Magazine was 
 one of the fool friends of progress. In his first number he 
 gravely reviews a grand plan of one James Hamilton, for 
 rendering " Owenism Consistent with our Civil and Religious 
 Institutions." His proposal is to begin the new world with 
 one hundred tailors, who are to be unmarried and all of them 
 handsome of person. Hamilton proposed to marry all the 
 handsome tailors by ballot to a similar number of girls. After 
 sermon and prayer the head partner and minister, assisted by 
 foremen of committees, were to put the written names of the 
 men in one box and those of the girls in another. The head 
 partner was then to mix the male names and the minister the 
 female names. When a man's name was proclaimed aloud, the 
 minister was immediately to draw out the name of a girl from 
 his box. The couple were then requested to consider them- 
 selves united by decision of heaven. By this economical 
 arrangement young couples were saved all the anxiety of 
 selection, loss of time in wooing, the suspense of soliciting the 
 approval of parents or guardians. The distraction of courtship, 
 sighs, tears, smiles, doubts, fears, jealousies, expectations, dis- 
 
 1 I preserve the names and addresses of the earlier societies' printers 
 and publishers. It is interesting to know the places where historic move- 
 ments first commenced and the persons by whose aid, or enthusiasm, or 
 courage the first publicity was given to them. Every part of London has 
 been dotted with shops where they were printed and sold, with coffee- 
 shops where they were discussed, and with printing offices where the 
 struggling publications were carried to be printed when one house after 
 another declined to print any more. 
 
 2 Private Letter from New Harmony, 1825 {Co-operative Magazine, 
 vol. i. No. 1, p. 50. 1826).
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 79 
 
 appointments, hope and despair were all avoided by this 
 compendious arrangement. How any editor, not himself an 
 out-patient of a lunatic asylum, could have occupied pages of 
 the Co-operative Magazine by giving publicity to such a 
 pamphlet more ineffably absurd than here depicted, it is idle to 
 conjecture. Could this be the Mr. Hamilton, of Dalzell, who 
 joined Mr. Abram Combe in the purchase of Orbiston for 
 / 20,000, and who offered to let lands at Motherwell for a 
 community, and to guarantee the repayment of ^40,000 to be 
 expended on the erection of the buildings ? 
 
 Apart from the eccentric views which we have recounted (if 
 indeed they were his) Mr. Hamilton was distinguished for the 
 great interest he took in co-operative progress and the munifi- 
 cence by which he assisted it. In the projected community of 
 Motherwell he was joined by several eminent men, who had 
 reason to believe that a large and well-supported co-operative 
 colony might be made remunerative, besides affording to the 
 Government of the day a practical example of what might be 
 done. Several gentlemen in England subscribed many thousands 
 each in furtherance of this project. Mr. Morrison, of the well- 
 known firm of Morrison and Dillon, was one of those who put 
 down his name for ^5,000. 
 
 The Co-operative Magazine of 1826 was adorned by an 
 engraving of Mr. Owen's quadrilateral community. The 
 scenery around it was mountainous and tropical. The said 
 scenery was intended to represent Indiana, where Mr. Owen 
 had bought land with a view to introduce the new world in 
 America. Mr. A. Brisbane prefixes to his translation of 
 Fourier's " Destiny of Man " the Fourier conception of a 
 phalanstere. Mr. Owen's design of a community greatly 
 excelled the phalanstere in completeness and beauty. Mr. A. 
 Combe exhibited designs of his Scotch community at Orbiston, 
 but Mr. Owen had the most luxuriant imagination this way. 
 Artists who came near him to execute commissions soon dis- 
 covered that the materialist philosopher, as they imagined him, 
 had no mean taste for the ideal. 
 
 Lamarck's theory of the " Origin of Species " was intro- 
 duced into the Co-operative Magazine a harmless subject 
 certainly, but one that was theologically mischievous for forty 
 years after. " Scripture Politics " was another topic with which
 
 80 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 co-operators afflicted themselves. " Phrenology," another terror 
 of the clergy, appeared. Discussions upon marriage followed, 
 but, as the co-operators never contemplated anything but equal 
 opportunities of divorce for rich and poor, the subject was 
 irrelevant. The editor actually published articles on the 
 " Unhappiness of the Higher Orders," x and provided remedies 
 for it, as though that was any business of theirs. It was time 
 enough for readers to sigh over the griefs of the rich when 
 they had secured the gladness of the poor. 
 
 In those days a practical agitator (Carlile), who had the 
 courage to undergo long years of imprisonment to free the 
 press, thought the world was to be put right by a science of 
 "Somatopsychonoologia." 2 There were co-operators Allen 
 Davenport, the simple-hearted ardent advocate of agrarian 
 views, among them who were prepared to undertake this 
 nine-syllabled study. 
 
 Every crotcheteer runs at the heels of new pioneers. 
 Co-operative pages advocated the " Civil Rights of Women," 
 to which they were inclined from a sense of justice ; and the 
 advocates of that question will find some interesting reading in 
 co-operative literature. Their pages were open to protest 
 against the game laws. The Co-operative Magazine gave 
 almost as much space to the discussion of the ranunculus, the 
 common buttercup, as it did to the "new system of society." 
 The medical botanists very early got at the poor co-operators. 
 A co-operative society was considered a sort of free market- 
 place, where everybody could deposit specimens of his notions 
 for inspection or sale. 
 
 In 1827, a gentleman who commanded great respect in his 
 day, Mr. Julian Hibbert, printed a circular at his own press on 
 behalf of the " Co-operative Fund Association." He avowed 
 himself as "seriously devoted to the system of Mr. Owen" : 
 and Hibbert was a man who meant all he said and who knew 
 how to say exactly what he meant. Here is one brief appeal 
 by him to the people, remarkable for justness of thought and 
 vigorous directness of language : " Would you be free ? be 
 worthy of freedom : mental liberty is the pledge of political 
 
 " Co-operative Magazine, No. III. 
 2 A Greek compound, expressing a knowledge of body, soul, and 
 mind.
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD Si 
 
 liberty. Unlearn your false knowledge, and endeavour to 
 obtain real knowledge. Look around you ; compare all 
 things ; know your own dignity ; correct your vicious habits ; 
 renounce superfluities ; despise idleness, drunkenness, gambling, 
 and fighting ; guard against false friends ; and learn to think 
 (and if possible to act) independently." This language shows 
 the rude materials out of which co-operators had sometimes 
 to be made. In personal appearance Julian Hibbert strikingly 
 resembled Shelley. He had at least the courage, the gentle- 
 ness, and generosity of the poet. Hibbert had ample fortune, 
 and was reputed one of the best Greek scholars of his day. 
 Being called upon to give evidence on a trial in London, he 
 honestly declined to take the oath on the ground that he did 
 not believe in an Avenging God, and was therefore called an 
 atheist, and was treated in a ruffianly manner by the eloquent 
 and notorious Charles Phillips, who was not a man of delicate 
 scruples himself, being afterwards accused of endeavouring to 
 fix the guilt of murdering Lord William Russell upon an 
 innocent man, after Couvoisier had confessed his guilt to him. 
 Hibbert's courage and generosity was shown in many things. 
 He visited Carlile when he was confined in Dorchester Gaol for 
 heresy, and on learning that a political prisoner there had been 
 visited by some friend of position who had give him ^1,000, 
 Hibbert at once said : " It shall not appear, Mr. Carlile, 
 that you are less esteemed for vindicating the less popular 
 liberty of conscience. I will give you ^1,000." He gave 
 Mr. Carlile the money there and then. It was Mr. Hibbert's 
 desire in the event of his death that his body should be at the 
 service of the Royal College of Surgeons, being another of 
 those gentlemen who thought it useful by his own example 
 to break down the prejudice of the poor, against their remains 
 being in some cases serviceable to physiological science. This 
 object was partly carried out in Mr. Hibbert's case by Mr. 
 Baume. Some portion of Mr. Hibbert's fortune came into 
 possession of Mrs. Captain Grenfell, a handsome wild Irish 
 lady after the order of Lady Morgan. Mr. Hibbert's 
 intentions, however, seem to have been pretty faithfully carried 
 out, for thirty years after his death I was aware of five and ten 
 pound notes occasionally percolating into the hands of one or 
 other unfriended advocate of unpopular forms of social and 
 vol. 1. 7
 
 82 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 heretical liberty, who resembled the apostles at least in one 
 respect they had " neither purse nor scrip." 
 
 During 1827, and two years later, the Co-operative 
 Magazine was issued as a sixpenny monthly. All the 
 publications of this period, earlier and later, were advertised 
 as being obtainable at 19, Greville Street, Hatton Garden, 
 then a co-operative centre, and at co-operative stores in town 
 and country. If all stores sold the publication then it 
 proved that they better understood the value of special co- 
 operative literature than many do now. 
 
 It was on May 1, 1828, that the first publication appeared 
 entitled the Co-operator. It was a small paper of four pages 
 only, issued monthly at one penny. It resembled a halfpenny 
 two-leaved tract. The whole edition printed would hardly 
 have cost thirty shillings if none were sold. 1 It was con- 
 tinued for twenty-six months, ceasing on August 1, 1830. 
 The twenty-six numbers consisted of twenty-six papers, all 
 written by the editor, Dr. King, who stated that they were 
 concluded because " the object for which they were com- 
 menced had been attained. The principles of Co-operation 
 had been disseminated among the working classes and made 
 intelligible to them." This was not true twenty years later, 
 but everybody was sanguine in those days, and saw the things 
 which were not, more clearly than the things which were. 2 
 The chief cause of failure which the editor specifies as having 
 overtaken some co-operative societies was defect in account 
 keeping. Of course, as credit was customary in the early 
 stores, accounts would be the weak point with workmen. 
 Dr. King wrote to Lord (then Henry) Brougham, M.P., 
 an account of the Brighton co-operators. Lord Brougham 
 asked Mr. M. D. Hill to bring the matter of Co-operation 
 before the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 
 Timid members on the council were afraid of it, as many 
 councils are still. It would have been one of the most 
 memorable papers of that famous society had they treated this 
 
 1 It bore as printer's name Sickelmore, Brighton, the last number (the 
 first that bore any publisher's name) gave that of Taylor and Son, North 
 Street, same town. It was always to be had at the Co-operative Bazaar, 
 19, Greville Street, Hatton Garden, London. 
 
 2 One of the disciples of Fourier, on being told that organised life was 
 impossible because it was too beautiful, answered : " It is too beautiful not 
 to be possible."
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 83 
 
 subject. They never did treat any original subject, and this 
 would have been one. 
 
 Mr. Craig, who had extensive personal knowledge of early 
 societies, states that one was formed at Bradford in 1828. A 
 stray number of the Brighton Co-operator (the one edited 
 by Dr. King), soiled and worn, found its way into Halifax, 
 and led to the formation of the first co-operative society there, 
 owing to the foresight and devotion to social development of 
 Mr. J. Nicholson, a name honourably known, and still re- 
 membered with respect, in Halifax. His son-in-law, Mr. 
 David Crossley, of Brighouse, all his life manifested intelligent 
 and untiring interest in Co-operation. 
 
 The first Birmingham co-operative rules were framed in 
 1828 by Mr. John Rabone, a well-known commercial name 
 in that town, who was a frequent writer in early co-operative 
 years. The reports of the early success of the Orbiston 
 community reached Birmingham, and had great influence 
 there. Some who had seen the place gave so good an account 
 of it, that it was the immediate cause of the first Birmingham 
 co-operative society being formed. 
 
 On January 1, 1829, the first number of the Associate 
 was issued, price one penny, " published at the store of the 
 first London Co-operative Trading Association, 2, Jerusalem 
 Passage, Clerkenwell." The Associate, a well-chosen name, 
 modestly stated that it was " put forth to ascertain how far 
 the working class were disposed to listen to its suggestion 
 of means by which they themselves may become the authors 
 of a lasting and almost unlimited improvement of their own 
 condition in life." The Associate was from the beginning 
 a well-arranged, modest little periodical, and it was the first 
 paper to summarise the rules of the various co-operative 
 associations. 
 
 The author of " Paul Clifford " takes the editor of the 
 British Co-operator by storm, who states that this work bids 
 fair to raise Mr. Bulwer to that enviable pinnacle of fame 
 which connects the genius of the author with the virtues 
 of the citizen, the philanthropist with the profundity of the 
 philosopher. 1 
 
 The Society for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge 
 1 British Co-operator, p. 62. 1829.
 
 84 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 held regular quarterly meetings, commencing in 1829. They 
 were reported with all the dignity of a co-operative parliament 
 in the Weekly Free Press, a Radical paper of the period. The 
 proceedings were reprinted in a separate form. This society 
 bore the name of the British Association for Promoting 
 Co-operative Knowledge first in 1830. 
 
 This publication, entitled The IVeekly Free Press, was 
 regarded as a prodigy of newspapers on the side of Co-opera- 
 tion. The editor of the aforesaid British Co-operator described 
 it as " an adamantine bulwark, which no gainsayer dare run 
 against without suffering irretrievable loss." No doubt " gain- 
 sayers " so warned, prudently kept aloof, but the " adamantine 
 journal " ran down itself, suffering irretrievable loss in the 
 process. 
 
 No one could accuse the early co-operators of being wanting 
 in large ideas. It was coolly laid down, without any dismay 
 at the magnitude of the undertaking, that the principles of 
 Co-operation were intended to secure equality of privileges 
 for all the human race. That is a task not yet completed. 
 In addition they made overtures to bring about the general 
 elevation of the human race, together with univeral knowledge 
 and happiness. Ten years before the British Association for 
 the Advancement of Science was devised in Professor Phillips's 
 Tea-room in the York Museum, and forty years before Dr. 
 Hastings ventured to propose to Lord Brougham the establish- 
 ment of a National Association for the Promotion of Social 
 Science, the Co-operative Reformers set up, in 1829, a 
 " British Association for Promoting Co-operative Knowledge." 
 It had its quarterly meetings, some of which were held in the 
 theatre of the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton Buildings, 
 Chancery Lane, London, known as Dr. Birkbeck's Institution. 
 The speeches delivered were evidently studied and ambitious, 
 far beyond the character of modern speeches on Co-operation, 
 which are mostly businesslike, abrupt, and blunt. Among 
 those at these early meetings were Mr. John Cleave, well 
 known as a popular newsvendor when only men of spirit dare 
 be newsvendors whose daughter subsequently married Mr. 
 Henry Vincent, the eminent lecturer, who graduated in 
 the fiery school of "Chartism," including imprisonment. 
 Mr. William Lovett, a frequent speaker, was later in life
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 85 
 
 imprisoned with John Collins for two years in Warwick Gaol, 
 where they devised, wrote, and afterwards published the best 
 book on the organisation and education of the Chartist party 
 ever issued from that body. Mr. Lovett made speeches in 
 1830 with that ornate swell in his sentences with which he 
 wrote resolutions at the National Association, in High 
 Holborn, twenty years later, when W. J. Fox delivered 
 Sunday evening orations there. Mr. Lovett was the second 
 secretary of the chief co-operative society in London, which 
 met at 19, Greville Street, Hatton Garden. 
 
 The fourth report of the British Co-operative Association 
 announced the Liverpool, Norwich, and Leeds Mercuries ; the 
 Carlisle Journal, the Newry Telegraph, the Chester Courant, 
 the Blackburn Gazette, the Halifax Chronicle, besides others, 
 as journals engaged in discussing Co-operation. The West- 
 moreland Advertiser is described as devoted to it. 1 
 
 The first Westminster co-operative society, which met in 
 the infant schoolroom, gave lectures on science. Mr. David 
 Mallock, A.M., delivered a lecture on " Celestial Mechanics " ; 
 Mr. Dewhurst, a surgeon, lectured on "Anatomy," and 
 complaint was made that he used Latin and Greek terms 
 without translating them. 2 The British Co-operator, usually 
 conducted with an editorial sense of responsibility, announced 
 to its readers that " it is confidently said that Mr. Owen will 
 hold a public meeting in the City of London Tavern, early in 
 Easter week ; and it is expected that his Royal Highness the 
 Duke of Sussex will take the chair. We have no doubt it will 
 be well attended and produce a great sensation among the 
 people." This premature announcement was likely to deter 
 the Duke from attending. 
 
 The first London co-operative community is reported as 
 holding a meeting on the 22nd of April, 1829, at the Ship 
 Coffee-house, Featherstone Street, City Road. Mr. Jennison 
 spoke, who gave it as his conviction that the scheme could 
 be carried out with ^5 shares, payable at sixpence per 
 week. 3 
 
 The first Pimlico Association was formed in December, 
 1829. Its store was opened on the 27th of February, 1830, 
 
 ' British Co-operator, p. 47 . - Ibid., p. 20. 1829. 3 Ibid., p. 44.
 
 86 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 and between that date and the 6th of May it had made ^32 
 of net profit. Its total property amounted to ^140. Its 
 members were eighty-two. 
 
 The first Maidstone co-operative society was in force in 
 1830, and held its public meetings in the Britannia Inn, 
 George Street. A Rev. Mr. Pope, of Tunbridge Wells, 
 gave them disquietude by crying " Away with such happiness 
 [that promised by Co-operation] as is inconsistent with the 
 gospel." As nobody else promised any happiness to the 
 working men, Mr. Pope might as well have left them 
 the consolation of hoping for it. He would have had his 
 chance when they got the happiness, which yet lags on its 
 tardy way. 
 
 In 1830 Mr. J. Jenlcinson, "treasurer of the Kettering 
 Co-operative Society," confirmed its existence by writing an 
 ambitious paper upon the " Co-operative System." 
 
 England has never seen so many co-operative papers as 1830 
 saw. Since the Social Economist was transferred to the pro- 
 moters of the Manchester Co-operative News Company, in 
 1869, there has been even in London no professed co-operative 
 journal. 
 
 The Agricultural Economist^ representing the Agricultural 
 and Horticultural Association, is the most important-looking 
 journal which has appeared in London in the interests of 
 Co-operation " Associative Topics " formed a department in 
 this paper. 
 
 In 1830, when the Co-operative Magazine was four years 
 old, the Co-operative Miscellany (also a monthly magazine) 
 commenced, and with many defects, had more popular life 
 in it than any other. The editor was, I believe, the printer of 
 his paper. Anyhow, he meant putting things to rights with a 
 vigorous hand. His Miscellany afterwards described itself as 
 a " Magazine of Useful Knowledge " ; a sub-title, borrowed, 
 apparently, from the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know- 
 ledge, then making a noise in the world. The editor of this 
 Miscellany held that co-operative knowledge should be placed 
 first in the species useful. It was then a novel order of know- 
 ledge. The Miscellany was of the octavo size ; the typo- 
 graphical getting-up was of the provincial kind, and the 
 title-page had the appearance of a small window-bill. It was
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 87 
 
 printed by W. Hill, of Bank Street, Maidstone. The editor 
 professed that his magazine contained a development of the 
 principles of the system. The allusion evidently was to Mr. 
 Owen's system. Of the people he says "many of them are 
 beginning to feel the spark of British independence to glow." 
 He tells us that some " are moving onwards towards the 
 diffusion of the views of Mr. Owen, of New Lanark, now 
 generally known as the principles of Co-operation. 
 
 Speaking of the meeting of the British Co-operative 
 Association, at which Mr. Owen spoke, "who was received 
 with enthusiastic and long-continued cheering," the editor 
 of the Co-operative Miscellany^ said : " The theatre was filled 
 with persons of an encouraging and respectable appearance." 
 Persons of an " encouraging appearance " are surely one of the 
 daintiest discoveries of enthusiasm. 
 
 At this time Mr. Owen held Sunday morning lectures in 
 the Mechanics' Institution, followed, says this Miscellany 
 " by a conversazione at half-past three o'clock, and a lecture 
 in the evening." 
 
 Early in 1830 appeared, in magazine form, the British 
 Co-operator ; calling itself also " A Record and Review of 
 Co-operative and Entertaining Knowledge." This publication 
 made itself a business organ of the movement, and addressed 
 itself to the task of organising it. To the early stores it 
 furnished valuable advice, and the sixth number " became 
 a sort of text-book to co-operators." No. 22 had an article 
 which professed to be " from the pen of a gentleman holding 
 an important office in the State," and suggested that intending 
 co-operators should bethink themselves of bespeaking the 
 countenance of some patron in the infancy of their Co-opera- 
 tion the clergyman of the parish, or a resident magistrate, 
 who might give them weights and scales and a few shelves 
 for their store shop. The members were to sign an arbitration 
 bond, under which all questions of property in the society 
 shall be finally decided by the patron, who must not be 
 removable, otherwise than by his own consent. The plan 
 might have led to the extension of Co-operation in rural 
 districts. And as the authority of the patron was merely 
 to extend to questions of property when no law existed for its 
 protection, the members would have had their own way in
 
 88 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 social regulations. All the patron could have done would have 
 been to take away his scales, weights, and shelves. A very 
 small fund, when the society was once fairly established, would 
 have enabled them to have purchased or replaced these things. 
 The British Association for Promoting Co-operative Know- 
 ledge, published in the Weekly Free Press a special protest 
 against " patrons of any sort, especially the clergyman or the 
 magistrate." The early socialists spoke with two voices. 
 With one they denounced the wealthier classes as standing 
 aloof from the people and lending them no kind of help, and 
 with the other described them as coming forward with 
 " insidious plans " of interference with them. It was quite 
 wise to counsel the working classes " to look to themselves 
 and be their own patrons," but it was not an encouraging 
 thing to gentlemen to see one of their order " holding an 
 important office in the State," kicked, " by order of the 
 committee," for coming forward with what was, for all they 
 knew, a well-meant suggestion. 
 
 The British Co-operator prepared articles for the guidance 
 of trustees and directors or committees of co-operative societies. 
 It gave them directions how to make their storekeeper a 
 responsible and punishable person. How to procure licences. 
 How to execute orders and schemes of book-keeping. It 
 usefully remarked : " We regret that the neglect of the first 
 Bloomsbury society to take legal measures to secure their 
 property has deprived them of the power to recover their 
 trading stock from four of the members, one of whom was 
 nominally a trustee. The parties entered the store at night, 
 and decamped with all the movables they could carry off. 
 This has broken up the society. We still repeat, the trustees 
 of a society ought not to be members of it." I Mr. Haigh, 
 of Mill's Bridge Society, Huddersfield, wrote to inform 
 the editor, that on the 14th ultimo "they were obliged 
 to discharge their storekeeper, as he had defrauded them of 
 much property during the quarter " a circumstance which 
 subsequently occurred very frequently in that district. Some 
 of the stores appear to have been troubled by the disappearance 
 
 The reason being, that if he were a member the law would then 
 regard him as a partner, who might, as such, appropriate the funds to his 
 own use. The law is changed now.
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 89 
 
 of cheese in larger proportions than the sales accounted 
 for, and an announcement was made of the formation of a 
 Mouse-trap Committee. 
 
 It was a law in England that no partner should sue his 
 co-partner for any fraud or breach of agreement by an action 
 at common law ; his only mode of proceeding against his 
 partner was to file a bill in equity in the Court of Chancery. 
 This mode of proceeding against any member of a co-operative 
 trading society, from the immense expense attached to it 
 (for ^60 would only meet the cost of filing the bill), was 
 rendered impossible for a working man to adopt. Therefore 
 it was better for him to pocket the first loss sustained rather 
 than throw two or three years' hard-earned savings into the 
 engulfing jaw of a Chancery suit. 
 
 A discussion arose upon "Educated Shopmen" in the 
 British Co-operator where it was proposed that the storekeeper 
 should be "a person of gainly appearance clean, active, 
 obliging, and possessing a high sense of honour." Mr. 
 Faber, contended that the storekeeper ought not to be re- 
 garded " as a servant only, but as a friend and brother of the 
 associates." 
 
 Efforts were then being made in London to establish an 
 agency for the sale of co-operative manufactures. In 1830 
 the distressed co-operators of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green 
 weavers produced a co-operative silk handkerchief. It was 
 an article that only ladies and gentlemen would buy in 
 sufficient numbers to be of any advantage j but the disastrous 
 proneness of enthusiasm to be instant in season and out of 
 season, led to there appearing upon it a design representing 
 the inordinate possessions of the upper classes, so that no 
 gentleman could use it without seeing the reproach. 
 
 The House of Commons published a paper detailing the 
 attempts happily being made to put down Hindoo suttees. 
 The British Co-operator writes upon it thus : " Mr. Owen 
 is right in saying that the period of a great moral change 
 which he has announced, is fast approaching. There is scarcely 
 a publication which issues from the press that does not bring 
 forward some new evidence of it." The co-operators at this 
 period believed in the immediate advent of Mr. Owen's 
 system as implicitly as the early Christians believed in the
 
 9 o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 coming of Christ, and every new and hopeful incident of 
 the day was regarded as a shadow, cast by the new world 
 before it. 
 
 Dr. Epps x and his system of phrenology, semi-Christian 
 and semi-materialistic, is introduced in the British Co- 
 operator, and Dr. Henry McCormac, of Belfast described 
 as " one of the illuminati of the age " is noticed as the author 
 of a work on the moral and physical condition of the working 
 class. Dr. McCormac was a promoter of social as well as 
 medical ideas, and was known as a teacher of mark. His son, 
 a well-known physician, was the author of similar works. 
 Dr. Epps, a leader in homoeopathy when it was ill-regarded, 
 took a sincere interest in advancing liberal opinion. In the 
 British Co-operator a co-operative catechism was published, 
 in the form of a dialogue between one Tom Seekout and 
 Jack Tellall, a co-operator. 
 
 After nine numbers had been published of the Associate, 
 which bore no date save that of London, 1 830, by which its 
 times of appearance could be told, it took the second title of 
 Co-operative Mirror. The tenth number reproduced the 
 catechism with pictorial embellishments, quite of the Catnach 
 order of art, representing Tom Seekout, a dilapidated rascal, 
 who wore breeches and stockings with holes in them, smoked 
 a pipe, had a battered hat, and was very thin. He is shown 
 as coming out of the " Pipe and Puncheon " public-house, a 
 far less dismal place, it must be owned, than the drawing of 
 the co-operative stores opposite a plain-looking, solid, rather 
 dreary house, bearing the name " Co-operative Society " over 
 the door. Before this stands a smiling, well-contented-looking 
 fellow, in good health and compendious whiskers, which are 
 apparently the product of the store, as poor Tom Seekout has 
 none. Jack Tellall, the co-operator wears a hat with a brim 
 of copious curvature, a coat evidently cut by some Poole of 
 the period, voluminous white trousers, and a watch and seals 
 that would be sure to have excited Mr. Fagin. In the distance, 
 between the "Pipe and Puncheon" and the "Co-operative 
 Society," is a remarkable church, very much given to steeple. 
 The pathway to it is entirely devoid of travellers ; but it is 
 quite evident that Jack Tellall, like a well-behaved co-operator, 
 1 Whose cocoa is still sold.
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 91 
 
 is on his way there, when he falls in with Tom Seekout, who 
 confesses that his elbows are not presentable to the beadle, and 
 that his belly is pinched in like the squire's greyhound. Jack 
 Tellall informs him, in the course of an amusing dialogue, 
 how Co-operation will put all that to rights. Number 1 1 of 
 this publication was printed on good paper in clear type, and 
 poor Tom Seekout, who appeared in Number 10, and our 
 decorous friend Jack Tellall, continue their dialogue under 
 conditions admissible in respectable society, and the engraving 
 was a miracle of improvement. It represented a community 
 of majestic and castellated proportions, quite a city of the sun, 
 resplendent on a plateau, raising its turrets above an umbrageous 
 forest which surrounded it, with just one glorious pathway 
 visible by which it was accessible. Beyond was the far-stretch- 
 ing sea, and from above the sun sent down delighting beams 
 through clouds which evidently hung enraptured over the 
 happy spot. Not even Ebenezer Elliott, with his sharp-eyed 
 criticism, could detect a single evidence of primness inflicted 
 upon the wild luxuriance of nature. There has been only one 
 portrait published, which represented Mr. Owen as a gentle- 
 man ; and this engraving of a community, in No. 1 1 of the 
 Associate, is the only one that had the genuine air of Paradise 
 about it. No doubt the Associate was indebted for it to 
 Mr. Minter Morgan, who had introduced it into his "Hampden 
 in the Nineteenth Century." 
 
 Among the correspondents of the British Co-operator was 
 Josiah Warren. He wrote from Cincinnati, January 30, 1830, 
 to recommend a scheme of cheap printing, of which he was 
 the inventor. Considering the power of giving a monopoly 
 by patents absurd, he makes known his scheme and offers it 
 to any one to adopt. Application was to be made to the Free 
 Inquirer, conducted in New York by Frances Wright and 
 R. D. Owen. Like Paine, Warren made a present to the 
 public of those copyrights in inventions and books, which in 
 Paine's case made others rich and left the author poor. The 
 world, which is apt to despise reformers for being always 
 indigent, should remember how some of them became so. 
 
 Mr. Josiah Warren was a member of Mr. Owen's com- 
 munity at New Harmony in 1826, and it was there he 
 conceived the idea that the error of Mr. Owen's principles
 
 92 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 was combination. Mr. Warren gave this doctrine the name 
 of Individuality his system being to let everybody have his 
 own way in everything, at his own cost, which has hitherto 
 been found to be an expensive form of waywardness. 
 
 Mrs. Wheeler, a familiar name in co-operative literature, 
 was a lady who very sensibly advocated the usefulness of 
 women taking part in public affairs. Frances Wright, after- 
 wards known as Madame D'Arusmont, was a Scottish lady 
 distinguished in the same way. Yet this did not prevent the 
 editor from introducing into it a paragraph concerning the 
 Anti-man Society at Maine calculated to bring a cause, which 
 had few friends then, into contempt. The editor was one of 
 that class who meant well and had little other capacity. To 
 the honour of co-operators, they always and everywhere were 
 friendly to the equal civil rights of women. The subject is 
 never obtruded and is never long absent. It continually recurs 
 as though women were an equal part of the human family and 
 were naturally included in Co-operation. Mr. J. S. Mill 
 frequented their meetings and knew their literature well, and 
 must have listened in his youth to speculations which he subse- 
 quently illustrated to so much effect in his intrepid book, 
 " Subjection of Women." 
 
 This journal, however, had substantial merits. It had 
 spaciousness of view as to the organisation of industry, and 
 published thoughtful and practical papers thereon. It had 
 cultivated correspondents who knew how to interest the reader 
 and were not merely useful and dreary. One gave an account 
 of one of Mr. Owen's meetings at the London Tavern. The 
 large tavern hall was crowded. Proceedings were delayed in 
 order that adversaries might elect a chairman of their own. 
 Mr. Owen quietly put it to the meeting whether, as was his 
 custom, he should conduct his own meeting, or whether a 
 stranger should occupy the chair. Hands were held up. It 
 was Owen against the field. The enemy was abundantly 
 beaten. " I have," said a religious advocate present, " often 
 argued with Mr. Owen, but the misfortune is, I can never get 
 him into a temper nor keep myself out of one." Mr. Owen 
 read an address two hours and a half long. The most devoted 
 admirer could not help trying to count the awful pile of pages 
 in the speaker's hands, to estimate when the hearer would be
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 93 
 
 out of his misery. No House of Commons no university 
 assembly no church meeting would have borne such an 
 infliction. Yet the audience kept peace. When the end did 
 come, a fury took possession of the adversaries. A Presby- 
 terian minister rushed to the platform. As he lifted up his 
 Calvinistic voice he became aware that the Rev. Robert Taylor, 
 who had taken upon himself the unpleasant name of "The 
 Devil's Chaplain," stood next to him, and close to him. 
 The Rev. Presbyterian Pharisee pushed back with his stick the 
 Chaplain of Lucifer. The meeting understood it. It was : 
 "Stand off, I am holier than thou." Gentlemen would con- 
 sider the act an insult a magistrate an assault Taylor did 
 neither, but bowed and retired a little. The meeting applauded 
 the dignified rebuke. In due course Taylor came forward of 
 his own right to reply. As he had wantonly caused himself 
 to be known by a distasteful name, he was not welcome on 
 his own account, and had a bad time of it. One evangelical 
 lady spoke against hearing him with a volubility which showed 
 how valuable she would have been had she lived in the days of 
 the building of Babel. Her tongue alone would have con- 
 founded the builders better than the multiplication of languages, 
 and saved the labour of Latin and Greek and other miseries of 
 scholarship entailed upon us. A description of what followed, 
 by an eye-witness, is given in the British Co-operator. 
 
 " Taylor at length obtained a hearing. His figure is good, 
 his appearance prepossessing, his dress affected, though not as 
 I had been taught to expect eccentric. His language was 
 florid and highly wrought, his sentences abounding in figures 
 of speech and closing in well-formed and generally pungent 
 periods. He was elaborate, yet fluent, with much of the 
 trickery of eloquence, much, too, of the soundness of reflection. 
 His gesture was appropriate to his diction, both were too 
 highly finished. It was acting, the acting of the theatrical 
 performer, not on the stage but before the looking-glass. It 
 was the elegant play of the sword fencer in his practice, 
 brilliant and dazzling, it wanted the earnestness, the ardour, 
 the recklessness of the combatants. In short, it was more 
 the rehearsal of the orator than the oration itself. In the 
 midst of affectation, the greatest and the most faulty, was that 
 (next after the display of the diamond on his little finger)
 
 94 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 which tempted him to quotations from the learned languages. 
 To speak Latin to an audience in the city of London was 
 certainly out of keeping. 
 
 "The attention of the meeting was now drawn to an object 
 equally worthy of attention, another apostle for the cause he 
 had espoused. It was the celebrated Henry Hunt, the Radical 
 reformer, standing on a chair near the centre of the room, 
 with head erect, his short white hair mantling over his florid 
 countenance, his coat thrown open, and his right hand fixed 
 on his side, in the resolute attitude of determined self-posses- 
 sion. I could see in a moment why it was he ever secured 
 an ascendancy over the wills of those whom he is in the habit 
 of addressing. He was Old England personified, and his very 
 figure spoke for him to English hearts. On his appearance 
 the clamour broke out afresh, for there was a strong expression 
 of disapprobation testified in some parts of the room against 
 him. But he was not to be daunted ; like the true English 
 mastiff, he held his grip; John Bull might bellow, fret, and 
 foam, but he was not to be shaken off. 'Gentlemen' 'down, 
 down,' on one side, l Go up, go up,' on the other. Still he 
 was fixed and immovable. * Gentlemen, if you will but allow 
 me to speak, I will tell you why I will not go up.' c Bravo, 
 Hunt.' C I went up and was turned down again.' Mr. Owen 
 apologised to him, explained the mistake, and requested him 
 to go up to the gallery. ' No,' replied the sturdy orator, ' I 
 am not one of your puppets, to be moved up and down at your 
 pleasure.' Mr. Owen on his side was as determined, though 
 not so sturdy. * Mr. Hunt, I do not hear you well, and as 
 I would be sorry to lose anything of what you say, whether it 
 be for or against my propositions, you will oblige me by coming 
 up.' Good temper is Mr. Owen's distinguishing attribute, 
 never was it displayed in a more amiable, effective manner. 
 The stern rigidity of Hunt's features instantly relaxed, he 
 testified his assent by a good-hearted nod, descended from his 
 self-selected point of elevation, was by Owen's side, and com- 
 menced a harangue by declaring his strong sense of the claims 
 which that gentleman had on the public attention, and his respect 
 for the philanthropy of his views, and for his perseverance in 
 pressing them on through good and evil report." 
 
 In those days the Birmingham Co-operative Herald existed.
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 95 
 
 The storekeeper appears to have been an object of solicitude 
 to it. Mr. Pare was afraid that the society would become 
 dependent upon one man, and urged that all members should 
 become in rotation committee men, so that there might be 
 sufficient knowledge of the affairs of the society in as many 
 hands as would enable them to change any principal officer 
 without arresting the progress of the society. This was pro- 
 vided for in the Assington co-operative farms, devised a few 
 years later. Every shareholder is a " steward " or member of 
 the committee in turn. 
 
 A subject discussed and not settled at the Bolton Congress 
 of 1872, was discussed with great force by Mr. Pare in 1830, 
 that was the permanence of share capital, and the necessity, 
 not merely the advantage, but the necessity, of treating co- 
 operative capital like joint-stock, railroad, and canal company 
 capital, and not compelling the directors of a store to give 
 members the value of their share on withdrawing from the 
 concern. Mr. Pare urged this in his Liverpool lectures, and 
 carried his advice as far as Gatacre, a village six miles from 
 Liverpool, where Lady Noel Byrom had, at that early period, 
 suggested the formation of a co-operative store. Though living 
 herself in another part of the kingdom, her solicitude for 
 social progress was communicated to her correspondents. 
 
 Mr. Pare, who was called the first Co-operative Missionary? 
 that being the title applied to him in the British Co-operator, 
 rendered in the friendly papers of the day frequent, modest, 
 and always interesting accounts of his tours, and his narrative 
 is very interesting to follow, as it alone records the dates when 
 Co-operation was first preached in some of the chief towns of 
 England. From Liverpool Mr. Pare proceeded to Lancaster. 
 Going in search of the mayor of that day to obtain from him 
 the use of a public hall, he found him at the County Lunatic 
 Asylum, which struck Mr. Pare as being a place so superior to 
 the comfortless lodgings and cottages of mechanics and farm 
 hands, that he thought there were considerable advantages in 
 being mad. The mayor, however, proved to be as much 
 demented as many of the inmates, for he disliked Co-operation, 
 lest its funds, which did not exist, should be applied to support 
 workmen in case of a turn-out against their employers. By 
 other means Mr. Pare obtained a building to speak in, and
 
 96 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 though his posters were up only four hours before his lecture, 
 more persons came than could get in, being from two to three 
 hundred in number. He next addressed, in Blackburn, about 
 three hundred auditors. He was informed that there were at 
 least twenty-six societies in this town and its immediate 
 vicinity. The industrial ground was good in those days, for 
 the co-operative seed sprang up fruitful everywhere. The 
 condition of the bulk of the inhabitants he saw there is worth 
 remembering. He beheld thousands of human beings pining 
 with hunger, in rags, with little or no shelter for their emaciated 
 bodies, and who had to beg to be allowed to work to obtain 
 even these miserable conditions of existence. His next visit 
 was to Bolton, where he lectured in the Sessions Room to 
 about four hundred persons. On this visit he was entertained 
 by the Rev. F. Baker, who had preceded him in delivering two 
 lectures on Co-operation in the Mechanics' Institute of that 
 town. 
 
 Some of the leading men of the city of Chester attended a 
 lecture delivered by Mr. Pare on the 17th of March. A co- 
 operative society existed then in Chester, consisting of seventeen 
 members, who were making arrangements to supply all the 
 co-operative societies in the kingdom with prime cheese at low 
 prices. The Chester men seemed desirous of getting at the 
 bottom of the subject, for they put questions to Mr. Pare 
 which caused his lecture to extend over four hours. At this 
 period Mr. James Watson was known as one of the store- 
 keepers of the first London co-operative society, 36, Red 
 Lion Square, and afterwards Jerusalem Passage, Clerkenwell. 
 Mr. Lovett was his successor. On making a journey to 
 Yorkshire, Mr. Watson was requested to act as a co-operative 
 missionary, and he was furnished with tracts for distribution 
 and the necessary credentials. Mr. Watson was an earnest 
 and forcible speaker, who knew how to unite boldness of 
 sentiment with moderation of manner. When Richard 
 Carlile's shopmen were being imprisoned, beyond the rate of 
 metropolitan supply, Mr. Watson was one, of many others, 
 public-spirited young men, who volunteered to supply the 
 place of those imprisoned. He took his place at Mr. Carlile's 
 counter, and also in prison when his turn came. He was 
 incarcerated three times through his participation in public
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 97 
 
 movements, and for periods of unpleasant length. He ultimately 
 became one of the three famous Radical publishers (Watson, 
 Hetherington, and Cleave), whose names were known all over 
 the country, as leaders of the Unstamped publication movement. 
 Mr. Watson remained in business until the opening of the 
 Fleet Street House in 1854, wnen his business was purchased 
 by the present writer. He maintained all his life a reputation 
 for principle and integrity, and was held in personal esteem by 
 the leading Radical members of Parliament from the days of 
 the drafting of the People's Charter to the time of his death 
 in 1874. Both as publisher and advocate, he always ranked as 
 one of Mr. Owen's most practical disciples. 
 
 It was reported (in 1830) that a co-operative society was 
 being formed at Marseilles, south of France, on the original 
 social principle that the character of man is formed for and not 
 by him ; Mr. Hamilton, of Dalzell, appears to have carried 
 this doctrine there. Persons wishing information about it were 
 to apply to M. Boinet, Boulevard du Musee, No. 7, A.D., 
 who would be at home from seven to eight in the morning for 
 that purpose. Propagandism begins early in the day in France. 
 
 The Newry Telegraph reported two fervid speeches on 
 Co-operation, by Edward Gardener and John Stevenson, made 
 at the annual dinner of the Armagh Benevolent Society, held 
 in the Market House, January 7, 1830. Ireland has always 
 been favourable to Mr. Owen's views, and received him well 
 long after England had grown angry at his apparent heresies. 
 
 A Metropolitan Co-operative Book Society was formed, 
 which met in 19, Greville Street. In the absence of P. O. 
 Skene, of Lewes, the chair was taken by W. Ellis. The 
 society had in view to establish reading-rooms and libraries. 
 This Mr. Ellis is the gentleman mentioned by Mr. J. S. Mill 
 in his autobiography, as an early friend and associate of his, 
 and to whom the metropolis was subsequently indebted for the 
 Birkbeck Secular schools founded by his generosity, and directed 
 by his trained judgment. 
 
 In October, 1830, the magazine before mentioned was 
 published once a fortnight by Strangs, of Paternoster Row, 
 and sold by co-operative storekeepers. It bore the double 
 title of Magazine of Useful Knowledge, and Co-operative 
 Miscellany. It took for its motto this premature sentence, 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 98 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 " Learning has declared war against Ignorance." It had done 
 nothing of the kind, but was only airing itself before a larger 
 multitude with Latin quotations and with Greek ones, where 
 the printer happened to have that type. Many long years 
 elapsed before Learning attempted any war against Ignorance. 
 The first speech reported in co-operative journals of Mr. 
 Henry Hetherington's appeared in No. 3 of this magazine. 
 The first number of the Miscellany had to tell of a 
 Rev. Mr. Pope, of Tunbridge Wells, who had " proved 
 Co-operation to be totally inconsistent with the Gospel." It 
 is fair to mention that about this period, one Rev. F. Baker, 
 the same who entertained Mr. Pare at Bolton, appeared 
 as an advocate of Co-operation, and published a periodical 
 which had reached forty-three numbers in 1830, and was sold 
 at one penny. But clerical dissentients were, however, never 
 wanting. 
 
 After the Birmingham Political Union " was hung up," as 
 Mr. Muntz expressed it, " like a clean gun " and never 
 taken down again, John Collins became known as a Chartist 
 speaker. He was a man of some force and earnestness, but not 
 otherwise distinguished for power. It was to his credit that he 
 assented to that form of progress which was to be advanced by 
 instruction rather than by force, which Chartism began to rely 
 upon. Mr. Collins and I used to go to Harborne together, a 
 little village some four miles from Birmingham, only famous 
 because Thomas Attwood, the founder of the Political Union, 
 had a seat there. Our object was to teach in a school in a 
 little Paedobaptist Chapel. Heaven, I hope, knew what 
 Pa?dobaptist meant. I did not. I was quite a youth then, 
 and sometimes Collins used to take me by the hand as I got 
 over the long walk badly. I remember when the sermon, 
 which followed the school teaching, was much protracted, I 
 used to long for dinner-time to come. I see now the humble 
 cottage, belonging to a deacon, to which I went, in which the 
 fire grate was very spacious, and the fire nearly invisible. I 
 used to sit very close to it looking at the snow in the garden, 
 which at that time covered the ground, as I ate my dinner off 
 my knees, which usually consisted of a cold mutton chop, 
 which my mother had thoughtfully provided, lest that article 
 should not be prevalent in the cottage, and her dear solicitude
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 99 
 
 was quite prophetic. John Collins came to know much of 
 Co-operation and to take interest in it. He was imprisoned 
 two years in Warwick Gaol with Mr. Lovett, as has been 
 said. 
 
 The impression that Co-operation was making upon 
 politicians was set forth in striking terms in 'B/acfyuood's 
 Edinburgh Magazine. x The gravity of the estimate made, 
 shows that the new industrial views were recognised as a moving 
 force of the time, as in that quarter no undue importance 
 would be accorded to them. The writer said : " Difficult as 
 it is to force upon the attention of those who live in continual 
 plenty and immoral indulgence, the severe distress of others, 
 whom it is a trouble to them to think of, yet they can hardly 
 be blind to the necessity of acting in a matter, which the 
 people themselves have taken up in a way extremely novel in 
 this country, and dangerous, or the contrary, according as the 
 Legislature may make it. Multitudes of the common people 
 now see clearly the state they are placed in. They perceive 
 that their labour is valuable, if they had the means of applying 
 it ; but as their former masters have no use for it, they are 
 driven to see whether they cannot use it for their own 
 advantage. Those who have the virtues of thrift and patience 
 are forming themselves into societies for the purpose of enjoy- 
 ing the benefit of their mutual labour ; and it is impossible to 
 look at their virtuous endeavours, to substitute comfortable 
 competence for the horrors of dependence upon precarious 
 employment by masters, without wishing them God-speed." 
 
 These words were evidently intended to influence those 
 who influence affairs, and are of interest and moment 
 still. 
 
 The last fruits of the enthusiastic period was the invention 
 of congresses. Indeed, from 1829, and for six years after, 
 Co-operation may be said to have lived on congresses. Here- 
 tofore such assemblies were called " Conferences." It was 
 Mr. Pare who introduced the American term " congress," to 
 distinguish social from political proceedings, which were known 
 as conferences. In America, congress implied a political 
 parliament. Mr. Pare held that he brought the term into 
 English notice by the frequent use co-operators made of it. 
 " No. 161. January, 1830.
 
 ioo HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 The first co-operative congress was held in Manchester, in 
 May, 1830. There were delegates present from fifty-six 
 societies, representing upwards of three thousand members, 
 who had, by small weekly contributions and trading on co- 
 operative principles, accumulated a capital of ^6,000 in less 
 than fifteen months. 
 
 Mr. Place has preserved a copy of the United Trades' 
 Co-operative Journal y issued in 1830, in Manchester. Its 
 price was twopence. It was printed on the best paper with 
 the greatest typographical clearness, and contained the soberest 
 and most intelligent writing of all the journals of this period 
 started to represent Co-operation. The anecdotes selected 
 were in good taste. It admitted nothing which was silly or 
 uninstructive. Many of its quotations were selected with such 
 judgment and knowledge that their literary interest is unabated 
 to this day, and would be well worth reproducing. Even its 
 original poetry was endurable, which was very rarely the case 
 in these publications. Once in making a quotation from the 
 Guardian newspaper, which it felt justified in contradicting, it 
 suffered its correspondent who wrote upon the subject to entitle 
 the paragraph in question, "Falsehoods of the Manchester 
 Guardian." To charge a journalist with lying, because he 
 took a different view of the condition of the operatives, was 
 indefensible. Mr. Taylor, the editor of the Guardian^ was 
 himself a man of honour, but had it been otherwise it was 
 quite sufficient to show that a writer was wrong without 
 calling in question his veracity. This United Trades' 1 'Journal 
 rendered a great service by publishing a summary of the rules 
 in force in various co-operative societies in the kingdom an 
 act of thoughtfulness and labour, and one that shows that the 
 enthusiastic period was not devoid of sagacity. To this day 
 these rules are instructive. They marked the towns, chiefly 
 Brighton and London, Worthing, Belper, and Birmingham, 
 where these rules were known to be adopted. They are 
 worthy the attention or co-operative societies now, as showing 
 the care that early societies took to secure character, confidence, 
 education, co-operative knowledge, and self-helping habits in 
 their members. The following are some of the more notable 
 rules : 
 
 Loans of capital to the society by its own members shall
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 101 
 
 bear an interest of $ per jioo, and are not returnable with- 
 out six months' notice. 
 
 In the purchase and sale of goods credit shall neither be given 
 nor received. 
 
 Every member agrees to deal at the store of the society for 
 those articles of daily use, which are laid in of suitable quality 
 and sold at fair ready-money prices. 
 
 All disputes among members on the affairs of the society 
 are to be settled by arbitration. 
 
 Any member misbehaving may be expelled by vote of the 
 majority of members at a quarterly meeting. 
 
 No husband shall be admitted a member without his wife's 
 appearing before the committee and expressing her consent. 
 
 A man is not eligible to be a member unless he can read and 
 write ; and in general he must produce a specimen of his 
 work. 
 
 No member is eligible for this committee until six months 
 after admission to the society. 
 
 The preface to the Co-operative Miscellany of 1830 stated 
 that there were then upwards of 20,000 persons united in 
 different parts of the kingdom. 
 
 The number of societies spread over England, Scotland, 
 Wales, and Ireland were estimated by the British Association 
 as being 266 in 1830. The members of the British 
 Co-operative Association itself numbered 639. The enthu- 
 siasm with which Co-operation continued to be regarded was 
 manifest by the statement in the British Co-operator, that in 
 the last quarter of the year 53 societies had been formed. 
 
 When William Thompson wrote his Practical Directions 
 for forming Communities in 1830, he stated there were nearly 
 300 co-operative societies of the industrial classes associated 
 through England, Scotland, and Ireland. He spoke of two 
 grand experiments instituted in 1825, on the principles of 
 co-operative industry, one at New Harmony, in the State 
 of Indiana, America, and the other at Orbiston, near Glasgow ; 
 and of others in different parts of the United States, particularly 
 one at Kendal, in the State of Ohio, without any connection 
 with Mr. Owen, other than that of friendly communications. 
 It was in 1827, lie says, that the people themselves took up
 
 102 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the idea of co-operative industry, and names William Bryen, 
 one of the hard-working industrious classes, as the chief 
 promoter in Brighton, Sussex, of a Trading Fund Association. 
 Within three years of that period the combined efforts of 
 Mr. Philip Skene, Mr. Vesey, of Exeter, Mr. William Pare, 
 of Birmingham, and other friends of co-operative industry, 
 united with Mr. Bryen, led to more than eighty associations 
 on similar principles being formed in different parts of 
 England. He relates that the first Brighton association had 
 accumulated funds sufficient to take a small piece of land, of 
 twenty or thirty acres, and others had commenced the 
 manufacture of cotton and stockings. The Brighton society 
 published every month a periodical called the Co-operator^ while 
 the Birmingham society issued the Co-operative Herald. 
 
 We have this year (1830) an announcement of the first 
 co-operative manufacturing community in London. The object 
 appears to be to give employment to members. A committee 
 was appointed to superintend the manufacture of brushes. 
 They were to be sent to the Co-operative Bazaar, 
 19, Greville Street, where goods manufactured by other 
 co-operative societies were purchased for sale. Co-operators in 
 Burslem were sending up orders for co-operative handker- 
 chiefs, stockings, galloons, and such things as were likely to be 
 sold among poor people. The British Co-operative Associa- 
 tion had the management of the arrangements, and they 
 opened their bazaar from two to three o'clock daily. The 
 terms on which goods were admitted were these : " The 
 carriage of goods paid ; the wholesale and retail prices fixed 
 and attached to the articles, with an invoice, specifying the 
 quantity, qualities, and kind of each article, which might be 
 sent on sale, or returnable if not sold. The money derived 
 from sales, subject to a deduction of l\ per cent., will 
 be paid to the society through which the goods have 
 been sent. At such times as the proceeds of the bazaar 
 management exceed the expenses, a dividend will be made to 
 the sender of goods previously sold." 
 
 A list was published of seventeen societies, which in 
 Manchester and Salford alone were formed between 1826 and 
 1830, bearing names like Masonic lodges, the "Benevolent," 
 the "Friendly," the "Owenian," and others. But only the
 
 THE ENTHUSIASTIC PERIOD 103 
 
 last-named society was intending to commence manufac- 
 turing. 
 
 At that time (1830) a few co-operators in Manchester took 
 600 acres of waste land upon Chat Moss, and contrived to 
 cultivate it. England had not a drearier spot in which to 
 begin a new world. There was scarcely a thing for the eye 
 to rest upon over a flat of several thousand acres. Railway 
 surveyors had declared it impossible to make the Manchester 
 and Liverpool line over it. Those who stepped upon it found 
 it a black, wet sponge, which absorbed the pedestrian in it up 
 to his knees. Horses who walked over it had to wear 
 wooden pattens. It was literally a " Slough of Despond," but 
 enthusiastic co-operators thought they could cultivate the 
 millennium there. Co-operation had the soul of charity in it, 
 and the apostolic virtue which hoped all things and believed all 
 things.
 
 104 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATlON 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DEVICE OF LABOUR EXCHANGES 
 
 " The night is darkest before the morn ; 
 When the pain is sorest the child is born." 
 
 Kingsley's Day of the Lord. 
 
 So far as my reading or experience extends there is no example 
 of a commercial movement so simple, necessary, and popular 
 as the device of Labour Exchanges exciting so wide an in- 
 terest and dying so soon, and becoming so very dead. The 
 exchange of labour meant really an exchange of commodities 
 upon which labour had been expended. One plan was to take 
 a large room, or series of rooms, where persons having articles 
 they needed to part with could exchange them for others, or 
 obtain a negotiable note for them. The first intimation in 
 England of this new device of commerce of industry came 
 from Mr. Owen. It appeared in the Crisis in the following 
 form : 
 
 " Notice to the Public : Equitable Labour Exchanges' 
 Institution of the Industrious Classes, Gray's 
 Inn Road, King's Cross. 
 
 "Agriculturists, gardeners, manufacturers, provision mer- 
 chants, factors, warehousemen, wholesale and retail dealers of 
 all descriptions, mechanics, and all others, who may be inclined 
 to dispose of their various articles of trade and merchandise in 
 the only equitable manner in which men can mutually dispose 
 of their property to each other, viz., its value in labour for 
 equal value in labour, without the intervention of money, are 
 requested to communicate with Mr. Samuel Austin, at the 
 Equitable Labour Exchange. 
 
 " All letters must be post-paid Robert Owen."
 
 THE DEVICE OF LABOUR EXCHANGES 105 
 
 These bazaars were designed to enable artificers to exchange 
 among themselves articles they had made, by which they 
 would save the shopkeeper's expenses. For currency labour 
 notes were substituted, which it was thought would represent 
 real value. The shoemaker brought his pair of shoes to the 
 bazaar, with an invoice of the cost (calculated at sixpence per 
 hour). The labour note, of so many hours' value, was given to 
 the shoemaker, who could then, or at any other time, buy 
 with them any other deposit in the bazaar a hat, or teakettle, 
 or a joint of meat, if he found what he wanted. Upon each 
 transaction a commission of 8J per cent, was charged, in some 
 bazaars payable in cash, to defray the expenses of the 
 institution. In the exchanges conducted under Mr. Owen's 
 auspices the commission charged was only one halfpenny in 
 the shilling. In the published rules of the Equitable Labour 
 Exchange, in Gray's Inn Road, in 1832, the name of Robert 
 Owen appears as governor ; and Thomas Allsop, Sampson 
 Mordan, and W. Devonshire Saull, as members of council. 
 
 According to Mr. Noyes, Josiah Warren, in 1826, 
 originated the idea of Labour Exchanges, which he com- 
 municated to Mr. Owen when he was a resident in Mr. 
 Owen's community of New Harmony. After leaving New 
 Harmony Mr. Warren went to Cincinnatti, where he opened 
 a Labour Exchange under the title of a Time Store. He joined 
 in commencing a second one in Tascarawas, Co. Ohio ; a 
 third at Mount Vernon, Indiana. He opened a fourth in 
 1842, at New Harmony, to which he had returned. Mr. 
 Owen alone gave effect to the plan in England, and by whom 
 alone it was made known. 
 
 In May, 1833, the National Equitable Labour Exchange, 
 London, was opened at noon on May-day with some pomp, at 
 the new rooms in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, London. 
 This place extended 250 feet from the front entrance in 
 Charlotte-street, to John Street, at the back. In Charlotte 
 Street it appeared to be no more than one of the usual private 
 dwellings ; but on passing through the entrance it opened 
 unexpectedly into a quadrangular building of two stories, with 
 a covered space in the centre of 16 ft. by 130 ft. Alterations 
 were made in it to suit the convenience of the Labour Exchange 
 and public meetings. Nearly 12,000 people were able to
 
 io6 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 stand in it under cover and hear a speaker with an ordinary 
 voice it could seat 3,700 persons. Mr. Owen convened 
 the opening meeting " purposely to announce his determina- 
 tion to reject the system of error, by which society had been 
 so long governed, and plant his standard of open and direct 
 opposition to it." He had done that sixteen years before, at 
 the City of London Tavern ; but that was a thing which 
 would bear doing many times over. Society had a way of 
 going on, regardless of the stand Mr. Owen made against it. 
 Mr. Roebuck, M.P., was the chairman. The chief thing 
 which he did was to make " known his conviction, that 
 nothing would be done for the labouring classes unless they did 
 it themselves." Mr. Gillon, M.P., was also a speaker. Mr. 
 Owen then gave his address. 
 
 Mr. Owen, as head of the London exchange, was publicly 
 offered a hundred tons of the pink-eyed potatoes. It seemed 
 an indignity that the correspondent of all the monarchs of 
 Europe should be publicly engaged in considering tenders for 
 pink-eyed potatoes. Sixpence was the uniform standard of 
 value for each hour, adopted by Mr. W. King. He it was 
 who was the editor of a Gazette of Labour Exchanges. The 
 Gazette stated that the first Labour Bank was established at 
 the Gothic Hall, New Road, Marylebone, in the month of 
 April, 1832. The projector of the bank had no capital. 
 Mr. Owen, who understood business, objected to this bazaar ; 
 as persons who had no property to indemnify the public from 
 loss were unfitted for the work. The Bank of Labour had no 
 capital at its back. It was to Mr. Owen's credit that when he 
 judged the King scheme unsound he said so. Mr. King 
 " wondered that he should find an opponent in the c universal 
 philanthropist,' " evidently being of opinion that a philanthro- 
 pist should approve of everything well intended, whether well 
 devised or not. The projector thought enough to allege that 
 he "was conscious of the purity of his intentions, and confident 
 in the soundness of his principles " ; but, as the " principles" 
 had never been tried, and as " purity of intention," however 
 excellent in itself, is not capital in a commercial sense, and will 
 buy nothing in the market, the exchange could not be 
 expected to command confidence yet it obtained it. Within 
 twenty weeks deposits of the value of ^3,500 were made.
 
 THE DEVICE OF LABOUR EXCHANGES 107 
 
 In writing to the Times concerning the Labour Exchange 
 Institution, Mr. Owen cited the great commercial organisation 
 of the firm of James Morrison & Co. as an approach towards 
 the change that he intended to effect in the distribution of 
 common wealth among the people. 
 
 A United Interests Exchange Mart and Bank was projected, 
 and premises taken for it in Aldersgate Street, a few yards 
 south of the corner of Long Lane, consisting of a spacious 
 front shop, with three other floors, each of nearly the same 
 extent, for showrooms and exchange purposes. An exchange 
 was opened in Sheffield, a town always venturesome in social 
 things. But it was Birmingham that stood next to London in 
 labour exchange fervour. Mr. Owen convened a congress in 
 1832 in Birmingham, at which delegates from various parts of 
 the kingdom were invited, to discuss this new scheme of local 
 commerce. The propagandism of it was in mighty hands, 
 wont to strike the world in a large way. At once Mr. Owen 
 held a great meeting in Birmingham, where he excited both 
 enthusiasm and inquiry into the nature of co-operative plans 
 generally. Mr. Thomas Attwood, himself then a man of 
 national repute, with a natural affinity himself for men of 
 spacious manners, introduced Mr. Owen, with many courtly 
 phrases, to the council of the famous Birmingham Political 
 Union, whom Mr. Owen addressed. He delivered lectures in 
 the public office in Dee's Royal Hotel, Temple Row, which 
 was largely attended by ladies ; and in Beardsworth's Reposi- 
 tory, which was attended by eight thousand people. Mr. 
 G. F. Muntz was announced to preside. Mr. Owen's subject 
 was " Labour Exchanges " ; and Mr. Beardsworth, having an 
 eye to business, offered to sell him the repository for a labour 
 exchange mart. Mr. John Rabone, Mr. George Edmonds 
 (one of the most ambitious orators of the Birmingham Political 
 Union, and subsequently Clerk of the Peace of the town) } 
 Mr. Hawkes Smith, Mr. Pare, and others, addressed the great 
 meeting at Beardsworth's. 
 
 Birmingham being distinguished among English towns for 
 the variety of its small trades and miscellaneous industries, 
 exchange of any kind came congenially. Journalism there 
 soon showed itself interested in advancing the idea. A special 
 Labour Exchange Gazette was started, and on July 29, 1833,
 
 io8 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 . the National Equitable Labour Exchange was opened in Coach 
 Yard, Bull Street. Benjamin Woolfield, Esq., was the 
 director, and Mr. James Lewes sub-director. The bankers 
 were Spooners, Attwoods & Co. The first day the deposits 
 were 18,000 hours, and the exchanges 900. Each day, for 
 some time, the deposits increased, but the exchanges never 
 exceeded one half. In August the association of depositors 
 numbered 840. Coventry sent ^30 worth of ribbons ; but a 
 much more saleable deposit was three hundredweight of good 
 bacon, and one person undertook to take any number of well- 
 manufactured Birmingham articles in exchange for the best 
 Irish provisions. The capital upon which this exchange com- 
 menced was only ^450, which the first three months realised 
 a profit, clear of all rents, salaries, and other payments, of 
 ^262. By this time London was filled with the fame of the 
 Labour Exchange Bazaar of Gray's Inn Road, which Mr. 
 Owen had taken to accommodate the growing business which 
 was arising around him beyond that which could be dealt with 
 in the Charlotte Street Rooms. It was stated that in one 
 week the deposits in the Gray's Inn Road bazaar amounted to 
 little less than ^10,000, and that if 4 per cent, out of the 
 8^ per cent, said to be then charged on those deposits were 
 applied to the extension of exchanges, there would be a 
 disposable accumulating fund of ^400 weekly, or if the 
 deposits and exchanges proceeded at that rate ^28,000 per 
 annum would arise for that purpose. "Over the water" 
 as the Surrey side of London was called things went on 
 swimmingly. The Labour Exchange Association was so 
 active that in 1833 ana< '3+ xt published monthly reports of its 
 proceedings, with carefully drawn up papers and speeches of 
 members. 
 
 The astonishing number of deposits made in a short time, 
 and the avidity with which exchanges were made, proved that a 
 large amount of wealth remained stationary for the want of a 
 market. No doubt numerous persons were stimulated by these 
 exchanges to make articles of use and value, who before did 
 nothing, because no means existed of disposing of them ; and 
 thus, by providing exchanges, new wealth was created. Mr. 
 Owen strongly recommended the management of the ex- 
 change at Birmingham to be given to Mr. William Robert
 
 THE DEVICE OF LABOUR EXCHANGES 109 
 
 Wood. Mr. Wood better understood the commercial possi- 
 bilities of these Exchanges than any one else. 1 The cardinal 
 point he insisted upon was, that each Exchange should be 
 provided with quick, sound, practical valuators not men 
 muddled with labour-note ideas of sixpence per hour estimates 
 but who would know exactly what a thing would fetch in 
 the market if it had to be sold out of doors. The labour of a 
 second-rate shoemaker, or button maker, might not be worth 
 sixpence an hour, while the labour of a skilful oculist might be 
 worth 100 guineas. Who could appraise the value per hour of 
 the chair painter and the landscape painter at the same six- 
 pence ? The Labour Exchange needed the pawnbroker's 
 faculty of quickly seeing what a thing was worth. The 
 exchange managers should have a clear eye to not giving more 
 than could be obtained for an article if they had to sell it to 
 a stranger. By giving more than the value obvious to the 
 outsider, the labour notes are depreciated in value. If a man 
 of business went into an exchange and saw persons depositing 
 chimney ornaments and firescreens, and carrying out kettles, 
 good hats, and sound pieces of bacon, he knew at once that 
 things could not go on. Their rapid popularity showed that 
 they really hit a general need, and sound management must 
 make them profitable. At first, tradesmen around them 
 readily agreed to take labour notes, and numerous placards 
 were issued, and are still extant (preserved by Mr. Place), 2 
 giving this notice to the public. Of course these tradesmen 
 took occasion to run round the exchange themselves, and see 
 what kind of deposits represented the value of the notes. A 
 weakness for " respectable" friends of the system caused in one 
 case a whole family of shrewd, talkative professors of the "new 
 views" to be put upon the directory of an exchange. These 
 adroit managers did business with their friends and acquaintances, 
 
 1 Mr. Wood remained persuaded of the utility of Labour Exchanges to 
 the end of his days, and proposed to co-operate with me in establishing 
 one. He became the leading dentist in Brighton and died at an advanced 
 age. He became alderman, and his friend Mayall the famous photo- 
 grapher became mayor. Both were Huddersfield men. Brighton owed 
 its public baths and other social improvements to Alderman Wood, to 
 whom the memory of Owen was a constant inspiration. 
 
 2 As many as three hundred tradesmen gave notice that the Labour 
 Notes would be taken at their places of business, and in some cases the 
 theatres made the same announcement that Labour Xotes would be 
 taken at the doors.
 
 no HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 who loaded the shelves with useless things appraised at a 
 special rate, while valuable and saleable articles were carried 
 away in exchange. Sharp shopkeepers sent down worthless 
 stock in their shops, exchanged it for labour notes, and before 
 the general public came in carried away the pick of the saleable 
 things, with which they stocked their shops. As they put in 
 their windows " Labour Notes taken here," they were thought 
 wonderful friends of the exchange. With some of them the 
 proper notice in the window would have been "Labour 
 Exchangers taken in here." And these were the knaves who 
 first began to depreciate Labour Notes and compare them to 
 French assignats, and they well knew the reason why. 1 The 
 popularity and even profit of the deposit business was such that 
 it bore this. Then wholesale and general dealers systematically 
 depreciated Labour Notes with a view to buy them up, which 
 they did, and carried off all the saleable goods they could find 
 at the exchange. These operators did not approve of the 
 exchanges which appeared to threaten a new system of barter, 
 and ingeniously devised means to discredit them and profit 
 themselves in doing it. If Mr. Owen had otherwise chosen 
 his officers in the central exchange the enemy might have been 
 frustrated ; but disinterestedness had become with him a second 
 nature, and he took for granted the integrity of those who 
 offered their services. When his suspicions were aroused no 
 man could see more easily or farther into a rogue than he. 
 
 Mr. Owen rather regarded these exchanges as weak expe- 
 dients of persons who thought that they could mend or mitigate 
 a state of society which he considered should be peremptorily 
 superseded ; they had not the advantage of that strong direction. 
 Facility and certainty of exchange is a condition not only of 
 commerce but of production. Astute persons failed not to see 
 that a wealth-making power resided in them. It was obvious 
 if pawnbrokers who received no money with deposits, but had 
 to pay out capital for them and be debarred from realising upon 
 articles taken in until a long period after, and then only when 
 not redeemed prospered, there was some probability that a 
 
 1 On the other hand there were honest and favouring shopkeepers who 
 took the notes with a view to promote their circulation as currency, and 
 gave saleable goods for them, who found themselves unable to obtain a 
 fair exchange at the bazaar, and thus they became victims of the exchange 
 scheme.
 
 THE DEVICE OF LABOUR EXCHANGES m 
 
 company of labour brokers who received cash with every 
 deposit and paid no capital out for it, but merely gave a note 
 for it and were at liberty to sell it the next hour could make 
 profit. There might have been a department where valuable 
 articles of uncertain demand could be received on sale at the 
 depositor's own price, to be paid for only when disposed of. 
 Had the profits accruing been carried to the credit of customers 
 in proportion to their dealings, as is now done in the co- 
 operative stores, and the first five pounds of profit so gained by 
 the exchanger capitalised to create a fund to stand at the back 
 of the notes to prevent panic or depreciation, these Labour 
 Exchanges might have continued, as they might now be 
 revived. 
 
 At the Surrey branch in Blackfriars Road, which existed 
 simultaneously with the Gray's Inn Road Exchange, the total 
 deposits soon amounted to ^32,000, and the exchanges to 
 1 6,000. 
 
 Mechanical inventions, steam engines, steamships, and pro- 
 jected railways had changed the character of industry before 
 men's eyes. Dr. Church was known to be running about 
 Birmingham on a steel horse. Though some of his patients 
 were more alarmed at his untoward steed, he made a favourable 
 impression upon the popular imagination. The novelty of 
 change disposed many to believe that the new discovery in 
 barter was the very supplement of industry wanted, and that 
 its uses and benefits would be indefinite. Their progress was 
 marvellous, and their first discouragement came, not from the 
 enemy but from friends. They were the disciples of the 
 world-makers who helped, in their mournful, misgiving way, 
 to bring the scheme down. They regarded these exchanges as 
 an expedient for diverging from the straight road which led to 
 the new world. Mr. Gray says: "They proved entirely 
 delusive, as all attempts to graft a new system upon the old 
 must be, without any corresponding change of principles and 
 and habits of action " ; whereas it was a merit of this scheme 
 that it required no change of principle and very little habit of 
 action. It was their success and profit becoming obvious to 
 untheoretical eyes that led finally to their ruin. The Jewish 
 proprietor of Gray's Inn Road saw that good commercial 
 results could be derived from them and conspired to obtain
 
 ii2 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 them himself. But the enthusiasm which Mr. Owen had 
 created, and which allured the public to any scheme with 
 which he was connected at that time, was wanting to the new 
 proprietor. He had taken a shop without being able to secure 
 to himself what in England is called the goodwill of the 
 business. 
 
 In January, 1834, the Labour Exchange in Gray's Inn Road 
 was broken up by violence. The proprietor, Mr. Bromley, 
 having had his building empty in 1831 for four months, 
 artfully placed the keys in Mr. Owen's unsuspecting hands, to 
 do what he pleased with it, he relinquishing any claim to rent 
 till 1832. Nothing was to be paid for the fixtures. Mr. 
 Owen accepted the arrangement without any schedule of 
 fixtures or any definite agreement as to terms and tenure of 
 future tenancy. Had the place gone on indifferently, Mr. 
 Bromley would have been very glad for such rent as Mr. 
 Owen would have paid him. For a year and a half Mr. Owen 
 used the place as the grand central institution for promulgating 
 his system. Lectures were delivered there on Sundays and 
 other days. Great festive celebrations were held ; and many 
 of the most eminent men of that day and of subsequent years 
 were among the occasional frequenters of the meetings. Trade 
 unionists, social, political, religious, and philanthropic reformers 
 of all schools, found welcome and hearing there. No opinion, 
 Tory, Radical, or religious, and no want of opinion, was a bar 
 to friendliness and aid, provided the object was one intended to 
 benefit the public. It was taking the Labour Exchange there 
 that brought the Institution (of which London never had the 
 like before or since) to an end. When Mr. Bromley saw the 
 exchange succeed he took steps to obtain possession of the 
 place, as he was satisfied Mr. Owen had discovered a mode or 
 making money which was unknown to Mr. Bromley. One of 
 his modest proposals, then, was that Mr. Owen should buy the 
 whole institution at ^17,000. Then he demanded that the 
 fixtures should be paid for, which had never been estimated at 
 more than ^700. He, however, made a demand for ^1,100 ; 
 and, to prevent dispute, or unpleasantness, Mr. Owen paid 
 him 700 out of his own pocket. It was ultimately arranged 
 that the premises should be given up, as the directors of the 
 exchange refused to take any further lease of the premises at
 
 THE DEVICE OF LABOUR EXCHANGES 113 
 
 the rental asked, which was ,1,700 a year. Mr. Bromley, 
 however, was so impatient of re-possession that he did not wait 
 even for their leaving, but procured a mob of men and broke 
 into the place, and let in sixty-four ruffians (the exact number 
 of the gang was set down), who smashed the secretary's doors 
 in, took possession of the fixtures belonging to the exchange, 
 and turned the directors into the street. The police were 
 called, some of the rioters were taken before the magistrates, 
 and the same discredit occurred as though Mr. Owen had not 
 paid the ^700. Of course there was a remedy in law against 
 Mr. Bromley, but the directors were too lenient to enforce it, 
 and they were content to open a new bazaar in the Surrey 
 Institution, Blackfriars Road. Notwithstanding the excite- 
 ment and mischievous knowledge the public had that the 
 Gray's Inn Road place might be peremptorily closed, the 
 amount of deposits on the last day it was opened was 6,915 
 hours, and the exchanges 5,850, so that the directors continued 
 to do business to the last day at the rate of more than ^50,000 
 a year. The lowest rent Mr. Bromley would agree to accept 
 as a condition of their remaining was , 1,400, and the rates 
 and taxes amounted to about ^300 more, making a yearly 
 outgoing of ^1,700. The business of the exchange was 
 clearly likely to bear this ; Mr. Bromley became so satisfied on 
 this point, was so impatient to get possession, that, rather than 
 wait a week or two for the convenience of removal, he resorted 
 to force, and immediately issued a placard announcing that 
 " The whole of the splendid and capacious premises, Gray's 
 Inn Road, will be occupied in future by the National Land 
 and Equitable Labour Exchange Company. The present 
 occupants will close their proceedings this week, and the 
 National Land and Equitable Labour Exchange Company will 
 commence receiving deposits on Wednesday morning next, 
 the 16th instant, at ten o'clock, and continue daily at the same 
 hour ; and the company's exchange stores will be opened to 
 the public on Monday, the 21st of January, 1833; after which 
 day the company will be ready to receive proposals for the 
 occupation of land lying at convenient distances from the 
 metropolis, or on the land of the intended railroad from 
 Birmingham to King's Cross." 
 
 Here was a well-laid scheme, which was really a tribute to 
 
 vol. 1. 9
 
 ii 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the value of exchanges. This practical man, unembarrassed 
 by any scruples, thought that if the plan succeeded so well 
 when weighed with Mr. Owen's unpopular principles, the 
 world would flock to the same standard when a neutral flag 
 was displayed. He, however, overlooked that outrage, though 
 it sometimes succeeds, is often a dangerous foundation to build 
 upon. Mr. Owen's disciples were not all philosophers they 
 were human enough to feel rage, and numerous and powerful 
 enough to make their indignation felt ; and they spoke so 
 unpleasantly of the new project and its ingenious projector, 
 that he got few exchanges, and lost his good tenants without 
 getting any other. He found he had not only alienated those 
 who had made the exchange system popular ; he had alarmed 
 the public by the spectacle of violence, police cases, and failure. 
 The National Company fell into well-earned contempt and 
 distrust, and the Gray's Inn Road buildings became an obscure, 
 woebegone, deserted, unprofitable holding. * No doubt, 
 Labour Exchanges died there. Had Mr. Owen's friends been 
 self-denying, stilled their hatchet tongues, and have promoted 
 the success of the Equitable Exchange, the cause might have 
 been saved. They did not comprehend that steam was not a 
 failure, though a thousand experiments broke down before a 
 single steamship sailed or railway car ran ; that new medicines 
 as often kill people as cure them before cautious, patient, 
 experimental physicians discover the right way of administering 
 them. Yet no one decries the curative art. But in social 
 devices the first scoundrel or the first fool the first thief or 
 the first blunderer, who by over-confidence, fraud, or ignorance 
 brings a scheme to immediate grief, sets the world against it 
 for generations, and journalists evermore speak of it as that 
 " abortive failure which was tried long ago and brought ruin 
 and ignominy upon all concerned." 
 
 1 The original correspondence on this subject and the statements and 
 letters of Mr. Bromley to Mr. Owen, are now in the possession of The 
 Owen Memorial Committee of Manchester.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 115 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD. 183I-1844 
 
 "Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world 
 Like one great garden showed, 
 And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurl'd, 
 Rare sunshine flow'd." Tennyson. 
 
 For thirteen years now Co-operation has to be traced through 
 Socialism. Store keeping had in many cases failed, and, where 
 successful, its profits were insufficient to pave the way to the 
 new world, much less defray the costs of that rather extensive 
 erection. Grand schemes were revived, in which idleness and 
 vice, silliness and poverty were to cease by mutual arrange- 
 ment. This state of things came to bear the name of 
 Socialism. 
 
 Social and co-operative literature has not been very brilliant. 
 Robert Dale Owen was incomparably the best writer of the 
 early period. William Hawlces Smith, of Birmingham, had 
 an animated readable style. Mr. Minter Morgan had literary 
 ambition. In this period the working-men writers were often 
 eloquent by impulse and passion. They told their story 
 ofttimes with verbose energy. There were frequent instances 
 of wit and humour in their platform arguments. But their 
 writing was best endurable to persons of the same way of 
 thinking, to whom earnestness was eloquence, and to whom 
 any argument in which they agreed seemed witty. Any man 
 who stood up manfully for opinions, at which society scowled, 
 seemed admirable, and was admirable in doing it ; and by 
 those who thought that deliverance from precariousness lav 
 that way, no art save sincerity was esteemed. 
 
 English men, as a rule, getso few large ideas that when one
 
 n6 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 makes its way into their mind, whether political, religious, or 
 social, they go mad about it for the first few years. They see 
 nothing but that. Everything else in the world is obscure to 
 them ; and they believe that their route is the high-road to the 
 millennium. No Co-operators arose who had the pen of 
 Bunyan, the Bedford tinker. 
 
 Many books were published without any date, or any allusion 
 by which a person unacquainted with the time could determine 
 when they were issued. So important a book as William 
 Thompson's " Practical Directions for the Establishment of 
 Communities" merely contains an incidental date which 
 suggests rather than tells when it appeared. All these authors 
 thought they were commencing a new world, and that their 
 works would be known and issued at the beginning of things. 
 Even Robert Fellowes, B.A., Oxon, who published an address 
 to the people in 1799, on the "Genius of Democracy," was not 
 well served by the printer, who made him say that " Nelson's 
 victory on the Nile had lain the posterity of France in the dust." 
 That would have been a famous achievement and saved Europe 
 much trouble. Posterity ought to have been prosperity. Huber 
 states that some ants are subject to a peculiar malady, which, 
 after being once seized with it, prevents them moving any more 
 in a straight line. There are a great many writers who are 
 subject to this disease, who not only move, but reason deviously, 
 and never arrive at the point of their meaning. Ant writers of 
 this description overrun socialist literature. 
 
 With the close of 1830 periodicals representing Co-operation 
 appear to cease. Few, if any, reached 1831. No new ones 
 were announced in London for that year, and no trace of any 
 remain. Another form of activity commenced. As 1830 was 
 the year of journals, 1831 was the year of congresses. The 
 fervour of the five years from 1826 to 1830 stimulated action, 
 and then ceased to direct it. Societies popular in conception 
 can hardly become so in practice, or be largely sustained without 
 the animation and counsel which well-contrived periodicals 
 supply. None could advertise or pay for competent editorship 
 or competent contributors. It comes to pass that journals 
 written by charity come to be read only by charity. At 
 length, in 1832, Mr. Owen entered the field of weekly 
 journalship himself, and issued a much larger paper than had
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 117 
 
 ever before appeared, purporting to represent Co-operation. Of 
 course it must bear a momentous title if Mr. Owen had 
 anything to do with it, and accordingly it was named The 
 Crisis. The poor are always in a crisis, and rich and poor in 
 that year were rather better off in this respect than they had 
 been for a long time. There was a profitable crisis approaching 
 of some importance, for the Reform Bill was near, but this did 
 not concern Mr. Owen, and it was scarcely mentioned in the 
 volume edited by him. The French Revolution had occurred 
 two years previously, and Mr. Owen narrowly escaped being 
 shot in it ; but as Louis Philippe was not a believer in the 
 "new views," Mr. Owen made no note of his deportation from 
 France. It was the change from error and misery to truth and 
 happiness, by the introduction of communistic plans, that was 
 to constitute the crisis. Mr. Owen proposed to offer for the 
 guidance of the affairs of men the heroic precept of " the truth, 
 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without mystery, 
 mixture of error, or the fear of man " which the world has 
 certainly not seen yet. It was proof that social expectation in 
 Owen was still great, that 12,000 copies were sold immediately 
 The Crisis was out, and a second edition of 5,000 was issued. 
 
 In the meantime the provinces were busy with organs of 
 associative opinion. After the first subsidence of Co-operative 
 journals in London they arose in Lancashire, and were con- 
 tinued during 1831 and 1832 in a more practical way than 
 in London, the price being mostly a penny, while in London 
 they were published as sixpenny magazines, and, of course, only 
 purchased by people who had sixpence to spare ; while in the 
 provinces Co-operation had become a matter of interest chiefly 
 to workmen who had less to spare. Then in London and the 
 south of England Co-operation was more sentimental, as 
 though the warmer atmosphere rarefied it ; while in the north 
 it appeared as though the cold condensed it. In Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire journals were more practical. Instead of theories 
 about the happiness of the higher orders, the pages were filled 
 with reports of societies actually in operation with accounts of 
 their experience and profit to the " lower orders." 
 
 Monthly papers had hitherto been the rule, it being illegal 
 then to publish news earlier than twenty-eight days old, 
 unless the paper bore the newspaper stamp ; which made it
 
 n8 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 impossible to issue a weekly paper which reported immediate 
 proceedings. Long before the newspaper stamp was abolished 
 considerable latitude had been allowed by the Government 
 with respect to journals representing religious, scientific, or 
 educational movements. It was impossible for the Stamp Office 
 to make a restrictive definition of news. All weekly publica- 
 tions reporting any proceeding which gave immediate informa- 
 tion came under the definition of a newspaper ; and Mr. 
 Owen's Crisis might have been put down at any time had 
 any one called the attention of the law officers to it. Mr. 
 Collett made this clear when he stopped Mr. Dickens' 
 Household Narrative of Current Events^ and brought the 
 Athenceum within the operation of the law. 
 
 The Lancashire Co-operator^ or Useful Classes' 1 Advocate^ as 
 it with some judgment called itself, took for its motto this 
 well-conceived improvement upon the half maxim, " Union is 
 strength," namely 
 
 " Numbers without union are powerless, 
 And union without knowledge is useless." 
 
 This publication, edited by Mr. E. T. Craig, first appeared 
 in September, 1831. It published addresses to Christian 
 co-operators, who, however, could never be persuaded to 
 take it. This journal was locally well received, and was sent 
 out by the Manchester and Salford Co-operative Council. It 
 was a small penny periodical, the expense of issuing which could 
 scarcely have cost the members more than a farthing each, 
 even if none had been sold. The editor showed great taste in 
 selecting illustrative extracts. One was from Shipley, the 
 Bishop of St. Asaph, which set forth that the art "of prevent- 
 ing insurrection is not to take from the people the power to 
 resist, but to make it their interest to obey." The fifth 
 number reported a co-operative tea-party, attended by about 
 a hundred and thirty men and women, in Halifax. In 
 September a successor to this little journal appeared under the 
 title of The Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operator^ resembling its 
 predecessor in every respect, with the addition only of the 
 name of " Yorkshire." In those davs adversaries were fond of 
 describing Co-operation as an ignis fatuus. An article under 
 that term " Co-operation an Ignis Fatuus" was written.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 119 
 
 Fifty people read the title for one who read the article. 1 
 
 In the second number of this two-counties' journal Mr. B. 
 
 Warden, an enthusiastic saddler, of Marylebone, addressed a 
 
 communication to the " Eight Millions of Workpeople of the 
 
 British Nation," though it was perfectly certain that eight 
 
 hundred would never see it. The editor continued to make 
 
 extracts from Bishop Shipley ; and, knowing that co-operators 
 
 were esteemed latitudinarians in religion, because they were 
 
 more scrupulous in believing only what they could give an 
 
 account of in reason, he judiciously called attention to Bishop 
 
 Shipley's wise saying : " I am not afraid of those tender and 
 
 scrupulous consciences who are over-cautious of professing or 
 
 believing too much. ... I respect their integrity. The men 
 
 I am afraid of are the men who believe everything, who 
 
 subscribe everything, and vote for everything." These 
 
 principleless evasionists overrun the country still and pass for 
 
 respectable persons of irreproachable faith. This journal 
 
 continued until February, 1832 writing to the last about 
 
 Co-operation being an ignis fatuus. It, however, reappeared 
 
 as a four-weekly organ. There was no halfpenny postage of 
 
 publications in those days, and the editor intimated that the 
 
 cost of carriage proved a barrier to its circulation, and the "Six 
 
 Acts " prohibiting their giving news, such as reports of lectures 
 
 or societies' meetings, oftener than once a month, they had 
 
 determined to issue their journal in future monthly ; but 
 
 whether the " Six Acts " frightened them from discovering 
 
 the name of the month or year of issue did not transpire. The 
 
 journal never contained the one or the other till, incidentally, in 
 
 October, the month and year appeared. In its monthly form 
 
 it was printed very prettily. It was in double columns, and 
 
 the chief subjects of each page was printed at the head. The 
 
 new series commenced by another address from Mr. B. Warden, 
 
 " To the Eight Millions." Its last number appeared in 
 
 November, and was entirely occupied with a report of the 
 
 fourth Congress of delegates, which was held at Liverpool. 
 
 That year Mr. T. Wayland, of Lincoln's Inn, published a 
 
 work on the " Equalisation of Property and the Formation of 
 
 Communities." 
 
 1 The adversaries whose eyes fell on the suspicious title exclaimed : 
 " We always said co-operators were under a delusion, and now they see 
 it themselves."
 
 120 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 The Congresses and their incidents will be more intelligible, 
 perhaps, if related in the order of their succession. The first 
 Congress was held in Manchester in 1830. The second 
 Co-operative Congress was held in Birmingham in October, 
 1 831, and for a season divided attention with the Reform Bill 
 in that town. It met in commodious rooms in the Old Square. 
 At this Congress, Rowland Detrosier was present, who had 
 already distinguished himself by the possession of unusual 
 scientific and political knowledge for one of his rank of life, 
 and who had a voice, an energy, and an eloquence which was 
 considered strikingly to resemble Brougham's. 
 
 Birmingham in those days was quite a centre of Co-operative 
 inspiration. Here the first organised impulse was given to the 
 formation of a band of missionaries. Here the Congress 
 proposed to contribute to the capital of the Voice of the People, 
 with a view to its becoming the accredited organ of the move- 
 ment. Then there were no railways nor funds for coaches, 
 and two of the delegates from Glasgow walked the whole 
 distance, nearly 300 miles. Robert Owen and William 
 Thompson were the chairmen of the Congress. In December 
 of the following year a public meeting of 8,000 persons was 
 held, lasting from eleven in the morning till four o'clock in the 
 afternoon, consisting of small manufacturers, shopkeepers, 
 operatives, and many ladies and persons of the wealthier classes. 
 Mr. Owen said, in writing to his son Dale, that " in all his 
 experience in Europe and America he had never witnessed so 
 numerous and gratifying a meeting." * 
 
 The third Co-operative Congress, held in the Gray's Inn 
 Road Institution, London, in 1832, was notable for many 
 things. Further and more open attempts were made to pro- 
 mote political indifference among co-operators. Mr. Owen 
 remarked that " despotic governments were frequently found 
 to be better than those called democratic. In the coun- 
 tries where those governments existed the industrial classes 
 were not found in such misery and destitution as in this 
 country, and therefore on this ground there was no reason 
 to dislike despotism. As far as the co-operative system was 
 concerned, it was of no consequence whether governments 
 were despotic or not." 
 
 1 Crisis, No. 39, 1832.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 121 
 
 Mr. Joseph Hume, M.P., who was a visitor to the Con- 
 gress, at once challenged this fatal doctrine of political in- 
 differentism. He said "he had himself been a co-operator, 
 perhaps longer than most present. He was surprised to hear 
 what had been said in reference to the character of govern- 
 ments. The English was not a democratic government. 
 Though democratic in name, it was despotic in practice. In 
 Austria and Constantinople despotism was exercised by one 
 man. In England it was inflicted by many. He was sur- 
 prised also that popular instruction was not urged in Mr. 
 Owen's address. It was only by knowledge that the people 
 could be freed from the trammels of bad laws and State 
 religion." The number of persons attending this Congress 
 were eight hundred on the day on which it assembled : 
 certainly showing great popular interest in the proceedings. 
 The new project of Labour Exchanges was that which was 
 uppermost in the minds of the public, both at the Birmingham 
 Congress and at this great one in London. 
 
 The first number of the Crisis, before mentioned, 
 announced this Co-operative Congress of the associations 
 in Great Britain and Ireland, and the societies were ad- 
 monished " to choose men capable of having their minds 
 elevated, and of such moral courage and singleness of purpose 
 that the passions of men should not be able to turn them from 
 the godlike course which they will have to run." A delegate 
 needed to have a good deal of courage to present himself at the 
 Gray's Inn Road Congress, as a person likely to fulfil these 
 high conditions, especially as all the members of Parliament 
 were invited to meet the men of the "godlike " career. It is 
 curious to observe all through the history of social and other 
 reform how few leaders seemed to consider how far their language 
 would be likely to excite the amusement, rather than the 
 respect, of those who differ from them. 
 
 Mr. Pare reported "the absence of Mr. Portman, M.P.; 
 Mr. Hughes, M.P. [there was a Mr. Hughes, M.P., favour- 
 able to Co-operation in that day]. Mr. Slaney, M.P., had 
 agreed to support a petition ; but neither Lord Brougham nor 
 Mr. O'Connell, who were to present it, ever did so, or even 
 acknowledged its receipt" not worth telling, since it gave 
 the public the idea that those honourable members did not
 
 122 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 think much of the Congress the probability being that both 
 gentlemen were overwhelmed with more applications than 
 they could attend to, or even write to say so. Lord Boston 
 sent a letter to the Congress. 1 
 
 Three members of Parliament Mr. Hume, Mr. Mackinnon, 
 and Mr. James Johnson appear to have been present. Mr. 
 Owen presided. The names best known to co-operative 
 history of the delegates who attended were Dr. Wade, who 
 afterwards wrote a history of the working class ; William 
 Lovett, honourably known subsequently for his advocacy of 
 educational Chartism ; Mr. John Finch, a Liverpool iron 
 merchant, a famous advocate of temperance, and a man of great 
 earnestness a religious man with great capacity for making 
 Socialism disagreeable to religious people ; Mr. William Pare, 
 of Birmingham ; Mr. Joseph Smith, of Salford ; James 
 Watson, B. Cousins, John Cleave, and the Rev. Thomas 
 Macconnell, a ready and powerful speaker, not known subse- 
 quently to much advantage. Mr. Hume came in the course 
 of the Congress, and, as we have seen, took part in the pro- 
 ceedings the report of which was made and edited on the 
 order of the Congress, by William Carpenter, a famous name 
 among the reformers of that day as the author of " Political 
 Letters," and many publications which still live in political 
 recollection. The motto of the political tracts published by 
 William Carpenter was : " Every man for every man, himself 
 included " a co-operative device in which it was provided 
 that the individual should not lose sight of himself. In other 
 respects this was a remarkable Congress. It adopted a wise 
 and much-needed resolution upon which nobody acted, which, 
 however, was ordered to be the standing motto of the society, 
 to be printed with all publications regarded as official, issued by 
 the co-operative body. It was this : 
 
 " Whereas, the co-operative world contains persons of all 
 religious sects, and of all political parties, it is unanimously 
 resolved that co-operators as such are not identified with any 
 religious, irreligious, or political tenets whatever ; neither those 
 of Mr. Owen nor any other individual." 
 
 This resolution was brought forward by Mr. Owen, and 
 showed good sense on his part. It was, however, impracti- 
 1 Crisis, May 5, 1832.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 123 
 
 cable since the principles of Co-operation as explained by him, 
 and accepted by co-operators, did contradict the popular belief 
 of the day as respects the un wilfulness of sin, the unjustifiable- 
 ness of punishment (except as a means of deterring others), the 
 power of influencing character by well-devised material con- 
 ditions. No resolution could establish neutrality in a party 
 whose principles committed it to dissent from the popular 
 theology. 
 
 At this Congress the United Kingdom was divided into nine 
 missionary districts, with a council and secretary for each. 
 I. The Metropolis ; 2. Birmingham ; 3. Manchester ; 
 4. Glasgow ; 5. Belfast ; 6. Dublin ; 7. Cork ; 8. Edinburgh ; 
 9. Norwich. The " old immoral world " was to be assaulted 
 at many points. 
 
 At this Congress a circular was sent to all the societies, 
 " Regulations for Co-operative Societies " : 
 
 " I. Let it be universally understood, that the grand ultimate 
 object of all co-operative societies, whether engaged in trading, 
 manufacturing, or agricultural pursuits, is community in latid. 
 
 " 2. To effect this purpose, a weekly subscription, either in 
 money, goods, or labour, from a penny to any other amount 
 agreed upon, is indispensably necessary to be continued from 
 year to year, until a capital sufficient to accomplish the object 
 of the society be accumulated." 1 
 
 The majority of co-operators had formed stores and 
 established numerous manufacturing societies for the mutual 
 advantage of the members. Many friends, among the middle 
 and upper classes, had established co-operative stores, and had 
 advanced capital to start them, from a kindly regard to the 
 welfare of the members, sometimes to improve their social 
 habits and train them in economy ; and sometimes with the 
 view to control their social and religious views bv their 
 influence as patrons. As working men grew independent in 
 spirit this patronage was now and then declined, and sometimes 
 resented. England, Ireland, and Scotland were studded, Eng- 
 land especially, in Yorkshire and Lancashire, with co-operative 
 manufacturing and provision associations, similar in character 
 but less opulent than those which we now know. Several of 
 
 1 This resolution led to co-operative stores being formed with a view to 
 devote their profits to a fund for purchasing community land.
 
 i2 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 these stores were destroyed by success. The members for a 
 time made money, but did not capitalise their profits, nor had 
 they discovered the principle of dividing profits in proportion 
 to purchases. The shareholders simply found success mono- 
 tonous. Some betook themselves to other enterprises more 
 adventurous. In some cases want of religious toleration broke 
 up the society. Bad management ruined others. In possibly 
 quite as many instances scoundrel managers extinguished the 
 society. The law, as has been said, enabled a thief to plead 
 that being a member of the society he only robbed himself, 
 although he stole the shares of everybody else. The amend- 
 ment of this state of things was not attempted until twenty 
 years later, when lawyers joined the co-operative movement. 
 Mr. E. Vansittart Neale, Mr. J. Malcolm Ludlow, Mr. 
 Thomas Hughes, J. J. Furnival, and others, took Parlia- 
 mentary action, and these crime-encouraging laws were 
 ended. 
 
 Co-operators were invited to set out, like pilgrims, to the 
 land of Beulah, where Acts of Parliament were unknown, or 
 unnecessary. Of these dreams Mr. Pare spoke happily, and 
 with the good sense from which English communists never 
 departed. "It was true," he said, "they wished equality, 
 but it was voluntary equality. It was true they were levellers, 
 but they wished to level up and not down. They sought to 
 create and retain fresh wealth for themselves." * 
 
 This Congress meant business, for, on Mr. Owen com- 
 municating that community land might be obtained if thought 
 desirable, at Aylesbury, in Bucks, of four hundred acres, 
 with one thousand acres adjoining, which he thought might 
 also be had, he, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Bromley were 
 appointed to inspect the estate, and a deputation was likewise 
 appointed to wait upon Mr. Morgan, of the Stock Exchange, 
 and endeavour to effect a loan of ^'250,000." 2 
 
 The fourth Congress of delegates was held in Liverpool, 
 October, 1832. So impatient and confident of progress were 
 the co-operative communists becoming, that they held two 
 Congresses in one year. 
 
 * Crisis, No. iv., 1832. 
 
 2 Report of Third Co-operative Congress, 1832. Reported and Edited 
 by order of the Congress by William Carpenter. It was a rule in those 
 times always to have the Congress reported and edited by men of mark.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 125 
 
 The fifth Co-operative Congress was held at Huddersfield 
 in April, 1833, when a public meeting took place in the 
 White Hart Inn, and one was held at Back Green, called by 
 the town crier. Mr. Rigby's name appears for the first time 
 at this Congress as a delegate from Manchester. It was 
 stated that " numerous delegates from the various co-operative 
 societies throughout the kingdom gave encouraging accounts 
 of their progress, and that the societies in the West Riding of 
 Yorkshire alone had accumulated a capital of ,5,000, which 
 was thought a great sum then in the north. It was at this 
 Congress that the death of Mr. Thompson, of Cork, was 
 announced by Mr. Owen, which was matter of deep regret 
 to all social reformers. Mr. Stock, High Constable of Hud- 
 dersfield, spoke at the White Hart meeting, and Mr. Owen 
 moved a vote of thanks to their patriotic High Constable." 
 Mr. W. R. Wood, of London, was appointed one of the 
 secretaries of the Congress. " A provisional committee was 
 appointed to immediately engage premises for a Labour 
 Exchange." This Congress is described in the Crisis for 
 May, 1833, as the sixth. In September of the same year 
 the full report is reprinted as that of the "fifth Congress," 
 which appears to be the right enumeration. 
 
 The sixth Congress was held at West End, Barnsley, 
 March 31, 1834. It is not, so far as I can trace, even 
 mentioned in the Crisis. 
 
 The seventh Congress recorded was held at Halifax, April 
 20, 1835. This was the last meeting of delegates from stores 
 described as "a Co-operative Congress." This Halifax Con- 
 gress was the end of the Co-operative Congress series. They 
 lasted six years. 
 
 This year, 1835, the Association of All Classes was formed, 
 and in May was held the first of the Socialist Congresses. It 
 was not convened as a delegate Congress, but was open to all 
 who cared to come. It was really the great meeting at which 
 the A.A.C.A.N. [Association of All Classes of All Nations] 
 was floated. The second Socialist Congress was convened at 
 Burton Chapel, Burton-street, Burton Crescent, London. Its 
 proceedings consisted of addresses and resolutions. 
 
 The third Socialist Congress was held in Manchester, May, 
 1837. It assembled in the Social Institution, Great George
 
 ii6 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Street, Salford. The Congress was intended to be, and is 
 always described as the " Manchester " Congress. 
 
 The practical result of this Congress was the formation of 
 a National Community Friendly Society. On the motion 
 of Mr. Lloyd Jones, a Missionary and Tract Society was 
 resolved on. 
 
 The chief things otherwise arranged were the enrolment of 
 the society under the ioth George the Fourth, chap. 56, as 
 amended by the 4th and 5th of William the Fourth, for the 
 purpose of obtaining legal security for the funds of a society 
 having in view the establishment of a system of united property, 
 labour, and education among the members thereof. Mr. James 
 Rigby, of Salford, and Alexander Campbell, of Glasgow, were 
 appointed the permanent missionaries of the association, who 
 were to receive instructions from the Central Board of the 
 Home Department. The Foreign department announced was 
 little heard of afterwards, though London was assigned as the 
 seat of the foreign government. The main objects of all the 
 resolutions, and departments, were founding communities of 
 united interests. The fervour which prevailed at this period 
 was indicated in an editorial article on " The Socialists' Cam- 
 paign," in which it was pointed out that things would go on 
 badly everywhere, " until * The Book ' the Book of the New 
 Moral World shall be received and acknowledged as a guide, 
 not simply to all parties, but to the entire family of human 
 kind." 
 
 The second quarterly report, presented after the announce- 
 ment of the Home and Foreign departments referred to, showed 
 a total income of only 122 10s. 4d. A revenue of ^500 
 a year certainly suggested that the world was going to be 
 governed with a very moderate budget. 
 
 The fourth Socialist Congress was held in Manchester, May, 
 1838. Mr. F. Hollick was first appointed a missionary at 
 this Congress. At the same meeting Messrs. William Clegg, 
 John Finch, and Joseph Smith were instructed to seek an 
 estate capable of accommodating five hundred persons. It 
 adjourned to the 30th of July to Birmingham, where it met 
 under the designation of a " Congress of Delegates of the 
 National Community Friendly Society." Mr. Owen, the 
 president, artfully read to the delegates an account of a council
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 127 
 
 of savages in the South Seas, 1 where throughout the whole of the 
 proceedings no two persons had attempted to speak at the same 
 time no speaker had attempted to impugn the motives or 
 opinions of the rest but all had honourably confined themselves 
 to the question before them one of many instances in which 
 savages are capable of teaching the civilised. 
 
 The two last-named associations that of All Classes of All 
 Nations and the National Community Society made a pro- 
 clamation at this Congress, and the " Outline of the Rational 
 System of Society " was first issued then. 
 
 The fifth Congress of this series was held in Birmingham in 
 May, 1839. Birmingham had become so influential a centre 
 of Co-operation, that not only was the New Moral IVorld 
 printed and published in it, but the Central Boards of the two 
 associations were established in Bennett's Hill, and the longest 
 Congress that had then been held took place in Birmingham. 
 The Congress there of 18 39 sat sixteen days. The Association 
 of All Classes and the National Community Society were 
 amalgamated and transmuted into something more wonder- 
 ful still, " The Universal Community Society of Rational 
 Religionists." 
 
 The sixth Congress met in a music saloon, South Parade, 
 Leeds, in May, 1840. The chief announcement made was 
 that since the last Congress the estate of East Tytherly, in 
 Hants, had been secured for the purposes of a community. 
 This first Congress of the Community Society was occupied 
 chiefly with the affairs of Tytherly. 
 
 The seventh Congress (second of the Universal Community 
 Society of Rational Religionists) met in Manchester in the 
 great hall of the Social Institution, May, 1841. The affairs 
 of Tytherly the Oueenwood Community, as it came to be 
 called was the main topic of debates, which lasted seventeen 
 days. In the proceedings of this Congress the name of the 
 present writer appears for the first time officially as appointed 
 Social Missionary for Sheffield. 
 
 The eighth Congress opened May, 1842, in the new building, 
 
 Harmony Hall, Queenwood. Standing orders were published 
 
 this year. The later Congresses showed business progress and 
 
 order of deliberation. More than the powers of a prime 
 
 1 From " Montgomery's Travels."
 
 128 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 minister were accorded to the president, that of choosing his 
 administration and changing them at his discretion. This was 
 the first Queenwood Congress. The docility which persecution 
 had taught some tongues was shown by Mr. Fleming at this 
 Congress, where he said by way of admonition to social 
 missionaries that " fondness for theological controversy always 
 argued an ill-regulated mind, to say the least of it; and he who 
 fostered that spirit could be neither good nor happy." 
 
 The ninth Congress was a special one, called at the Institu- 
 tion, 23, John Street, Tottenham Court Road, July, 1842, to 
 take the affairs of Harmony into consideration, as funds were 
 wanted. The Congress sat on Sunday. The business occupied 
 nine days. 
 
 The tenth Congress of May, 1843, again held at Harmony 
 Hall, was styled the " Eighth Session of the Congress of the 
 Rational Society " (the " special " Congress not being counted 
 in official enumeration). 
 
 The eleventh Congress of the " Rational Society," as it was 
 now called, took place again at Harmony Hall, May 10, 1844. 
 Harmony Hall affairs occupied the main time of the delegates, 
 who grew fewer as the business became more serious. Lack 
 of funds and diminished members deterred or disqualified many 
 societies from electing representatives. 
 
 The twelfth Congress met again at Harmony Hall, May 10, 
 1845. A series of elaborate business papers and financial and 
 other statements were laid before the delegates. Mr. George 
 Simpson was now the general secretary, quite the ablest man 
 who had held the office in later years. Had Mr. Simpson been 
 secretary from the beginning of the Queenwood community it 
 would probably have had a different fate. A clear-minded, 
 single-minded, and capable financial secretary is of priceless 
 value in experimental undertakings. 
 
 A thirteenth " special " Congress was convened at the 
 Literary and Scientific Institution, John Street, London, in 
 July, 1845. The disposal of Harmony was the critical question 
 debated. The proceedings were remarkable for a curious 
 reactionary speech made by Mr. Lloyd Jones, who said " he 
 had serious doubts now as to the good effects of their preaching 
 for several years past, and it was with him a question whether 
 they had bettered the state of those who by their preaching
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 129 
 
 they had loosed from the authority they were formerly under, 
 and placed them under themselves." z Mr. Henry Hethering- 
 ton stoutly said " it was always good to release individuals from 
 the influence of bad men and false opinions, and was at a loss 
 to conceive how people could be made better if it was not 
 done." There are times when able men are discouraged at the 
 small impression made on those with whom they are directly in 
 contact. Truth often deflects from those it strikes, travels far 
 and hits other men. Time alone shows the good done. It is 
 worth while telling mankind when they are in known wrong. 
 It gives men a motive to look in that direction. Besides, it is 
 the duty of those who strive to be reformers to take care when 
 they set men free from ignorant aims, that they place them 
 under the dominion of intelligent and demonstrable ones, and 
 provide for such repetitions of the teaching as shall keep the 
 new conception strong and clear. 
 
 Socialism under Mr. Owen's inspiration and its own enthu- 
 siasm continued in its grand ways to the end. It issued pro- 
 clamations, manifestoes, and addresses to her Majesty. If the 
 Queen preserved them she must have left a fine collection. 
 
 The fourteenth and last of the Socialist Congresses was held 
 at Queenwood Farm, June 30, 1 846. 2 The New Moral 
 World had ceased then, and these proceedings were reported in 
 the Reasoner, which from 1846 vindicated and explained co- 
 operative principle, and in every subsequent publication under 
 the same editorship. 
 
 George Petrie, a Scotchman by birth, but who had the 
 appearance of an Irish gentleman, served as a private in the 
 army, and took part in the Peninsular wars. He was a man 
 of courage, who ran generous and frightful risks for his com- 
 rades, from which only his wit extricated him. Settling in 
 London among the co-operators he wrote a poem on 
 " Equality," which was dedicated to Robert Dale Owen. He 
 was an energetic man, and attracted many personal friends. 
 He became an inmate of one of Mr. Baume's experimental 
 cottages on the Frenchman's Island,3 where he became insane 
 in a month. 
 
 The Rev. C. B. Dunn, curate of Camberworth, is a name 
 
 1 New Moral World, July 26, 1845. " Reasoner, July 8, 1846. 
 
 3 Pentonville Prison stands on the spot now. 
 vol. r. 10
 
 130 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 which frequently occurs in the Congress and other co-operative 
 reports as a successful speaker and advocate of Co-operation. 
 
 Among the writers of co-operative melodies was Mrs. Mary 
 Leman Grimstone, a popular contributor to the Monthly 
 Repository^ edited by W. J. Fox, who some twenty-five years 
 later became member of Parliament for Oldham, and who 
 himself was one of the early and literary friends of Co-opera- 
 tion. Mrs. Grimstone wrote an acrostic on the founder of 
 Co-operation : 
 
 " O mnipotent benevolence, this is thy holy reign : 
 W oe, want, crime, vice, and ignorance shall fall before thy fame ; 
 E re long, o'er all the gladd'n'd earth shall thy full blaze be glowing, 
 N or leave a spot that shall not hear and bless the name of Owen ! " 
 
 All these glowing predictions should be deposited privately 
 in some House of Prophecy, to be brought out when the day 
 of fulfilment comes. The Crisis placed on the title-page 
 of the first volume a portrait of Robert Owen enough to scare 
 any one away from its pages. To compensate for this a 
 vignette appeared, representing the Labour Exchange Institu- 
 tion at Gray's Inn Road. The design was a sort of Canaletto 
 interior. The place never looked half so well as in this 
 engraving. Very early in volume two this disappeared, and 
 gave place to a large straggling parallelogram of a community. 
 The Crisis was the first London weekly paper representing 
 Co-operation, and excited great interest and hope. 
 
 The friends of the " great change " impending were far 
 from intending that the public should pass through the 
 "crisis" without knowing it. The Social Missionary and 
 Tract Society of the time established three stations at 
 Primrose Hill, Copenhagen Fields, and White Conduit House 
 where they sold sixteen dozen of the Crisis in one day. 
 All matters of interest to the party were made known in its 
 columns. Mr. F. Bate would write a note to the editor 
 " announcing that the Annual Report of the London Society 
 would be received at Burton Rooms on Sunday morning, at 
 ten o'clock." 
 
 Though the co-operators were charged with latitudinarianism 
 as respects responsibility, they appear to have had a very sharp 
 conception of it in practice. Mr. Eamonson was a shining 
 light of that day. It was he who delayed the index of the
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 131 
 
 first volume of the Crisis for some time, in order to get a 
 good likeness of Mr. Owen to put upon the title-page ; and 
 who finally produced that alarming one of which the reader 
 has been told. This gentleman, having a debt which he 
 was unable to get paid, actually inserted in the Crisis the 
 following notice : 
 
 "To Persons in Debt. Whereas, if Mr. Puckeridge, 
 alias Mr. Mackellon, proprietor of the Royal Clarence 
 Theatre, New Road, does not immediately settle the small 
 account which is due to Eamonson, 15, Chichester Place, 
 for papers, he will continue to give publicity to it by this 
 and other means, as also some other persons who are in his 
 debt, and whose conduct has been shuffling and unmanly." 
 
 The sub-editor who suffered this notice to appear should 
 have been wheeled away by the first costermonger who passed 
 by the office with his barrow. 
 
 In the thirty-fifth number of the Crisis Mr. Owen associated 
 with himself his son, Mr. Robert Dale Owen, as conductor of 
 the paper. This occurred in November, 1832. Mr. Dale 
 Owen and his father's joint names appeared for the last 
 time in 1833. Volume two was much diminished in size. 
 Articles still appeared in it with the welcome signature of 
 " R. D. O." Soon after, the journal stated that its co-editor, 
 Robert Dale Owen, had set out for the United States ; and 
 the title-page bore the new title of National Co-operative 
 Trades Union, and Equitable Exchange Gazette, the pro- 
 ceedings of Labour Exchanges and projected communities 
 were the principal topics, and it gave the additional informa- 
 tion that it was " Under the patronage of Robert Owen." 
 A third volume commenced in September, 1833. It now 
 returned to its original size and name, and was again a 
 spacious, well-printed paper. 
 
 From the prevalence of Mr. Owen's articles and expositions 
 of his views in it, the probability is that he found the funds. 1 
 Its price was now three halfpence, having previously been one 
 
 1 When the Labour Exchange was broken up at Gray's Inn Road by 
 violence, 9,000 hours of labour notes were stolen "abstracted" Mr. 
 Owen said. These Mr. Owen undertook should be honoured if presented. 
 About the time of the Queenwood Community of 1840, Mr. Owen appears 
 to have come to the end of the money he had reserved for the furtherance 
 of social principle, and appears afterwards limited to an income only 
 sufficient for his personal comfort.
 
 1 32 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 penny. It now bore two small engravings on either side of 
 the title, one representing a small town where the buildings, 
 on one hand, appear in very irregular groups, while opposite is 
 a lunatic asylum. All the people to be seen in the streets 
 before it are crippled, or blind, or ragged ; while in the new 
 town the buildings are in mathematical order ; the walks well 
 laid out, all the people there are well dressed, well-to-do, and 
 perfectly upright. The artist, however, had no genius for 
 sketching the new world ; for the old, immoral arrangement 
 of the houses, with their quaint appearance, presented a far 
 better skyline than the monotonous regularity of the well- 
 built pile. The lunatic asylum had a far more picturesque 
 appearance, and must have been a pleasanter place to live 
 in than the solid, prosaic structure with which it was 
 contrasted. 
 
 A fourth and last volume of the Crisis appeared in 1834. 
 By that time all the diagrams had disappeared. There was 
 less and less of Mr. Owen in its pages, and more and more 
 of the Rev. J. E. Smith, who was a continual lecturer at 
 the Charlotte Street Institution, and his fertile and industrious 
 lectures frequently filled the pages of the Crisis, which 
 became more various in contents, and more readable ; but Mr. 
 Smith lectured upon Socialism with so much ingenuity that 
 Mr. Owen did not know his own system, and at last he 
 protested, announcing that he would issue an entirely new 
 publication, to be called the New Moral World, stating, 
 with his usual grandeur, that " the great crisis of human nature 
 would be passed that week." At length the date was definite 
 and the event near. Three years the crisis had been pulling 
 itself together, but then, the world was shy. It had now 
 determined to make the plunge. In the same number Mr. 
 J. E. Smith protested, and announced that any persons left 
 undispersed by the crisis he would gather into a fold of his 
 own, and announced a new publication to be called the 
 Shepherd. Amid a shower of fables and playful gibes at 
 his illustrious colleagues and his disciples, Mr. Smith took 
 his departure. 
 
 The Rev. J. E. Smith, better known subsequently as 
 "Shepherd Smith," was one of those clever and curious 
 spirits who alighted within the confines of Co-operation. He
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 133 
 
 was a born mystic, who explained everything by means of 
 indefinite and untraceable analogies. He entertained his 
 hearers, he baffled his questioners, he evaded his adversaries. 
 He constantly said excellent things, but all that was admirable 
 was mostly irrelevant. He became the wonder and delight of 
 thousands who never hoped to understand him. Mr. Smith 
 afterwards achieved a wide and prolonged repute as the fertile, 
 diverting editor of the Family Herald. He made a fortune 
 by his wit and inexhaustible variety, and, exemplary editor ! 
 he left it among his contributors, with a considerable portion 
 to Mr. B. D. Cousins, his publisher, a pleasant and active 
 promoter of Co-operation, whose name was honourably asso- 
 ciated with those of Hetherington, Watson, and Cleave. 
 
 The Crisis, like all propagandist papers which preceded 
 it, and many which followed it, appeared in several sizes, 
 with fluctuations in quality, colour of paper, infirmity of type 
 and orthography, price, and changed names. Like flags 
 carried in battle, they were made out of such material as 
 happened to be available in the exigencies of forced marches, 
 and were often shot into tatters by the enemy. Taxes upon 
 knowledge and upon news hampered them, and rendered them 
 unable to include matter of daily interest. The True Sun, 
 of 1834, stated that the Crisis was prevented assuming the 
 character of a newspaper through the cost of the stamp, or it 
 would probably have had a prosperous existence. 
 
 Two New Moral Worlds appeared the first was issued 
 August 30, 1834, and was larger and altogether better 
 printed than the second, which was issued three months later, 
 and formed the first of a series of annual volumes, which 
 were continued until 1845. It showed vitality in a movement, 
 attempting larger schemes when lesser ones had failed, that 
 its weekly journal, the New Moral World, should have a 
 career of twelve years before it. The August issue was 
 described as the " Official Gazette of the National Association 
 of Industry, Humanity, and Knowledge," a most compendious 
 representation, it must be owned. The first article, addressed 
 to the " Unions of Great Britain and Ireland," was signed 
 W. R. Wood, the young and eloquent speaker, whose name 
 appeared in the proceedings in relation to Labour Exchange. 
 
 The New Moral World may be regarded as the most
 
 i 3 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 important, the longest continued periodical which the co- 
 operators had established. Co-operation, however, was less 
 formally noticed than in the Crisis. At this time co-operative 
 societies were dying out all around. Mr. Owen and his 
 disciples were more and more influenced by the belief that 
 these small affairs could effect no permanent change in society, 
 and that they must concentrate their endeavours on the 
 establishment of the great social scheme, which should demon- 
 strate once for all and for ever the possibility and advantages of 
 organised industry and organised society. The failure of the 
 Indiana and the Orbiston experiments certainly discouraged 
 advocates, but Mr. Owen's persistent assertions that a larger 
 combination of means only was wanted to attain a striking 
 success, kept up the faith of many adherents. The missionary 
 propaganda proposed in 1832, and put in operation in 1833, 
 created a new generation of adherents. Numerous young 
 men of considerabe ability were inspired by the addresses 
 made in various towns, and the facilities of discussion afforded 
 in the various lecture-rooms gave them opportunities for 
 public speaking. Popular excitement arising, and large 
 audiences being attracted, active and provoking adversaries 
 made their appearance, and all who could address an audience 
 took the platform in defence of the new principles, acquired 
 training as public debaters, and a stand was made on behalf of 
 a great social change. How could any one within that 
 enthusiastic circle doubt that Mr. Owen saw his way to the 
 introduction of the new co-operative world, seeing that he 
 had applied for the government of Coaquila and Texas, and 
 that the Mexican Government had actually conceded to him 
 the jurisdiction of the entire line of frontier stretching from 
 the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, some 1,400 miles in 
 length, and 150 miles in breadth, in which to establish his 
 wonderful government of peace and plenty ? x To plant the 
 English millennium on 1,000 or 2,000 acres would, to use 
 Mr. Disraeli's unpleasant and ignominious simile, be a mere 
 " flea bite " of progress. 
 
 In 1834 a correspondent of Mr. Owen's, whose communi- 
 cation, signed <c J. C," appeared in the New Moral IVorld^ in 
 November of that year, proposed a " Floating Co-operative 
 
 1 New Moral World, September 26, 1835.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 135 
 
 Community," which was to have its station on the Thames, 
 where it was thought the inhabitants would be safe from the 
 extortions of retail traders, lodging-house keepers, and gin- 
 shops. Convenient shops were to be selected where the 
 families of the floating society could go on shore for the 
 instruction of the children in horticulture, agriculture, and 
 botany. '* Community " coffee-houses existed in London 
 in 1834. Co-operators were never deterred by poverty of 
 means. A halfpenny a week land fund had its enthusiastic 
 members and friends, who expected to join Mr. Disraeli's 
 territorial aristocracy by patient subscriptions of two shillings 
 and twopence a year. 1 
 
 At 14, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, was situated " The 
 Institution" where Mr. Owen lectured every Sunday, and 
 festivals and discussions were held on week-days. Socialism 
 was always social. Its worst enemies could not deny this, 
 and it first set the example of teaching working people 
 to meet like ladies and gentlemen, on a pleasant equality, to 
 abandon habits of isolation, sullenness, and conspiracy, and to 
 chat, and sing, and dance, and think their way to schemes of 
 competence. The Poor Man's Guardian of 1834, said, "We 
 believe greater order or more genuine good feeling and polite- 
 ness are not to be met with in any of the public assemblies in 
 the metropolis or elsewhere." Considering that these assemblies 
 were composed mainly of lodging-house keepers, newsvendors 
 (who in those days were seldom long out of prison), grocers, 
 tailors, costermongers, shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, and in 
 some cases, as I know, sweeps, good people of conventional 
 tastes were perplexed at this new species of association. It 
 was not then understood that variety of industry was really the 
 dress and decoration of the public service ; and those who 
 rendered none were merely nude and useless, and if they 
 wilfully evaded work they were disreputable compared with 
 those who lived by their honest labour. At length these 
 assemblies commanded respect. 
 
 At the end of 1834 the first female co-operative association 
 was formed. The object of the promotors was to form associa- 
 tive homes, and enable their members to acquire the art of 
 living in contiguous dwellings. To raise funds these female 
 1 New Moral World, No. 10, p. 64, December 20, 1834.
 
 136 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 co-operators commenced selling tea and coffee, inviting the 
 custom of the faithful to that end. 
 
 There were congratulations to the members of the Charlotte 
 Street Institution on their having given spontaneous support 
 to a grocery store, as it was in contemplation to open a 
 meat-seller's store. 
 
 A French advocate of association, Mons. J. Gay, sent a 
 letter by Dr. Bowring, in 1834, in which he described a plan 
 of association which he had himself projected, and which was 
 to consist of 12,000 souls. His dining-room was to be the 
 size of the court of the Louvre, and capable of seating 12,000 
 guests a very satisfactory dinner-party. 
 
 The "London weekly publication," as its advent was 
 described, bore the title of the New Moral World. Its tone 
 and terms were apostolic : otherwise its typographic style and 
 appearance were inferior in quantity and quality of writing 
 to the Crisis. It bore a proud, confident motto, which 
 averred that "Silence will not retard its progress and opposition 
 will give increased celerity to its movements." This was one 
 of several famous sentences which Mr. Owen constructed. 
 The great crisis of human nature, which was to take place in 
 the fourth week in August, appears really to have come off, 
 for the first serial number of the volume, appearing on Saturday, 
 November 1, 1834, 1 declared in its opening sentence that "the 
 Rubicon between the old world and the new moral worlds is 
 finally passed." 
 
 These tidings were followed by twenty-one proofs of the 
 principles and practices of the new state of things and were 
 somewhat dull. The second number announced that " truth 
 had at length gained the victory over error. Its reign upon 
 earth had commenced, and would now prevail for evermore." 
 The two volumes for 1835 and 1836 contained mainly papers 
 by Mr. Owen. 
 
 Two pages of the New Moral World of 1835 contain 
 the most intelligible and brief calculation of the material 
 requirements in the way of agriculture, manufactures, and 
 provisions for 500 persons of the working class which appears 
 
 1 It was printed and published by Rowland Hunter, junr., at the office 
 of the Association of All Classes of All Nations, 14, Charlotte Street 
 Kitzroy Square.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 137 
 
 in the records of these schemes. The proportions of persons 
 were no men, no women, and 280 children, who were to 
 occupy 1,000 English acres, upon part of which a village was 
 to be built for their habitations. 
 
 Early in the year, owing to the excessive cold which pre- 
 vailed in 1835, Mr. Owen ceased to lecture in the Charlotte 
 Street Institution, and delivered his addresses in his chapel in 
 Burton Street, Burton Crescent. 
 
 Early in 1834 Mr. Owen had proposed that the "Friends 
 of the human race " should form " An Association of all 
 Classes, and of all Nations." An elaborate scheme was 
 published of this comprehensive society, of which Mr. Owen 
 was to be the " preliminary father." This paternal authority 
 published the long proposals for a " change of system in 
 the British empire " which were duly offered to the Duke of 
 Wellington's administration. 
 
 Notices were published that at one o'clock on the 1st of May, 
 1835, a great meeting would be held in the Charlotte Street 
 Institution, when the superseding of the old world by the 
 new would be made, and the contrast between them would 
 be made evident. 
 
 The A.A.C.A.N. (Association of All Classes of All Nations), 
 the great cosmopolitan device of 1835, was formed at this 
 meeting, "to effect an entire change in the character and 
 condition of the human race." Mr. Braby opened the pro- 
 ceedings and Mr. Owen took the chair. His speech occupied, 
 when published, nearly two entire numbers of the New 
 Moral IV or Id, long enough to weary both worlds at once, 
 and would have affected the temper of all the nations together, 
 had they been present. Nor did the trouble end there. One 
 Mr. Charles Toplis, of Leicester Square, had conceived an in- 
 fernal engine, a sort of Satanic mitrailleuse, which was to eject 
 a thousand balls in the time one man could fire one. This 
 he called " the Pacificator." Mr. Toplis had the wit to send 
 an account of the horrible thing to Mr. Owen, who thought 
 it something like an act of Providence that it should reach him 
 just as he had finished writing his address, as it seemed to 
 confirm the announcement he had made of the probable 
 termination of war all over the world. Mr. Toplis had, 
 Mr. Owen thought, made war impossible by multiplying the
 
 138 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 powers of destruction ; and he insisted upon the Toplis paper 
 on " the Pacificator " being read, which being long must still 
 have further wearied the Association of All Classes of All 
 Nations. Indeed, the Toplis document was dull enough to 
 have dispersed any army had it been read to them without 
 any other application of " the Pacificator." The report says 
 the meeting was numerous and respectable, but the only 
 person of note who spoke at the end was Richard Carlile ; he, 
 however, was a man of historic powers of endurance. 
 
 A congress was announced to be held fourteen days later, 
 to set the A.A.C.A.N. going, when Mr. Owen stated that 
 he should retire from public life. On that day he would be 
 65 years of age. He said that he had, while he was wealthy, 
 taken the precaution of making his wife and children sufficiently 
 independent of his public proceedings, which always involved 
 pecuniary loss. Mr. Richard Carlile made an eloquent speech 
 on Mr. Owen's retirement from public life. Henceforth the 
 lectures in the Charlotte Street Institution were given in the 
 name of the A.A.C.A.N. Of course, Mr. Owen never 
 retired, and public letters appeared every week from his pen ; 
 sometimes to Lord Brougham, at another time to Sir Robert 
 Peel, and to Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer. Three months 
 later Mr. Owen served upon a sub-committee with Thomas 
 Attwood a committee appointed of members of Parliament 
 and others who had met at the Exchequer Coffee House, 
 Palace Yard, to consider means of relieving the distress which 
 then existed among the working class. Mr. Owen even 
 wrote an address to the " Religious of all Denominations." 
 Twelve months after his retirement, he was addressing letters 
 to his Majesty William IV. from 4, Crescent Place, Burton 
 Crescent. 
 
 In September, James Morrison, the editor of a trades-union 
 journal called the Pioneer^ died. He was the first platform 
 and literary advocate of unionism, who obtained distinction for 
 judicious counsel and a firmness made strong by moderation. 
 He died prematurely through working beyond his strength. 
 His widow was long known at the Social Institution, Salford, 
 for activity and intelligence nearly equal to his own. She was 
 one of the lecturers of the society. 
 
 This year some friends in Finsbury obtained possession of
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 139 
 
 Zebulon Chapel, in the Curtain Road, and converted it into 
 an Eastern Associative Hall. It caused disquietude in certain 
 quarters that " Zebulon " should become a social institution. 
 
 A Social Land Community Society was the quaint name of 
 a scheme this year, which never got far beyond its name. We 
 have known a good deal in London of co-operative tailors since 
 "Alton Locke" appeared. In the "Social Land" year (1835) ; 
 an association of the tailor craft conducted a business at 5, 
 Brydges Street, Strand. 
 
 Mr. Owen's lectures on marriage, and that kind of per- 
 plexing thing, were first printed in volume one of the New 
 Moral World, in 1835. Many thought them unfortunate in 
 tone, terms, and illustrations ; while those who thought ill of 
 his objects found in them an armoury of weapons for assault 
 which lasted them ten years. In the abstract pages of the 
 New Moral World, the lectures were harmless and inacces- 
 sible, but some one had them reprinted in Leeds, and Mr. 
 Joshua Hobson published them. It was then brought to light 
 that the lectures were not verbatim, but made up of abrupt 
 notes taken by a hearer. But Mr. Owen did not care to 
 repudiate what he did not recognise. It did not need Mr. 
 Owen to tell us that we cannot love whom we please : yet it 
 continues true that we may all our lives remain pleased with 
 those who allure us to like them. There are unsuitable 
 marriages, when divorce is far more moral than association 
 with hate. But in those days it was deemed sinful to 
 think so. 
 
 The rubicon being passed so late as November 1, 1834, 
 was followed on October 31, 1835, by the second volume of 
 the New Moral World, which opened with the sub-title of 
 the "Millennium." The full title read, "The New Moral 
 World and Millennium." That hitherto evasive form of 
 perfection had been secured. A junior member of the council 
 of the A.A.C.A.N., unaware of it, delivered a lecture at the 
 Charlotte Street Institution, on " Millennial Prospects." 
 
 A proposal was made for establishing co-operative Free- 
 masonry, and a Lodge was determined upon, and the "punctual 
 attendance of all the brothers was respectfully requested." 
 
 Trade unions and trade benefit societies took imposing titles. 
 The printers, who acquire increase of sense by setting up the
 
 i 4 o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 sense of others, were first to have their Grand lodge, and 
 schemes were published for establishing lodges in all nations 
 of the world. An attendance of "all the Brothers" of the 
 " Grand Lodge of Miscellaneous Operatives and Friends of 
 Industry and Humanity" was called, in February, 1835. 
 This catholic device certainly gave everybody a chance ; for 
 he must be very badly used by nature or circumstance who 
 was not qualified to be classed among "miscellaneous" people. 
 
 Volume two of the New Moral World (1836) had a de- 
 partment called "Herald of Community," but the "Herald" 
 was many years blowing his trumpet before forces appeared. 
 Social reformers were always making "trumpet calls." In 
 1835 one W. Cameron, author of the first "Trumpet," 
 announced a second, which he dedicated to Robert Owen, 
 who certainly did not require it as his friends had a large 
 stock. 
 
 About this time Mr. Owen became acquainted with a little 
 book which afterwards made some noise, known as Etzler's 
 " Paradise within the Reach of All Men." The great co- 
 operator must have had some side of his nature open to 
 wonder. The clever German undertook to put the whole 
 world in ten years in a state of Paradise, which might be 
 permanently maintained without human labour, or next to 
 none, by the powers of nature and machinery. Etzler was a 
 man who stood by the wayside of the world, and offered the 
 philosopher's stone to any passer-by who would take it. 
 "Look here," he cried in his preface, "ye philosophers, ye 
 speculators, ye epicureans, behold a new, easy, straight, and 
 short road to the summit of your wishes." By Mr. Etzler's 
 invention the sea was to become a drawing-room, and the air 
 a sort of upper chamber, for the accommodation of those who 
 dwelt on the land. Mr. Owen regarded Etzler as a fellow- 
 renovator of the universe, who had, in some wonderful way, 
 got before him. 
 
 Now and then French Socialists contributed some astounding 
 scheme of co-operative cooking, in a limited degree practicable, 
 but was projected on a scale of magnitude which made it 
 absurd. A proposal was made in Paris to supply the city with 
 food by one immense restaurateur. One who had studied the 
 project said, with something of the fervour of Mr. Etzler :
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD i 4I 
 
 "Go and see it. There are Greek statues holding frying- 
 pans, brilliant portraits of Lucullus, of Gargantua, Vatel, 
 Carme, and all the great men who have honoured universal 
 gastronomy. There you will see the great cook, M. de 
 Botherall, skimming his gigantic pot, his forehead enveloped 
 with a cotton nightcap and a viscount's coronet. To prove 
 the profits arising from the scheme he offers to wrap his 
 cutlets for twelve days in bills of 1,000 francs each. In a 
 short time the restaurative omnibuses will circulate through 
 Paris. A cook will be upon the front seat, and a scullion 
 behind. These vehicles will contain broth and sauce for the 
 whole city. There will be the soup omnibus, the omnibus 
 with made dishes, and the omnibus with roast meat, running 
 together, after which will come the tooth-pick omnibus, and 
 lastly the omnibus with the bill." This must have been 
 ridicule, but social editors quoted it as one of the possible 
 schemes of the time. 
 
 Ebenezer Elliott had, like the Chartists who came after 
 him, a political distrust of social amelioration. In 1836 
 Elliott made a speech in Sheffield in favour of news-rooms, in 
 which he stood up stoutly on behalf of political knowledge, 
 and said, " Be not deluded by the Owens, the Oastlers, the 
 Bulls, and the Sadlers, these dupes of the enemy." 
 
 In 1836, Mr. Owen published the book of the "New 
 Moral World," which, while it animated his disciples by many 
 observations which it contained, gave persons of any vivacity 
 of temperament rather a distaste for that kind of existence. 
 The phrase, " taxes on knowledge," so often heard twenty 
 years later, appeared in the New Moral World in February, 
 1836, imported from the London Review. 
 
 Notices of co-operative societies grew fewer and fewer in 
 volume two of the New Moral World, but we have 
 announcements that the " Religion of the Millennium " is 
 now ready, and may be had of the publishers. In volume four 
 of the New Moral World, November, 1836, occurs a notable 
 passage which illustrates how poor an opinion Mr. Owen 
 entertained of Co-operation, which had excited so many hopes, 
 and had been the subject of so many endeavours. He related 
 that on his journey to New Lanark he passed through Carlisle. 
 Devoting Tuesday and Wednesday " to seeing the friends of
 
 i 4 2 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the system, and those whom I wish to make its friends : to 
 my surprise I found there are six or seven co-operative societies, 
 in different parts of the town, doing well, as they think, that 
 is, making some profit by joint-stock retailing. It is, however, 
 high time to put an end to the notion very prevalent in the 
 public mind, that this is the social system which we contem- 
 plate, or that it will form any part of the arrangements in the 
 New Moral World. 
 
 Later, in December, a prospectus appeared of an intended 
 Hall of Science in Brighton, prefixed by the phrase, " Science 
 belongs to no party." This might be true, but there were 
 certainly many parties who never had it. These halls of 
 science were devoted not to physical but to social science. 
 
 Mr. J. Ransom, of Brighton, was one of six who wrote a 
 letter to the New Moral World, proposing means of 
 increasing the sale of the publication, and showing that the 
 early interest which Brighton took in Co-operation was still 
 sustained. 
 
 A writer in the Radical, a weekly stamped newspaper, 
 addressed several brief, well-written letters to the working 
 class on the means of obtaining equality. The writer took 
 the signature of "Common Sense," and published his letters 
 in dateless pamphlets ; but I believe the Radical appeared in 
 1836. The most striking thing that "Common Sense" had 
 to say was that " the besetting sin of the working people is 
 their admiration of the unproductive classes, and their con- 
 tempt and neglect of their own." It must be owned that 
 during this period of departure from Co-operation to Socialism, 
 the new adherents got a little absurd. Their styling Mr. Owen 
 the " Preliminary Father," and addressing him, as Mr. Fleming 
 did in public letters, as " Our dear Social Father," showed the 
 infirmity of tutelage. They pulled themselves together a 
 little towards the end of 1836, when they silenced the 
 Millennium gong, and called their journal the New Moral 
 World and Manual of Science. 
 
 The ecstatic term "Millennium" ceased, and "Manual of 
 Science" succeeded it; but when, instead of lectures, songs, 
 and religion of the new time, the reader was introduced to 
 papers on " The Functions of the Spinal Marrow," the transi- 
 tion was very great. The editor of a " Manual of Science "
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 143 
 
 had no means of furnishing it. Science then was not the 
 definite, mighty thing it now is. The British Association for 
 advancing it was not born till four years later. The Penny 
 Magazine people and the Chambers Brothers both excluded 
 discussions on politics and religion from their pages, and the 
 journals of the co-operators were the only papers of a popular 
 character which dealt with religion and politics, and recognised 
 science as one of the features of general progress. The little 
 they did, therefore, passed for much and meant much in those 
 days. It was a merit, and no small merit, to recognise science 
 when it was deemed a form of sin. The volume bearing the 
 sub-title of " Manual of Science " did something to sustain the 
 profession by giving a page or more in each number upon 
 subjects of physical science. In several towns, notably in 
 Manchester, the Socialist party erected Halls of Science. 
 There was an instinct that science was the available pro- 
 vidence of man, and would one day be in the ascendant. The 
 volumes of the Moral World at this time were devoid of 
 advertisements. The editor withheld necessary information 
 from his readers of public and other meetings to take place on 
 behalf of their own principles. " We refrain, he said, " from 
 making formal announcements, which by some persons might 
 be mistaken for advertisements ; we never deal in this kind of 
 merchandise," as though publicity was merely venal. 
 
 Mr. J. L. Gay, of Paris, addressed a letter to Mr. Owen, 
 from which it appeared that the French world-makers did 
 not think so much of the English contrivance to that end. 
 Mr. Gay reports, that the most rational St. Simonians and 
 Fourierites refuse either to hear or read any exposition of 
 Socialism ; but they very sensibly demanded a practical trial 
 of it. They would look at that. The French Socialists of 
 Mr. Owen's school were then about to establish a " Maison 
 Harmoniene de Paris " (House of Harmony at Paris). 1 
 
 The fourth volume of the New Moral World was 
 printed by Abel Heywood, of Manchester, 2 always known to 
 Radicals and Social Reformers as a man of honour, of energy, 
 and the chief Liberal publisher of Manchester, when that 
 
 1 Neiv Moral World, December 24, 1836, p. 66. 
 
 * Volume three had been printed by John Gadsby, of the same city. The 
 price of each number of the fourth volume of the New Moral World was 
 three halfpence. A number contained eight pages.
 
 i 4 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 trade required not only business ability, but the courage of 
 meeting imprisonment. Volume four was more belligerent 
 than the previous one. The politicians united against a system 
 which disregarded immediate political right, under the belief 
 that a state of universal community would render rights 
 unnecessary, or secure them in full ; but community was distant, 
 and the need of political liberty was near. One number of the 
 New Moral World stated that " Mr. Hetherington, with the 
 Radicals at his back, decried their proceedings." The New 
 Moral World published an article from the Shepherd, stating 
 that Mr. Owen had been to Paris, and found that "the 
 French were looking beyond politics, and lucky would it be 
 for us also if, instead of palavering with such trifles as ballots, 
 and canvas, and law amendments, we were to cast this small- 
 ware overboard, and raise one loud and universal shout of 
 social reorganisation. This patching and mending system is 
 a miserable delusion." Yet the same article recorded that 
 Mr. Owen had been prevented lecturing in Paris by the police, 
 lest he should excite commotion through the numbers he 
 attracted. The fact was a prompt rebuke of the con- 
 temptuousness expressed as to political freedom. The "small- 
 ware" had great value in practice. The editor of the New 
 Moral World had published offensive and foolish articles 
 himself, disparaging Radical politics. 
 
 In an article upon the name of the paper, the editor stated 
 that he rejected the abandoned name of co-operator, the most 
 sensible that had been adopted, and the members of the 
 Grand Society of All Classes and All Nations wisely refused 
 to be called Owenites, although they persisted in their affection 
 for Mr. Owen, whom they designated at the same time their 
 "social and right reverend father." At the Manchester 
 Congress of All Classes of All Nations at which only one 
 class of one nation appeared, and a very small portion of that took 
 part in the proceedings they determined to call themselves 
 Socialists. At this period, June, 1837, the Moral World 
 was printed at Manchester, and then Mr. George Alexander 
 Fleming became editor, 1 and also general secretary of the 
 central board which had been formed. Henceforth the 
 
 1 Mr. Fleming's editorship commenced June 10, 1837, and his resignation 
 was dated from Avenue Cottage, Queenwood, November 8, 1845.
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 145 
 
 Moral World was edited with more controversial vigour, and 
 with general energy and ability as a propagandist organ, but 
 the last volume edited in London, the "Manual of Science" 
 volume, was the most various and readable of the whole that 
 had been published. It gave weekly a column taken from the 
 " Daily Politician," composed of short passages of current 
 political interest selected from the general newspaper press ; 
 notable sayings of philosophers, well-chosen anecdotes, extracts 
 from books of mark and force, such as Mr. Mill's " History of 
 British India," rendering that volume of the N. M. W. 
 readable to this day. 
 
 " Live for others," that afterwards became the motto of the 
 Comtean religion of humanity, was the subject of an editorial 
 article in the New Moral World for January 21, 1837. 
 
 Mr. W. D. Saull, of London, announced that he had received 
 Exchequer bills to the amount of j 1,000, of which the interest 
 was to be devoted to the purposes of an educational friendly 
 society S 00 more were announced when Mr. Baume 
 appeared at Bradford as a deputy representative of the society. 
 His proceedings being reported in the Northern Star, 
 and quoted in the New Moral World, the editor added a 
 caution against confounding that project with the National 
 Community Society, and professed doubts as to the practicability 
 of the plan. 
 
 The Star in the East commenced in 1837. Its price was 
 fourpence-halfpenny. It was a newspaper and stamped, and 
 the first which professedly advocated social views. Its editor 
 and proprietor, Mr. James Hill, of Wisbech, was a member 
 of the distinguished Rowland Hill family, to whom the public 
 has been indebted for so many national improvements. 
 
 The east and north had both Stars, edited by Hills. Both 
 Stars arose in the same year. The Northern Star had 
 Feargus O'Connor for proprietor, and Mr. Hill, an energetic 
 Yorkshire schoolmaster, for editor, but no relative of Mr. Hill, 
 of Wisbech. The northern luminary was political, being the 
 organ of the Chartists, but always friendly to social ideas both 
 proprietors being community makers in their way ; Mr. James 
 Hill having a peculiar social theory of his own to work out at 
 Wisbech, chiefly educational, after the genius of his family ; 
 Mr. O'Connor having a land scheme which, with the usual 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 146 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 talent of reformers for administering to the merriment of 
 adversaries, he located, among other places, at Snig's End. 
 
 The Rev. Joseph Marriott, who represented Rochdale at 
 the Manchester Congress of 1837, published a drama entitled 
 " Community," which appeared in the N. M. W. Some 
 of the predictions of telegraphic facilities which it contained 
 are now seen realised in every street, which then only the 
 Socialist imagination would incur the risk of regarding as a 
 possibility of the future. The fact of to-day was a " craze " 
 then. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Marriott was a gentleman of far more 
 enthusiasm on the whole than discernment, for he described 
 Mr. Thompson's essay on " The Distribution of Wealth " as 
 a work " as superior to Adam Smith's c Wealth of Nations ' as 
 one book can be to another." The subject was certainly an 
 important supplement to the great topic stated by Adam Smith, 
 but the difference in the capacity and range of thought of the 
 two writers ought to have been perceptible even to enthusiasm. 
 Adam Smith traced the laws which were found to operate in 
 commercial affairs. Mr. Thompson planned the laws which 
 he thought ought to operate under circumstances which had 
 never existed. Yet if the public read Mr. Thompson's book 
 they would be of opinion "that there was something in it." 
 
 In June, 1838, the seat of social government and the journal 
 of the society were removed to Bennett's Hill, Birmingham. 
 Mr. Guest became the publisher; known as the leading Liberal 
 publisher of the town, as Mr. Heywood was of Manchester. 
 The printer was Francis Basset Shenstone Flindell, of 38, New 
 Street, Birmingham. The editor announced that various 
 considerations had induced the Central Board to limit the 
 number of impressions to 2,000. One consideration deter- 
 mined it, and that was that they had no more purchasers. 
 There arose in Birmingham several advocates. ' It was the 
 residence of Mr. Pare, the earliest and ablest organiser of the 
 movement, and Mr. Hawkes Smith, its most influential 
 advocate through the press; and the town furnished two 
 lecturers, Mr. Frederick Hollick and the present writer. 
 Birmingham was long distinguished for its influence in co- 
 operative things. There was also actively connected with the 
 Central Board an Irish gentleman, Mr. John Lowther Murphy,
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 147 
 
 the author of several minor works of original merit the best 
 known being "An Essay Towards a Science of Consciousness." 
 They were illustrated by diagrams, broadly designed, which 
 had an air of ingenuity and newness. The argument was 
 materialistic, put with boldness and with definiteness. 
 
 Occupying a professional position and having audacity in 
 council and in action, Mr. Murphy was always a popular 
 figure on the platform. Single, and a dentist in sufficient 
 practice, no social persecution could reach him, since Christians 
 with the toothache would waive any objection to his principles 
 when he could afford them more skilful relief than any one 
 else. In meetings of danger his courage was conspicuous and 
 effective. 
 
 There is a conquest of conviction, and the leader herein 
 was Mr. William Hawkes Smith, incomparably the wisest 
 and most practical writer in defence of social views. He 
 wisely maintained that the denunciation of religion was 
 irrelevant to co-operative ends. His son, Mr. Toulmin Smith, 
 became a man of eminence as a black-letter lawyer and 
 author of remarkable works on municipal and parliamentary 
 government. 
 
 A writer who really contributed accurate information on 
 many subjects employed the instructive signature of a 
 " Student of Realities," whose name was Vieussieu, a gentle- 
 man in official employment at Somerset House, whose sons after 
 him took a generous and expensive interest in social progress. 
 
 In those days a small book was published separately called 
 " Outlines of the Rational System and Laws of Human 
 Nature." They were divided into five fundamental facts and 
 Twenty Laws of Human Nature. Human nature in England 
 was never so tried as it was during the first five years when 
 these were discussed in every town in the kingdom. When 
 a future generation has courage to look into this unprecedented 
 code as one of the curiosities of propagandism, it will find 
 many sensible and wholesome propositions, which nobody now 
 disputes, and sentiments of toleration and practical objects of 
 wise import. 
 
 The fifth volume of the New Moral World was enlarged 
 to sixteen pages, and published at twopence. The phrase 
 " Manual of Science " was now omitted. But it published
 
 148 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 under the head of "Physical Science'* Mr. Mackintosh's 
 " Electrical Theory of the Universe." The volume showed 
 a great increase in reports of propagandist lectures in numerous 
 towns, and bore as its large-type title, the simple name of the 
 Moral World, " New " being modestly subordinated. 
 
 " Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy " is the name ot 
 an energetic little book by Mr. J. F. Bray. It was a good 
 deal read by co-operators of the time. 
 
 There was a Social Pioneer that made its appearance in 1839, 
 printed by Mr. A. Heywood, of Manchester. It was rather 
 late in March, 1839, to bring out a Social Pioneer, thirty years 
 after those operators had been in business. In October of the 
 same year a more ambitious journal appeared, entitled the 
 Working Bee, "printed by John Green, at the Community 
 Press, Manea Fen, Cambridgeshire, for the Trustees of the 
 Hodgsonian Community Societies." It took the usual honest 
 and determined motto " He who will not work neither shall 
 he eat ; " but it turned out that those who did work did not 
 get the means of eating, there being no adequate provision 
 made for this at Manea Fen. 
 
 Volume six of the Socialist journal started with the full 
 pretentious title of The New Moral World, and the ponderous 
 sub-title of " Gazette of the Universal Community Society of 
 Rational Religionists, enrolled under Acts of Parliament 
 10 George IV., c. 56, and 4 and 5 William IV., c. 40." 
 This was the first time the movement put on a legal air. 
 The sixth volume commenced in Leeds in July, 1838. 
 
 Volume seven also continued to represent the National 
 Religionists of the L^niversal Community Society. 
 
 The eighth volume of the Moral World commenced a series 
 of a larger size than had before appeared. It was as large 
 as a moderate-sized newspaper, all in small type, and was the 
 costliest weekly journal the co-operative party had yet 
 commanded. The charge was threepence per number of 
 sixteen pages, and was printed by Joshua Hobson, in Leeds, 
 who was himself an author upon social and political questions, 
 and was well known among the politicians of Chartist times 
 as printer, and publisher also, of the Northern Star. The year 
 1840 was the culminating period of the Socialist advocacy. 
 The expectation of a new community being near its establish-
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 149 
 
 ment brought an accession of writers to the Moral World ; 
 and the eighth volume was edited with spirit. The articles 
 had a general and literary character. 
 
 In volume nine, which commenced January, 1841, the 
 Rational Religionists still confronted the public on the 
 title-page. 
 
 Volume ten was a serious issue, abounding in addresses 
 and Congress reports, animated a little by reviews and accounts 
 of provincial and metropolitan lectures. It commenced in 
 July, 1841, and ended June, 1842. Never despairing, early 
 in the volume, the editor again commenced to give directions 
 how to obtain the millennium, although it had arrived and had 
 had its own way some years previously. In October, 1841, 
 the printing of the Moral World was brought back to London 
 after wandering in the wilderness of Manchester, of Birming- 
 ham, and of Leeds five years. 
 
 The eleventh volume let slip one of its anchors. It began 
 with the simpler sub-title " Gazette of the Rational Society." 
 The Rational Religionists peremptorily disappeared. Whether 
 they had sworn themselves into disrepute, they having taken 
 to oath-taking, or found it onerous to maintain its clerical 
 pretensions which raised the very questions of religious con- 
 troversy which it was the duty of the society to avoid, was 
 never explained. 
 
 The twelfth volume continued to mankind the comfort 
 of knowing that there was in their midst one " Rational 
 Society." Of course the meaning was that the society aimed 
 at promoting rational conditions of life, and it was well that 
 there should be some persons pledged to find out these 
 conditions if possible. But unfortunately the name did not 
 represent the aspiration, but seemed to express the fact ; and 
 " Rational Society " was not a fortunate term. 
 
 The thirteenth volume of the New Moral World, the largest 
 and last of the official issue, commenced on June 29, 1844. 
 The end, for a time, of all things communistic was then 
 casting its ominous shadows before. In February, 1845, this 
 journal was first printed at the Community Press, by John 
 Melson, for the governor and company of Harmony Hall, 
 Stockbridge, Hants. The last number printed there appeared 
 on August 23, 1845. The type was sold, and bought by Mr.
 
 150 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 James Hill, who bought also the second title " Gazette of the 
 Rational Society." Mr. Hill contended that he had bought 
 the copyright of the paper. The title New Moral World 
 Mr. Owen claimed as his copyright, and by arrangement with 
 him, a further volume was commenced, under the title of the 
 Moral World, the word " New " was omitted, and it appeared 
 under the further editorship of Mr. Fleming. The result 
 was that on August 30, 1845, two Moral Worlds again 
 appeared, the old one being the new and the new one the old ; 
 Mr. Fleming editing the Moral World, which Mr. Owen 
 retained, and Mr. Hill editing the New Moral World, which 
 he had bought. Mr. Hill's New Moral World continued 
 to January, 1846, when he merged it into a new paper 
 entitled the Commonweal. It ought to have borne the title 
 of the Commonsqueal, for it shrieked. Under the words, 
 " Gazette of the Rational Society," which Mr. Hill retained, 
 was printed Mr. Owen's motto : " Any general character, 
 from the best to the worst, may be given to any community 
 by the application of proper means, which are to a great extent 
 under the control of those who have influence in the affairs 
 of men." Underneath this Mr. James Hill placed his rival 
 and refutatory motto : " It must certainly then be concluded 
 that 'proper means' have not been applied, since such means 
 to a great extent have been ' under the control ' of Mr. Owen 
 and those who have had influence in the affairs of the Rational 
 Society." Mr. Hill himself had been an educational and 
 social reformer of no mean note in his time. His Star in the 
 East had been a journal of great interest and great instruction, 
 but he had a faculty for vigorous and varied disputation, which 
 grew by what it fed upon. He was a writer of ability and 
 flexibility, who attacked with great celerity any one who 
 dissented from him ; and if disputation could be entertaining 
 of itself the new issue in his alien hands would have been the 
 most alluring of the series. 
 
 The fourteenth volume of the Moral World suspended the 
 profession of being the gazette of the Rational Society, which 
 it appears was after all a saleable title, since Mr. Hill certainly 
 bought and continued to use it, long after the society was 
 practically extinct. Mr. Fleming described his new volume as 
 the " advocate of the Rational System of Society, as founded
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 151 
 
 by Robert Owen." It was printed by McGowan and Com- 
 pany, the printers of the Northern Star, in London. Only 
 eleven numbers of this volume were issued. 
 
 The close of 1845 and the early months of 1846 introduced 
 to the social reader a new journal, bearing the ambitious and 
 provoking title of the Herald of Progress. Mr. John Cramp 
 was the projector and editor of it. The present writer was 
 one among the contributors after it commenced. 
 
 During these later years there was collateral activity in 
 social literature in several quarters, but Co-operation seldom 
 attracted attention. Mr. Frederick Bate published in 1841 
 a play, in five acts, entitled " The Student." Mr. Goodwyn 
 Barmby, a poet who possessed real lyrical power, an advocate 
 of original tastes, hung up his hat in the social hall, where no 
 hat save his could hang. He married " Kate," the clever 
 correspondent of the New Moral World. Mr. Barmby founded 
 a Communist church, and gave many proofs of boldness and 
 courage. He and Dr. George Bird, who afterwards obtained 
 professional eminence in medicine, issued a prospectus of the 
 London Communist Propagandist Society. Dr. Bird con- 
 tributed the best literary reviews which appeared in social 
 publications of the day. Mr. Lewis Masquerier, of New 
 York, was a frequent correspondent, known from 1836 as 
 a fertile and original author of social works, and was dis- 
 tinguished as a leader of the land reformers of America, who 
 took for their motto certain famous words from Jefferson, 
 namely, "The mass of mankind has not been born with 
 saddles on their back, for a favoured few booted and spurred, 
 ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God." 
 
 In 1840 the Fourierites established in London a paper called 
 the Morning Star, edited by Mr. Hugh Doherty, a writer who 
 had puzzled the readers of the Moral World through many 
 a wearying column. He entitled his journal A Phalansterian 
 Gazette of Universal Principles and Progressive Association. Its 
 sources of authority were the book of Scripture and the book 
 of Nature. Dr. Doherty published works of value afterwards 
 to those who accept Fourierist principles. 
 
 In 1842 a magazine, entitled The Union, and Monthly 
 Record of Moral, Social, and Educational Progress, was edited by 
 Mr. G. A. Fleming. It contained papers from the fertile and
 
 152 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 ingenious pen of "Pencil'em," by January Searle, Charles 
 Lane, Charles Bray, and a writer who used the name of 
 Arthur Walbridge, who wrote a story of " Torrington Hall," 
 and a very suggestive book on " Social Definitions " ; and 
 anonymous papers by eminent and popular writers, whose 
 names the editor suppressed on the uninteresting principle 
 that truth should stand unsupported by names which might 
 induce people to look at it. Reformers in those days took 
 pride in adopting all the means they could to prevent the truth 
 they had in hand becoming popular, and then complained that 
 it had few friends. 
 
 In 1843 there appeared a publication entitled the New Age, 
 a less pretentious title than the New Moral World. The 
 New Age was also called the Concordian Gazette. It represented 
 a small band of mystics, who were inspired by James Pierrepont 
 Greaves, one of whose doctrines was, " as man cannot do right 
 when he himself is wrong, a right nature must be superadded 
 to him in order to establish right institutions in society." One 
 of the conditions, as Mr. Greaves would say, were pure air, 
 simple food, exercise, and cold water, which he contended were 
 much more beneficial to man than any doctrinal creeds, or 
 churches, chapels, or cathedrals. Mr. Greaves was seldom 
 so clear and intelligible as this. He was himself the most 
 accomplished, pleasant, and inscrutable mystic which this 
 country has produced. He possessed competence, which enables 
 a man to be unintelligible and yet respected. An American 
 gentleman, Mr. H. G. Wright, who was a natural Greaves, 
 described him as possessed of "a lofty forehead, a well- 
 defined contour, a nose inclined to the aquiline, a deep, 
 sonorous, slightly nasal voice, a stature rather above the middle 
 height, and a marvellous eye. Mystery, God, Fathomlessness, 
 all were written upon him." A man of mark, after his kind, 
 it must be owned. 
 
 The disciples of Mr. Greaves took premises at Ham 
 Common, in Surrey, which they called Alcott House. The 
 society was called the First Concordian. It was also the last. 
 Their two best writers were Charles Lane, who dated from 
 Concord, Massachusetts, and Goodwyn Barmby. The New 
 Age, its organ, was very intelligently edited, but was discontinued 
 when it had existed little more than a year and a half, on the
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 153 
 
 ground that "no book could represent what was passing in that 
 establishment. Even the proceedings of a single day were 
 found to be of far greater moment than could be transcribed 
 or recorded in any work whatever." Those who visited the 
 Concordian were certainly not of this opinion. The inmates 
 were scrupulously clean, temperate, transcendental, offensive 
 to any one who ate meat, attached to Quakers, especially white 
 ones, repudiated even salt and tea, as stimulants, and thought 
 most of those guests who ate their cabbage uncooked. They 
 preached abstinence from marriage, and most things else. 
 Their cardinal doctrine was that happiness was wrong. The 
 managing director, Mr. William Oldham, was called Pater, 
 and, like Howard, preferred damp sheets to dry ones. Mr. 
 Lane invited the Pater to join the Shakers at Harvard, 
 Massachusetts, where he would find no want of liberty to 
 carry out his self-denying plans to the utmost. A very little 
 liberty is sufficient to do nothing in, and a very small space 
 would have enabled the society to carry out its only experiment, 
 which consisted in standing still in a state of submission to the 
 Spirit until it directed them what to do. Mr. Greaves' disciples, 
 however, had the great merit of pausing before they did 
 anything until they had found out why thev should do it, 
 a doctrine which would put a stop to the mischievous activitv 
 of a great many people, it thoughtfully followed. 
 
 So late as 1843 Mr. G. A. Fleming and Mr. Lloyd Jones 
 opposed the Anti-Corn Law League. An active representative 
 of the school, Mr. Ironside, a well-known partisan of Socialism 
 in Sheffield, reported on one occasion that he had been to hear 
 Dr. Smiles, editor of the Leeds Times, lecture on Complete 
 Suffrage, and "was at a loss to imagine how Socialists could 
 waste their time in listening to expositions of such petty 
 measures as these." 
 
 The Central Board issued charters authorising the foundation 
 of branches in the different towns, when satisfied as to the zeal 
 and respectability of the parties making application for them ; 
 which long hung up in places of honour in some of the old 
 halls. Occasionally a grand notification was made to the 
 branches of the Association of All Classes of All Nations, and 
 to all others whom it might concern, running thus : " Whereas, 
 the Congress of the Association [with the far-reaching name]
 
 154 
 
 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 did, for the more extensive and systematic diffusion of the 
 social principles, divide Great Britain and Ireland into certain 
 districts with missionary stations ; and whereas a memorial has 
 been presented to the Central Board from the branch of the 
 Association, situate at Sheffield, requesting that that town may 
 be made a missionary station, and that a district may be assigned 
 for the labours of the missionary. Now, therefore, we, the 
 Central Board, in pursuance and by virtue of the power and 
 authority vested in us by the Congress, and in consideration of 
 the memorial hereinbefore mentioned, do hereby make the 
 following revision of the districts : that is to say, the town of 
 Sheffield, and generally that part of the county of York not 
 included in the Leeds district, to be taken from the Manchester 
 district ; the towns of Derby and Nottingham, and generally 
 the county of Nottingham, and that part of the county of 
 Derby north of a line drawn immediately south of the town 
 of Derby, to be taken from the Birmingham district ; and the 
 county of Lincoln to be taken from the London district ; and, 
 further, we do hereby order and determine that the counties 
 and parts of counties and towns so taken from the said districts 
 shall constitute a new district, to be called the Sheffield district, 
 which shall comprise : 
 
 Sheffield 
 
 Spalding 
 
 Ashbourn 
 
 Rotherham 
 
 Market Deeping 
 
 Belper 
 
 Doncaster 
 
 Bourn 
 
 Wirksworth 
 
 Barnsley 
 
 Folkingham 
 
 Cromford 
 
 Thorn 
 
 Grantham 
 
 Alfreton 
 
 Barton-upon-Humber 
 
 Lincoln 
 
 Mansfield 
 
 Great Grimsby 
 
 Gainsborough 
 
 Bakewell 
 
 Louth 
 
 East Retford 
 
 Buxton 
 
 Market Rasen 
 
 Newark 
 
 Dionfield 
 
 Boston 
 
 Nottingham 
 
 Chesterfield 
 
 Holbeach 
 
 Derby 
 
 Worksop " 
 
 This was the extent of my diocese when I was appointed 
 Social Missionary for Sheffield. 
 
 Then they did "furthermore order and determine" certain 
 other things, not necessary here to recite. All this legal 
 pomposity could never have been of Birmingham growth. 
 The board there had acquired a Mr. Bewley, as a secretary, a 
 gentleman of capacious ways, who might have inspired those 
 extraordinary terms. The enumeration of places which com- 
 prised the district of Sheffield was, however, real. There was
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 155 
 
 work doing and to be done there. It was no uncommon thing 
 to meet in social literature a protestation that " we must not 
 be understood as advocating any sudden changes." 1 Seeing 
 how limited was its means there was no possible danger in 
 their peremptory efforts. 
 
 A disastrous peculiarity in advocacy, by which the pages of 
 co-operative journals were disfigured, was that of quoting the 
 most offensive things said against the doctrines and advocates 
 of its own party. The enemy never did that by them ; but 
 this fact never instructed them. The information the Socialist 
 editors were able to give their readers was not much. They 
 could seldom afford to pay the printer for what they did give ; 
 and yet they went to the expense of reprinting and circulating 
 among their own adherents the most unpleasant imputations 
 which embittered wit could make against them. All timid 
 adherents were alarmed when they saw these things. Half- 
 informed adherents could not possibly tell what answer could 
 be made ; and prudent readers withdrew at once from a cause 
 against which such imputations were being made, and which 
 they were called upon to circulate among their own family and 
 friends. Sharp-witted adversaries had every encouragement to 
 go on, multiplying their accusations, the publications, and 
 exhaust all the means of the society in publishing effective 
 disparagements of itself. The outside public possessed writers 
 more numerous and skilful than these semi-penniless reformers 
 could command. Such, however, was their infatuation that 
 they not only suffered the sharpshooters of the enemy to take 
 aim at their own readers from their own pages, but allowed the 
 rabble of evangelical pamphleteers and tract writers to possess 
 their gates, and to pelt them with mud and stones. 
 
 On one occasion the editor, Mr. Fleming, having made a 
 vehement comment upon the Manea Fen scheme, afterwards 
 expressed his regret in a very manly way that he had violated 
 the pacific principles imposed by Socialism upon its representa- 
 tives. Imputative terms were often applied to opponents. 
 From some, it was said, " the truth was not to be expected." 
 Charges of " dishonesty," of " wilful misrepresentation " were 
 made, which obliges all the friends a man of honour has to 
 come forward in his personal defence ; and enables all the 
 1 "Outlines of Various Social Systems," 1844.
 
 156 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 friends a scoundrel has to intrude themselves in the controversy. 
 Nevertheless, it ought to be said, as it honestly may, to the 
 credit of the social party, that though its leaders lacked a clear 
 grasp of principles of neutrality in invective, it was only on 
 great provocation that they spoke ill of others. Compared 
 with the vituperation and personalities of every other party, 
 political and religious, of their day, they were examples of for- 
 bearance to adversaries, who showed them no quarter. A page 
 of laughter is a better defence against a worthless adversary 
 than a volume of anger. Terms which impute want of honour 
 to others, or accuse them of conscious untruth, dishonesty, or 
 bad motives, are charges with which the judge and not the 
 journalist may deal. 
 
 When one person makes imputations of dishonesty upon 
 another, the only legitimate notice is to kick him, and nobody 
 ought to make these imputations unless he is prepared for that 
 operation being performed upon him ; and no editor ought to 
 permit such imputations unless he is prepared to recognise that 
 form of reply. 
 
 Many things, social, polemical, and progressive, with which 
 society now concerns itself, appears to have begun in one or 
 other co-operative publications ; or if not originated were 
 espoused, and publicity accorded, when they were denied any 
 hearing elsewhere. 
 
 Abram Combe called his organ of Orbiston the Register of 
 the Adherents of Divine Revelation. The editor said that 
 " Abram Combe was perfectly right in adopting whatever 
 name he thought proper, as a free and unbiassed expression of 
 his conscientious opinions." [If Mr. Combe's object was not 
 to establish a public community for public advantage, but 
 simply a group of persons for the profession of Combism he 
 was right, but the universality of communism was gone.] The 
 editor added, " We are great lovers of candour and moral 
 courage." Yet the editor, Mr. Fleming, abandoned (when 
 imprisonment overtook them) two social missionaries, the 
 present writer being one, Mr. Charles Southwell, of spirited 
 memory, was the other. I was put upon my trial for delivering 
 a lecture in Cheltenham upon " Home Colonies." It was 
 never pretended by the witnesses that the lecture was otherwise 
 than neutral, and it was admitted by the judge, Mr. Justice
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 157 
 
 Erskine, that no remark whatever was made in it which trans- 
 gressed the proper limits of the subject. In the town of 
 Cheltenham, in which it occurred, a small Socialist poet, one 
 Mr. Sperry, suspected of heresy, had been induced to recant, 
 and had then been naturally abandoned and despised by those 
 who had promised him advantage if he did so. This affair had 
 produced an impression in the town that Socialist speakers were 
 wanting either in courage or honesty, and the same feeling 
 existed in other towns. The Bishop of Exeter had really 
 frightened many. When Mr. Pare was forced to resign the 
 registrarship of Birmingham, it became a question with other 
 gentlemen, who held official situations, how far they were 
 prudent in standing connected with this party. The Central 
 Board began, under alarm, to urge the policy of theological 
 neutrality, which they ought to have adopted earlier on 
 principle. Some of the missionaries took a running leap into 
 the clerical ranks, upon which they had so long made war. 
 They obtained licenses as preachers, and advertisements were 
 issued, setting forth that lectures would be delivered to the 
 Societies of the Rational Religionists, by the "Rev. B. Swearat- 
 last " and the " Rev. J. Swearatonce." As the gifts of these 
 gentlemen were not understood to lie in this direction, this step 
 caused scandal. When, at the Cheltenham lecture referred to, 
 a question was put by one of the audience, having a theological 
 object, I gave a definite and defiant answer, which, at least in 
 that place, restored the reputation of Socialist speakers for 
 uncalculating explicitness. Neither the trial and imprisonment 
 which followed, nor the parliamentary proceedings in reference 
 to it, were ever mentioned in the New Moral World. Room 
 was found for articles on " Chinese Manure " and the " Sense 
 of Beauty," but in its Samaritan pages no reference was made 
 to the missionary, who had literally " fallen among thieves " in 
 the discharge of his official duty. Mr. Owen, the president, 
 had said to the Congress, only a month before, " When we are 
 questioned on any subject, we should declare what convictions 
 we are obliged to have. Such is the ground I mean to take. 
 What I have told you is my determination, and, though not a 
 single individual go with me, I shall pursue the same course." 1 
 A special Congress was held during the imprisonment of the 
 New Moral World, May 28, 184 1.
 
 158 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 missionary lecturer in Gloucester Gaol, and no allusion was 
 made, no resolution proposed respecting him. The Central 
 Board addressed weekly its "Friends, Brothers, and Sisters" 
 upon many subjects, but they never suggested that some help 
 might be needed in a certain household, though the subscrip- 
 tion of a penny a day, by the members of the board, would 
 have saved one young life in it. 
 
 What was wanted was neither defiance nor compliance, 
 unless there was a change of conviction. Then a manly and 
 explicit retraction of what errors the convert supposed himself 
 to have held was due as an act of honour ; so that the 
 abandoned opinions might no longer possess the influence, 
 whatever it might be, that his authority and example could be 
 considered to lend to them. 
 
 The Hall of Science, in Manchester, was registered in the 
 Bishop's Court as a place of worship belonging to a body of 
 Protestant Dissenters called " Rational Religionists," and by 
 that means it was brought under the Act of Parliament which 
 licensed it to be open for divine worship. This Act rendered 
 all who officiated in the building liable to be called upon to 
 take the following oath : 
 
 I solemnly declare, in the presence of Almighty God, that 
 / am 
 
 First. A Christian, and 
 
 Second. A Protestant ; that as such, / believe 
 Third. The scriptures of the New and Old Testament 
 commonly received among the Protestant churches, do contain 
 the revealed Word of God ; and that I do receive 
 
 Fourth. The same as the rule of my doctrine and practice. 
 Mr. Swearatlast (Robert Buchanan) took this oath in 
 Manchester. Mr. Maude, the magistrate, who administered 
 it, first demanded to know whether this was an oath binding 
 on his conscience, and whether he really believed in a future 
 state after death of rewards and punishments ? This mission- 
 ary, who had been several years lecturing against every one of 
 these points, as one of the expounders of " truth without 
 mystery, mixture of error, or the fear of man," replied that he 
 did believe in all these things, and that the oath was binding 
 upon his conscience. The Central Board never repudiated 
 the missionaries who thus lied in open court before the whole
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 159 
 
 city. Indeed, the editor of the New Moral World justified it 
 and stated that he would take it. Mr. Buchanan had sufficient 
 self-respect to make scruples about it. He was anxious to 
 prove to the court that he had a conscience, and to stand well 
 before the public ; and the court was adjourned to give him 
 time to make up his mind. On Tuesday, August 11, 1840, 
 he appeared, took the oath, and made the declaration under 
 19th George II., c. 44, and received his certificate of having 
 done so. 1 Mr. Fleming so far respected the moral sense of 
 his readers of the Moral JVorld as never to publish this 
 discreditable scene. Mr. Swearatonce(Mr. Lloyd Jones) gave 
 his own account of how he went through the part on 
 February 13, 1841, in Bristol. "On Tuesday I attended at 
 one o'clock for the purpose of taking the oath. The office 
 was crowded by gentlemen who seemed anxious to see the 
 performance. It passed off very comfortably. I took it with- 
 out any words. I am now, therefore, the Rev. Lloyd Jones." 
 The small capitals are the " Rev." gentleman's and the word 
 " performance " too. 2 
 
 Other gentlemen than those who were present long 
 remembered these scenes reported in the press. Many years 
 after, when the present writer was concerned in getting the 
 Secular Affirmation Bill passed through Parliament, Sir George 
 Cornewall Lewis demanded, reproachfully (looking at me as I 
 sat in the gallery of the House of Commons as he spoke), 
 "Where are your cases ? Where are the men of honour who 
 refuse the oath ? It is your free-thinker who takes it 'with- 
 out any words.' " 
 
 Those of us who had consented to act as missionaries were 
 in some sort, in our secular way, apostles of a new state of 
 society, which, we weekly assured the public by the title of 
 our accredited journal, was to be at least "moral," if not 
 otherwise notable. Then it did not become any of us so it 
 seemed to me and my colleagues of the protesting school to 
 
 1 Sun, August 14, 1840. 
 
 * These proceedings made Mr. Southwell indignant, and being a man 
 of fiery courage, he wrote an article in the Oracle of Reason (started as 
 a protest against the New Moral World policy of the day), which caused 
 his imprisonment for twelve months. He intended to defy prosecution ; 
 and Sir Charles Wetherall, who was his judge, was a man quite ready to 
 meet him half-way in supplying it. Mr. Southwell was imprisoned in 
 Bristol and I in Gloucester Gaol.
 
 160 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 fall, in self-respecting honour, below those other apostles with 
 whose teaching we were in many respects " non-content." 
 Though sincerity does not imply errorlessness, it gives 
 dignity to those who profess error honestly. The Christian 
 apostles had this personal dignity. It seemed to me, for one, 
 that we had no moral right to dissent from them publicly, 
 were we content to advance our cause by meaner means than 
 theirs. We could not be their equals in advantage. Our 
 inspiration was not owing to contact with a celestial teacher : 
 but it was in our power to be their equals in honesty, and 
 refuse to profess the opinions we did not hold, whatever peril, 
 or personal loss, or social discomfort followed. We were to 
 teach " truth without mixture of error." Even when we follow 
 mathematical truth dealing with definite and palpable magni- 
 tude we travel but a short way, into the realms of certainty ; 
 while in moral and social things where "sense is narrow and 
 reason frail " who can fathom truth without error ; or escape 
 the need of hourly precaution, qualification, and moderation ? 
 We were to teach "without fear of man." That was 
 the one thing possible in the humblest advocates. Fear- 
 lessness of man in the discharge of the duty of speaking in 
 the spirit of relevance, conceding the same freedom to others 
 that was within our power. To fail herein before the 
 world, in the publicity of a court of law, where persecution 
 gave us the priceless opportunity of winning respect, seemed 
 alike a failure of policy and honour. 
 
 He has no claim to free speech unless his object is to utter 
 true speech and to maintain veracity among the people by 
 example. Though I never took an oath of any kind in my 
 life, since I could not take it in the sense in which the court 
 administered it, yet I am no fanatic against oaths, and respect 
 those who take them sincerely. The common instinct of 
 society respects the memory of those poor and humble 
 religionists of despised sects, who, having hardly any grace but 
 that of sincerity, have suffered torture and death rather than 
 say the thing which was not. Socialists who professed to intro- 
 duce a higher morality were bound to set an equal example. 
 Addison usefully tells us of Euripides that : " The great tragic 
 poet, though famous for the morality of his plays, had intro- 
 duced a person who, being reminded of an oath he had taken,
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC PERIOD 161 
 
 replied, * / swore with my mouth, but not with my heart.'' The 
 impiety of this sentiment set the audience in an uproar ; made 
 Socrates (though an intimate friend of the poet) go out of the 
 theatre with indignation, and gave so great offence that he was 
 publicly accused and brought upon his trial, as one who had 
 suggested an evasion of what they thought the most holy and 
 indissoluble bond of human society, so jealous were these 
 virtuous heathens of any the smallest hint that might open a 
 way to perjury." 
 
 It was to the credit of Socialism that the oath-talcing related 
 led to a schism in the party. Undoubtedly we did harm of 
 one kind at the time. In setting up a new camp we 
 weakened the force which held the recognised co-operative 
 fort ; and those who may be influenced by our example should 
 weigh well the responsibility we incurred, and be satisfied 
 whether we were justified in our course before they imitate us. 
 
 Others, as stout Mr. Finlay, of Edinburgh, and Mr. Pater- 
 son, then of the same city, Mr. Adams and Mrs. Adams, of 
 Cheltenham, not missionaries but of the party, underwent 
 imprisonment on the same account. Dr. Watts, Mr. Jeffery, 
 and Mr. Farn, who were all missionaries, rendered every help 
 in their power to sustain the protesters. Mrs. Emma Martin 
 fearlessly aided. Nor will I omit to mention, with what 
 honour I can, my untiring friends in the Gloucester affair 
 Maltus Questell Ryall, a man remarkable alike for ability and 
 courage, and William Chilton also. Both cared for Socialist 
 honour ; no personal peril intimidated them from vindicating 
 it. 
 
 It was the intention of the opponents of the propagation of 
 social views to close the halls by forcing the oath described 
 upon the lecturers. The Rev. Mr. Kidd, and some other 
 divines, took the step of indicting the owners of the halls for 
 receiving money for admission at the doors. As the partisans 
 of Co-operation were not wealthy, and incurred expense 
 beyond their means in disseminating their views, it was only 
 by taking admission money at the doors, that they could 
 maintain their advocacy. The clergy knew this, and calcu- 
 lated that if they could prevent admission money being taken, 
 they would succeed in closing the hall. It was a shabby, but 
 a well-calculated proceeding. Accordingly, they did lodge an 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 162 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 indictment against the hall owners in Manchester, for 
 receiving money at the doors. They found an Act of 
 Parliament of the reign of George III. (fruitful in infamous 
 Acts), which levied serious fines upon the conductors of halls if 
 money was taken at the door on the Sunday, unless such hall 
 was licensed as a place of worship. The Rev. Mr. Kidd's 
 prosecution failed, the directors producing a license which 
 described it as the authorised place of worship of the Rational 
 Religionists. But, as the speakers in a licensed hall must be 
 licensed preachers, Mr. Kidd next prosecuted the lecturer at 
 the hall, who, we have seen, eventually took the oath. Mr. 
 Kidd thus triumphed. 
 
 In various halls in the country to this day money is taken 
 without their being licensed, and addresses are delivered by 
 lecturers who never took anv oath as preachers ; but, owing to 
 the ignorance or generosity of the clergy, no legal steps are 
 taken against them, which, if taken, must have the effect of 
 degrading the speaker or closing their proceedings. These 
 Georgian Acts are still in existence, and persons of pernicious 
 intent still put them in force. A few years since eminent 
 scientific teachers in London, Huxley among them, were 
 prevented by them from instructing the people on the Sunday. 
 The Aquarium at Brighton was closed by them on the same 
 day ; and in no Co-operative Hall is it legal to take money for 
 lectures or even a tea-party on the Sunday, and the most 
 valued forms of co-operative life are arrested by those clerical 
 laws. Thus Co-operation has not only to be judged by what 
 it has done, but what it has been prevented doing. 
 
 Amid the crowds of incidents and of persons, in connection 
 with this movement, many remain unnamed lest the weight of 
 detail oppress the reader. Where two events or two persons 
 equally serve to explain the story, like the two women grind- 
 ing at the same mill, one is taken, and the other left.
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 163 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 
 
 " Seeing that human society labours under a chronic want of disinte- 
 restedness and mutual consideration on the part of its members, there is 
 a demand for select or heightened pictures of love, devotedness, and 
 sympathy, as an ideal compensation." Professor Baix. 
 
 It is a long time since Joseph de Maistre declared that " the 
 human race was created for a few, that it is the business of the 
 clergy and the nobility to teach the people that which is evil 
 and good in the moral world, and that which is true and false 
 in the intellectual world. Other men have no right to reason 
 upon such things : the people must suffer without murmur- 
 ing." In these days the people decline to suffer. They resent 
 the infliction of suffering upon them. They see that the 
 inequalities of nature are made greater by the wilful con- 
 trivances of men. The people protest against inferiority being 
 imposed upon them. They see that some men by opportunity, 
 energy, and enterprise are able to forfend themselves against 
 suffering. The people endeavour to equalise opportunities 
 for themselves by the establishment of communities. Though 
 they have not much to show for their efforts, they set a self- 
 helping example. Their failures are not to be mourned over, 
 but imitated. France, which for years held political 
 supremacy in Europe, lost it by the conspiracy of an 
 imperial adventurer, who happened to possess a talent for 
 assassination. 
 
 Though France, in its own brilliant and insurgent way, has 
 borne the palm of distinction for the propagandism of social 
 reform, England in a quieter way has shown the capacity for 
 comprehending equality. A distinguished lawyer, who had
 
 164 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 great knowledge of the municipal history of his country, the 
 late Toulmin Smith, of Birmingham, in his great book on the 
 " History of Early English Guilds," traced the social features 
 of English life with a research in which he had no compeer. 
 His daughter, Lucy Toulmin Smith, in the befitting preface 
 which she supplies to her father's work, states that the early 
 " English guild was an institution of local self-help which, before 
 Poor Laws were invented, took the place, in old times, of the 
 modern friendly or benefit society, but with a higher aim. It 
 joined all classes together in a care for the needy and for objects 
 of common welfare." 
 
 " Guilds," says this authoress, " were associations of those 
 living in the same neighbourhood, and remembering that they 
 have, as neighbours, common obligations, regarding love to 
 one's neighbour, not as a hollow dogma of morality, but known 
 and felt as a habit of life." 
 
 It is also worthy of notice in these days, in which we flatter 
 ourselves that social reform is being born that there were 
 " scarcely five out of the five hundred gilds known to history 
 which were not formed equally of men and of women." The 
 British Association for the Advancement of Science has 
 admitted ladies to read papers at its meetings. This has been 
 counted an astonishing step. It is creditable, but not astonish- 
 ing, seeing that in the old social days English women were 
 counted upon to take part in the civil progress of the city. 
 Many women who take part in these movements think it a new 
 thing ; and many more, who stand aloof, think it unwomanly, 
 not knowing that they are merely the degenerate daughters of 
 noble mothers who thought it their duty to take a public part 
 in the duties of society. 
 
 In 1870 the Deputy Johann Jacoby, addressing his con- 
 stituents in the Second Arrondissement of Berlin, said : "The 
 great end before the people is the abolition of the wage system, 
 and the substitution in its place of co-operative labour." The 
 late Mr. Frederick Cowell Stepney, a great friend of British 
 and foreign workmen, said, in their behalf, that " The emanci- 
 pation of the working classes must come from the working 
 classes themselves. The struggle for the emancipation of the 
 workman is not a struggle for class privileges, but for the 
 obliteration of all class dominion. It is, therefore, worth while
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 165 
 
 looking a little at some Lost Communities, whose romantic 
 story has instruction and encouragement in it. 
 
 When the tireless Welsh reformer, of whom we have spoken, 
 was one day dining at the house of a Frankfort banker, he met 
 a renowned German statesman, Frederick Von Gentz. " I 
 am in favour of seeing a social progress commence," said Mr. 
 Owen, " for if union could replace disunion, all men would 
 have a sufficiency." " That is very possible," replied Von 
 Gentz ; " but we by no means wish that the masses should 
 become at ease and independent of us. All government 
 would then be impossible." This was the old idea of the 
 higher classes. Every one sees now that government will never 
 be secure until competence and independence are enjoyed by 
 the people. 
 
 When the term "Social Science" was first employed in 
 England it sounded as the most visionary word dreaming 
 philosophy had suffered to escape in its sleep. Statesmen had 
 none of that quality which scientific men call prevision a 
 compassing foresight, seeing what ought to happen, and taking 
 care that it should happen. Society was a sort of legally 
 arranged blunder, the costly device of public incompetence. 
 We are still in that state that Fourier used to call our 
 "incoherent civilisation." It is from this that community 
 contrivers strive to deliver us. 
 
 A Pantisocracy was the idea of cultivated men, a name 
 derived from Greek words, implying a state in which all 
 govern and all serve. This is one of the prettiest definitions 
 of association extant. Communities on a superstitious basis 
 have hitherto been the most successful. It is easier to trust in 
 what you are told than to find out what you ought to trust in. 
 Science is the latest born power of the understanding. The 
 knowledge of it, belief in it, the use of it, and the trust in it, 
 are of slow growth. Reality seems to be the last thing men 
 learn. When they do come to comprehend its nearness, its 
 importance, its influence over their destiny, men will avail 
 themselves of its teachings. There will be heard then from 
 platform and pulpit words of passion, of power, of fiery counsel, 
 such as fitful, fluctuating belief in unseen influences have 
 never yet called forth. 
 
 It is quite true, as Italians say, "he who has a partner has a
 
 1 66 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 master " ; and this is true of marital partnership, yet men and 
 women enter gladly into it. All association is sacrifice of minor 
 things for the attainment of greater. In religious societies 
 sacrifice is made by authority, in secular association the 
 authority is common sense, and that is not common. The 
 reason of every great step has to be made plain to the general 
 understanding. As intelligence increases association becomes 
 more possible. Co-operation to the extent it now prevails 
 was impossible, until later years. Association is still an almost 
 unknown art. Religious communists have sought peace and 
 plainness, security and competence. Secular communists seek 
 peace and art, intelligence and prosperity. Intelligent indi- 
 viduality will exceed anything hitherto realised by communities 
 of mere industry and faith. 
 
 One who gave the English people the earliest and the first 
 unprejudiced account of American communities, Harriet 
 Martineau, says : " If such external provision, with a great 
 amount of accumulated wealth besides, is the result of 
 Co-operation and community of property among persons so ill 
 prepared for its production as these, what might not the same 
 principles of association achieve, among a more intelligent set 
 of people, stimulated by education, and exhilarated by the 
 enjoyment of all the blessings which Providence has placed 
 within the reach of man ? If there had been no celibacy 
 amongst them they would probably have been much more 
 wealthy. The truth of these positions cannot be doubted by 
 any who have witnessed the working of the co-operative 
 svstem. It can never now rest till it is made matter of 
 experiment." x 
 
 Communities are, as yet, in their infancy. There are two 
 causes which account for the failure of many of them. 
 
 First. The want of sufficient capital to maintain the place for 
 a few years on a frugal scale, until the members could be 
 trained in self-supporting efficiency. 
 
 Second. Members were not picked men, nor pledged to 
 obey the authority established among them, and readily re- 
 movable if unsuitable. 
 
 Schemes of social life require the combination of means and 
 intelligence, and have to be attempted many times before they 
 1 Society in America.
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 167 
 
 succeed. Could the present railway system have been perfected 
 in the minds of inventors at the beginning of the century, it 
 could not have been got into work, for no workmen were to 
 be had of sufficient skill to make the engines or conduct the 
 traffic. 
 
 The most sensible account given of the English system by a 
 foreigner is that which Buonarroti made at the end of his long 
 life in a letter to Mr. Bronterre O'Brien. 
 
 " Babeuf," he said, " attempted to combine a numerous 
 people into one single grand community ; Owen would 
 multiply in a country small communities, which, afterwards 
 united by a general bond, might become, as it were, so many 
 individuals of one great family. Babeuf wished his friends to 
 seize on the supreme authority, as by its influence he hoped to 
 effectuate the reforms they had projected ; Owen calculated on 
 success by preaching and by example." 
 
 Mr. David Urquhart, a writer who never fails to interest the 
 reader, and to whom the public are indebted for much out-of- 
 the-way knowledge, gave in his work on " Turkey and its 
 Resources," in 1833, a remarkable account of the great 
 Co-operative Society of Ambelakia, whose varied activity was 
 a miracle of co-operative sagacity. It would have continued 
 had there been a court of law in which questions in dispute 
 could be speedily and cheaply settled. It has been the fate of 
 Co-operation often to be, not only before its time, but before 
 the law. 
 
 "Ambelakia," says Mr. Urquhart, " is the name of a spot 
 overlooking the Vale of Tempe, where an extraordinary 
 association had a brilliant existence of twenty years. ... I 
 extract," says Mr. Urquhart, "from Beaujour's 'Tableau du 
 Commerce de la Grecque ' the details he has preserved respecting 
 it, in as far as they were confirmed to me by the information I 
 obtained on the spot. 
 
 " Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of 
 Holland than a village of Turkey. This village spreads, by 
 its industry, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to 
 an immense commerce which unites Germany to Greece. Its 
 population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at present 
 (1798) to 4,000, who live in their manufactories like swarms 
 of bees in their hives. The Ambelakiot faces are serene ; the
 
 168 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 slavery which blasts the plains watered by the Penens, and 
 stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides of Pelion 
 (Ossa) ; and they govern themselves, like their ancestors, by 
 their protoyeros (primates, elders), and their own magistrates. 
 Twice the Mussulmans of Larissa attempted to scale their 
 rocks, and twice were they repulsed by hands which dropped 
 the shuttle to seize the musket. 
 
 " Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the 
 factories ; whilst the men dye the cotton, the women prepare 
 and spin. There are twenty-four factories. This yarn found 
 its way into Germany, and was disposed of at Buda, Vienna, 
 Leipsic, Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth. The Ambelakiot 
 merchants had houses of their own in all those places. These 
 houses belonged to distinct associations at Ambelakia. The 
 competition thus established reduced very considerably the 
 common profits ; they proposed, therefore, to unite themselves 
 under one central commercial administration. The lowest 
 shares in this joint-stock company were between j6oo and 
 ^700, and the highest were restricted, that the capitalists 
 might not swallow up all the profits. The workmen subscribed 
 their little profits, and, uniting in societies, purchased single 
 shares ; and besides their capital, their labour was reckoned in the 
 general amount ; they received their share of the profits 
 accordingly, and abundance was soon spread through the whole 
 community. 
 
 " Never was a society established upon such economical 
 principles, and never were fewer hands employed for the 
 transaction of such a mass of business. 
 
 " The greatest harmony long reigned in the association ; the 
 directors were disinterested, the correspondents zealous, and 
 the workmen docile and laborious. The company's profits 
 increased every day on a capital which had rapidly become 
 immense ; each investment realised a profit of from 60 to 
 100 per cent., all of which was distributed, in just pro- 
 portions, to capitalists and tvorkmen, according to capital 
 and industry. The shares had increased tenfold." 1 
 
 Mr. Urquhart's estimate of the causes of failure gives, first, 
 "the too great extension of the municipal body, its consequent 
 loss of activity and control, and the evasion of responsibility by 
 ' Chap. iv. p. 46, of his work named.
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 169 
 
 the managers ; secondly, the absence of judicial authority to 
 settle in their origin disputes and litigated interests, which, in 
 the absence of law, could only be decided by the violence of 
 faction. 
 
 " That the exclusion of the workmen from a due influence in 
 the administration, and share in the profits, was the real cause 
 of the breaking up of the commercial association, is established 
 by the fact of the workmen separating themselves into small 
 societies." 
 
 That is a very important statement Mr. Urquhart makes, 
 namely, that " the exclusion of the workmen from a due 
 influence in the administration and share in the profits was the 
 real cause of the breaking up of the association." 
 
 The Ambelakiots had, however, many points worthy of 
 modern notice. They were citizens as well as co-operators, 
 and fought when occasion required for independence. Thev 
 understood the theory of industrial partnerships better than any 
 modern companies do, and profits were divided between 
 capital and labour long before modern discussions arose upon 
 that subject. 
 
 More modern instances, however, claim our attention. No 
 one should accuse Socialists of wanting in intrepidity when 
 they settled down on the banks of the Wabash of Indiana, 
 which the much-enduring German celibates were deserting. 
 
 New Harmony a name never applicable to it, but in- 
 herited consisted of 30,000 acres of land, purchased by Mr. 
 Owen in April, 1825. In 1822 it was peopled by 700 persons, 
 who had previously occupied a back settlement in Pennsylvania, 
 near Pittsburg, and were chiefly German emigrants. They 
 had had for their spiritual teacher and temporal director Mr. 
 Rapp. They were ignorant, bigoted, despised intellectual 
 attainments, and were celibates. They greatly enriched 
 themselves, and might have multiplied their wealth, as we 
 have seen, had they multiplied themselves. " New Harmony " 
 stood in a thickly-wooded country on the banks of the Wabash 
 and about thirty miles from the mouth of that river. The site 
 of New Harmony was generally flat for about a mile and a 
 half from the river ; but the neighbouring hills were covered 
 with vineyards and orchards. The Wabash here was an 
 ample stream, winding its course in front of the town and
 
 170 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 beneath the luxuriant and lofty woods on the opposite banks 
 of the Illinois. The town was well laid out in straight and 
 spacious streets, crossing each other at right angles, after the 
 manner of modern American towns. There were excellent 
 wells in this Wabash settlement, and public ovens at convenient 
 distances from each other. There were well-built granaries, 
 barns, and factories, and a pretty village church, the white 
 steeple of which was pleasantly seen from afar. Mr. Owen 
 explained his intended plan of proceedings in the House of 
 Representatives at Washington, an opportunity which would 
 not be accorded to the angel Gabriel of speaking in the 
 Houses of Parliament in London, if he contemplated founding 
 a settlement on the Thames. In three months Mr. Owen 
 was joined by upwards of 900 individuals, which further 
 increased, and notice had to be given to prevent more persons 
 coming. 
 
 Lord Brougham, being asked (about 1826) to give his 
 opinion of schemes of industrial societies, answered : " Co- 
 operation will, by and by, do for the worst, but it must begin 
 with picked men." The Indiana communists were not of 
 this description. In fact, they were advertised for. Notice 
 was given that all ready to join the new system of society 
 might make their way to the banks of the Wabash, and all 
 who came were accepted, just as though you could begin the 
 New World with a job lot. As was to be expected, the men 
 of good sense were ultimately overwhelmed by the mass of 
 wayward adherents, composed, in the words of Mr. Horace 
 Greeley, for the most part of " the conceited, the crotchety, 
 the selfish, the headstrong, the pugnacious, the unappreciated, 
 the played-out, the idle, and the good-for-nothing generally, 
 who, discovering themselves utterly out of place and at a 
 discount in the world as it is, rashly conclude that they are 
 exactly fitted for the world as it ought to be." Nevertheless, 
 the men of good sense ruled at first, and prevailed interrnittingly 
 throughout. A committee was appointed to govern this 
 heterogeneous assemblage of 1,000 Republicans. It is clear 
 they had business instincts, for the first thing they did was to 
 pass a resolution " that no spirituous liquors shall be retailed in 
 New Harmony ; " and this resolution has been repeated in 
 every great co-operative society down to this day.
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 171 
 
 For the first forty years of their career no clergyman, with 
 a character to lose, would guarantee them Christian charity. 
 St. Peter was apprised to have a sharp eye upon them if they 
 came to his gate. Yet these Socialists were not wan tin o- in 
 self-denial, which the very elect, who sat in judgment upon 
 them, often failed to practise ; and they were resolute that Co- 
 operation should always mean Temperance. They had none 
 of the teetotalers' tenderness for wilful inebriates, treating them 
 with more respect than the self-sustained, self-respecting, 
 temperate man. They regarded intemperance as uneconomical. 
 They knew that drunkenness is madness at large, and in 
 countless families children and women are shut up with these 
 maniacs, and live in daily jeopardy and terror. It was better 
 to have a tiger or a snake in a community than a drunkard. 
 You could kill the beast or the reptile, but the drunkard might 
 kill you. It would not pay to manage him in a community. 
 Some knew the inebriate in every stage. In the first he is 
 amusing. Playwriters make merry with him ; comic artists 
 put his foolishness into demoralising cartoons. In the second 
 stage his officious good-nature is succeeded by suspicions, which 
 make his society a nuisance and a peril. In the third stage he 
 stabs those who oppose him, or does it on surmise of his own, 
 against which there is neither warning nor defence. The 
 foulest suspicions grow real to the inebriate. In some cases 
 daughters hear infamous accusations upon testimony apparently 
 authentic. Waste and violence mark the days of horror and 
 sorrow in the household. Little children undergo frights 
 which affect their reason (as doctors know). Working men 
 and women have been hanged for murder which mere self- 
 defence against drunken provocation has forced upon them. 
 The most brilliant men, the sweetest and most self-denying 
 women, whom suffering, weakness, or sorrow bows low, until 
 nervous exhaustion befals, come to this dreadful end. There is 
 no land of refuge, no escape for them. The fatal temptation 
 is ever in their sight. At every corner of every street that 
 which to them is the accursed spirit is blazoned. Advertise- 
 ments in newspaper or magazine carries the dreadful information 
 where can be got the dainty drink of death. The co-operators 
 had knowledge enough of the causes of sin to pity the poor 
 wretch on the inclined plane, but they would have no inclined
 
 172 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 i plane laid down in their stores. There have been drunken 
 saints and drunken sceptics, whom both sides have deplored, 
 but a drunken co-operator would be a nuisance, a scandal, and a 
 fool. Where temperance in use is the observance, moderation 
 is expected as naturally as courtesy or truth, and immoderation 
 held as infamous. 
 
 In New Harmony the religious difficulty was made to 
 submit to the co-operative conditions of liberty, conscience, and 
 criticism. The different sects ultimately met in church and 
 hall, attending as they chose, when they chose, and upon whom 
 they chose ; and preachers of all denominations had free liberty 
 to teach, and discussions are mentioned J as having occurred 
 after the morning services. 
 
 As late as 1842, New Harmony, in Indiana, was the subject 
 of report in the New Moral World. Robert Dale Owen was 
 there at that time, and stated in a speech that many of those 
 present, himself among the number, hoped to live and die 
 in New Harmony. They expected to leave their children, 
 their daughters as well as their sons, behind them, the future 
 inhabitants of the place. Mr. R. D. Owen was occupied 
 in replying to the objections of ministers of religion. The co- 
 operators would have certainly done twice as much as they 
 accomplished but for the time spent in answering clerical critics, 
 who had nothing whatever to do with their business. Mr. 
 R. D. Owen, who had not delivered a single lecture on the 
 subject of religion for ten years, condescended to answer one 
 Rev. B. Halstead, who all that time had been lecturing upon it 
 every Sunday. It cannot be said that these social reformers did 
 nothing for the future. They spent their time in writing papers 
 on theological subjects, long enough to fill the bookshelves of 
 posterity. On their own ground ministers of religion were to 
 be regarded with respect so long as they were unimputative ; 
 but religion, being an affair of individual conscience, for 
 which individuals are made responsible in the future, and not 
 the minister, he had no right to dictate opinions for which 
 another had to answer. 
 
 The absence of Mr. Robert Owen during the years when 
 personal inspiration and training were most important, was a 
 great disadvantage to the community. 
 
 1 Co-operative Magazine, r826, p. 50.
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 173 
 
 Abram Combe deserves to be ranked with Mr. Owen for 
 the cost to himself with which he strove to prove co-operative 
 life practicable. He published a periodical informing the public 
 of the progress of the Orbiston community. It was a small 
 neatly-printed paper, which he named The Register of the First 
 Society of Adherents to Divine Revelation at Orbiston^ which was 
 not very civil to all the other Christian societies, which for 
 eighteen centuries have regarded themselves as being the same 
 description of persons. Mr. Combe professed to derive his 
 principles from Mr. Owen, and appeared to treat the principal 
 things Mr. Owen had said as discoveries. These discoveries 
 Abram Combe had the merit of stating in his own wav, and 
 stating very well ; and some thought in a much more acceptable 
 form than the master had put them. The Register was the 
 least tiresome and most sensibly written of any of the publica- 
 tions of the class. There were practical articles about the 
 situation and prospects of the place, the views of the inmates, 
 the different occupations, diversions, and departments ; the pro- 
 ceedings of the theatre which was opened in Orbiston. Letters, 
 when they were good, were introduced, and extracts also from 
 private letters when they contained passages publicly interesting. 
 Notices of co-operative publications were given, and of experi- 
 ments elsewhere, commonly done in a very pleasant spirit. 
 Lectures were reported, some of which must have been well 
 worth hearing since at this time they are interesting reading. 
 
 In 1826 the Orbiston Community buildings were begun on 
 the 1 8th of March. An average of 100 men were employed. 
 The art ideas of Mr. Abram Combe were of the most sterile 
 utilitarian order. He held that " it ought always to be borne 
 in mind that the sole use and end of domestic accommodation is 
 to protect the body from painful sensations." " To me," he said, 
 "it has a slight appearance of irrationality to seek mental plea- 
 sure from such a source, seeing that liberty, security, and 
 knowledge, united with social intercourse, and confirmed by the 
 affection and esteem of all with whom we are in contact, con- 
 stitute the only source from which the wants of the mind can 
 be supplied." The excellent gentleman must have been born 
 without any sense of art in his soul. Every longing for beauty 
 in his nature must have been satisfied by the sight of mortar and 
 whitewash. What a genius poor-law commissioners missed in
 
 174 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Abram Combe ! He would have been the Pugin of bare Bethels 
 and union workhouses. He was wise in proposing the plainest 
 conveniences until prosperity was attained, but he need not 
 have struck his harp in praise of naked monotony. A building 
 was described as possessing a centre left centre and left wing 
 right centre and right wing. The left centre contained 
 about 120 private rooms. The whole building was plain, was 
 all of hewn stone, and was said to have " a rather magnificent 
 appearance," which criticism, after what we know of the 
 architect, must have been written by a gravedigger. It is, 
 however, but just to add that the Glasgow Chronicle of that day 
 said that " the rooms intended for the inmates were neat and 
 even elegant." If so there must have been some departure 
 from Mr. Combe's principle of dreariness. 
 
 Orbiston was near Hamilton. The funds for the settlement 
 were raised by a joint-stock company, and were divided into 
 two hundred shares of ^250 each, paid in quarterly instalments 
 of jTio ; Mr. Combe, of course, being the giant contributor. 
 
 The community buildings are described as situated on the 
 banks of the Calder, at that place the river being but a paltry, 
 quick, shallow, mill stream, but the banks beautiful. The 
 visitor approaching the place saw only a tall white building, 
 covered with blue slates, standing entirely by itself, without a 
 house or tree to keep it company. The general feature of the 
 spot was flat, but surrounded on all sides by near or distant, high 
 mountainous scenery. On arriving at the building one found 
 it to be plain, of great extent, and devoid of every ornament 
 yet the aim, the zeal, the sacrifices of the promotors, and the 
 hopes they inspired, made these places sacred. 
 
 Mr. Combe was described as a stout-built, middle-aged, 
 farmer-looking man, giving no indication of the general know- 
 ledge he was understood to possess ; known in Edinburgh as 
 a sharp-eyed tanner that being his business well understand- 
 ing the art of pursuing the "main chance," of a cynical turn of 
 mind, satirical and vivacious beyond either of his eminent 
 brothers. He visited New Lanark in 1820. Though he was 
 then thirty-five years of age, he experienced an entire "change 
 of mind," as complete, remarkable, and salutary as any recorded 
 in the annals of religious conversion. 
 
 Some of the many persons visiting Orbiston were naturally
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 175 
 
 disposed to make some compensation to the community for the 
 time of the members consumed in taking visitors round, and 
 they made offer of money on account of the attendants placed 
 at their disposal. This was resented in a dignified and foolish 
 article, for the community might have been eaten up, either in 
 food or time, by visitors a few curious to learn, but more 
 curious to ridicule. A charge for attendance in showing people 
 round, at so much per hour, would have been welcome to the 
 common fund. However, a very sensible suggestion was made, 
 namely, that visitors who felt desirous of serving the place 
 should purchase some article of its produce. 
 
 In the Co-operative Magazine of this period (1826) were 
 prudently published several calculations of the proportion of the 
 agriculturists, mechanics, and other workmen who should be 
 included in a community, according to the quality of land 
 which was to be occupied. There were also statements of the 
 conditions to which members were to conform in the Orbiston 
 and New Harmony communities. These calculations and 
 conditions are not devoid of historic interest as showing what 
 conceptions were entertained of the art of association, by two 
 such eminent leaders and students of it as Robert Owen and 
 Abram Combe. But it would be unfair in the historian to 
 waylay the reader with twenty pages of these technical details. 
 
 The Orbiston estate consisted of 290 acres, for which the 
 serious sum of ,20,000 was paid. The land was cold and poor, 
 and has been judged to be not worth half the money ; and an 
 additional ^20,000 was expended on buildings. An ill-assorted 
 random collection of most unsuitable persons flocked to the 
 spot, which speedily acquired from the surrounding population 
 the emphatic name of" Babylon." At its breaking up the land 
 and buildings were sold for ^16,000. But for Mr. George 
 Combe, who, at the death of his brother Abram, forced on the 
 total destruction of the concern, the foundry, with its " forge 
 and water-wheel " might yet have remained to waken the echoes 
 of that " romantic dell." Orbiston was ridding itself of its 
 idlers and its unsuitable members it was gradually con- 
 solidating itself, and would, but for the forcible legal interference 
 of the great phrenologist, have righted itself. 1 
 
 Orbiston was nearer succeeding than other European experi- 
 1 New Moral World, vol. vii. p. 995, January 4, 1840.
 
 176 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 ments. Had Mr. Abram Combe lived, his practical sense and 
 fine example, no doubt, would have sustained the community. 
 He was quite right in wasting no money on ornament in the 
 erection of the earlier buildings, but he was wrong in writing 
 against ornament ; true ornament is art, and art is pleasure ; 
 and pleasure in art is refinement, and refinement is the grace of 
 life. It was of no consequence that the buildings were plain at 
 first. The enthusiastic would be quite content if the buildings 
 were wholesome, and they might have been so contrived that 
 the addition of comeliness could have been given when there 
 was money to pay for it. Mr. Combe died of his own enthu- 
 siasm. Unfitted for much field-work, he persisted in it exces- 
 sively, even after his lungs were affected. When what he had 
 done was explained to him, he regretted that the physiology of 
 health had not been taught to him in lieu of other knowledge, 
 which could not now save him. He was a man of fine parts 
 and many personal accomplishments, and a martyr of Co- 
 operation. 
 
 Subsequently Mr. William Thompson arose, with whose 
 name the reader is already familiar. He had a definite scheme 
 of social life in his mind, which he had given the best years of 
 his life to describe and define, and which he left his fortune to 
 forward. 
 
 In those days it was, and still is, difficult to leave money for 
 purposes of progress, not of an orthodox character. Religious 
 judges at once confiscated the bequest on the ground of alleged 
 immorality of purpose. Any persons to whom the money 
 might revert could successfully plead the lunacy of the testator. 
 Nobody believed in the sanity of any one who sought unknown 
 improvement in an untrodden way. The only way was to 
 give the means while you lived. If testators could have been 
 persuaded of this, some projected communities never attempted 
 would have been heard of, and some commenced would not 
 have been lost. 
 
 Mr. Thompson died in March, 1833, and left freehold 
 estates to the value of ^8,000 or ^10,000 to thirteen 
 trustees, to be applied in loans to communities, the pur- 
 chase of shares in communities, and the reprinting for 
 gratuitous distribution such of Mr. Thompson's works as 
 might be supposed to further co-operative objects. The heirs-
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 177 
 
 at-law disputed the will, and collections had to be made to 
 defend it. A plea of insanity was set up against Mr. Thomp- 
 son. Ultimately a decision was obtained in the Rolls Court, 
 Dublin, when the counsel for the heirs brought forward the 
 same imaginary charges of intended sexual immorality in com- 
 munity arrangements which were brought forward thirty years 
 later in the Rolls Court, London, with respect to the Queen- 
 wood community. The Cork case ended in the court taking 
 possession of the funds. 
 
 In September, 1831, announcement was made of a co- 
 operative community being established in Cork, under the 
 influence of Mr. Thompson it was intended to consist 
 of two thousand individuals. Two years before his death 
 a Congress was held in Manchester, May, 1831, for the 
 purpose of arranging the immediate formation of a com- 
 munity. The first Birmingham Co-operative Society had 
 published, in " Carpenter's Political Letter," a recommenda- 
 tion that the incipient co-operative community should be 
 upon the plan laid down by Mr. William Thompson, and that 
 application should be made to 199 other co-operative societies 
 to elect one member of community each, and supply him 
 with ^30, in order that the community should start with 
 ^6,000. Mr. Owen declined to be a party to the pettiness 
 of writing to two hundred societies only. He proposed a 
 committee for universal correspondence, and refused to have 
 his name associated with any committee which was for 
 making a beginning with a smaller sum than ^240,000. Mr. 
 Thompson had come up to London, with other gentlemen 
 resident at a distance, to promote practical operations. 1 At 
 the Manchester Congress, he wisely urged that they should 
 commence with a small experiment in proportion to their 
 possible means, and the Congress was disposed to advance 
 6,000 to him, when it could be raised upon their scheme. 
 A document was agreed to in which his plan was recom- 
 mended, but Mr. Owen, saying that ^6,000 or ^20,000 
 would be insufficient, discouraged the attempt. 
 
 In the Cork community, which Mr. Thompson meditated, 
 entire freedom of thought and expression on all subjects were 
 to prevail, guided by regard for the feelings of others ; and 
 1 Mr. Thompson's speech, London Congress, 1832. 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 178 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 entire freedom of action, not interfering with similar freedom 
 in others, were amongst the mutually guaranteed rights of 
 every member of this community. Religion was declared 
 to be the peculiar concern of the individual alone. Women 
 were to be entitled to equal means of improvement and enjoy- 
 ment, and to be equally eligible with men to all offices to 
 which their inclination or talents might lead. 
 
 Besides his famous Scotch convert, Abram Combe, Mr. 
 Owen made an Irish convert hardly less remarkable, who 
 founded an Irish community which attained greater success 
 than that of Orbiston. It was in 1830 that Mr. Vandeleur, 
 of Ralahine, devoted 618 acres to the uses of a modified 
 community on Mr. Owen's plan. His tenantry were of 
 the lowest order of Irish poor, discontented, disorderly, and 
 vicious. Mr. Vandeleur had heard Mr. Owen's lectures in 
 Dublin, and was persuaded of the suitability of his scheme 
 of co-operative agriculture for Ireland, and he did not hesitate 
 to trust his fortune in order to verify the sincerity of his 
 convictions. His expectation of success was very high, and ? 
 although he proposed to apply the co-operative principle to 
 the most unfavourable state of society in the world, it is 
 admitted on all hands that his experiment succeeded. 
 
 Strange to say, the most important application of Co- 
 operation to agriculture has occurred in the restless land of 
 potatoes and Whiteboys, amid the bogs of Ralahine. Mr. 
 William Pare published a history of this Irish experiment. 
 The sort of treatment to which farm labourers had been sub- 
 jected on the Vandeleur estate there was not calculated to 
 promote good-will. A reaper on a hot harvest day paused 
 to get a drink of water from a can, when the steward kicked 
 it over, declaring that he would not have water there as an 
 excuse for the reapers wasting their time. No wonder that 
 a few wandering shots flew about this estate : and after better 
 treatment set in, the men went out shooting as a precautionary 
 measure, but when they saw good homesteads put up for them, 
 a share of the produce of their labour secured to them, peace, 
 and even prosperity, reigned in that wretched district. This 
 patch of Irish communism is the only one that ever flourished. 
 It did not come to grief of itself; its proprietor ended it. 
 Though a gentleman of good family, Mr John Scott Vandeleur
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 179 
 
 was a gambler, and lost the co-operative farms and everything 
 else in a dice-box. He fled himself, and passed into outer dark- 
 ness, and was never more heard of by men. There being no 
 equitable land laws, such as Mr. Gladstone devised, for Ire- 
 land, the co-operators had no claims for improvement of stock, 
 and the " New Systemites," as they were called in Ireland, 
 vanished also. There is no doubt that the "system" 
 answered among the worst-used people, and under the worst 
 circumstances imaginable. The Rev. Francis Trench, brother 
 of the Archbishop of Dublin, visited the "New Systemites," 
 and not only expressed, but wrote his approval of what he saw. 
 The society had made itself rules. One was, that " no mem- 
 ber be expected to perform any service or work but such as 
 is agreeable to his or her feelings." Irish human nature must 
 not be of bad material, since both honest and disagreeable work 
 was daily done, and done cheerfully. One day a mail coach 
 traveller found a man up to his middle in water repairing 
 a dam. 
 
 " Are you working by yourself? " inquired the traveller. 
 
 " Yes," was the answer. 
 
 " Where is your steward ? " 
 
 " We have no steward." 
 
 " Who is your master ? " 
 
 " We have no master. We are on a new system." 
 
 " Then who sent you to do this work ? " 
 
 " The committee," replied the man in the dam. 
 
 " Who is the committee ? " asked the mail coach visitor. 
 
 " Some of the members." 
 
 " What members do you mean ? " 
 
 " The ploughman and labourers who are appointed by us 
 as a committee. I belong to the New Systemites." 
 
 When Mr. Craig, the co-operative steward, first went 
 among these men, who had shot the previous steward, they 
 sent him an interesting sketch of a skull and crossbones, and 
 an intimation that they intended to put him to bed under 
 the " daisy quilt." As he went along the road, the people 
 who did not know him saluted him with the kind country 
 greeting of " God be with you." One of his labourers told 
 him that he should always reply in Irish "Tharah-ma-dhoel." 
 Accordingly Mr. Craig answered everybody " Tharah-ma-
 
 180 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 dhoel " ; but he observed that his rejoiner did not make him 
 popular, when a friend explained to him that " Tharah-ma- 
 dhoel" meant "Go to the Devil." The man who taught this 
 dangerous answer became one of the best members of the 
 society ; and once, when the co-operative steward was supposed 
 to be lost behind the Crattan Wood, he met "Tharah-ma- 
 dhoel " looking for him, and on being asked why he had come 
 out on that errand, answered 
 
 "We thought you were lost in the Bog Mountain." 
 
 " Suppose I was lost, what then ? " said the steward. 
 
 " Sure, sir," answered Tharah-ma-dhoel, " if we lost you we 
 should lose the system." 
 
 Mr. Craig deserves words of honour for his courage in 
 undertaking the post of steward, seeing that his predecessor 
 had been shot, and that the proprietor, Mr. Vandeleur, had 
 been under the protection of an armed force. Between Terry- 
 Alts, White Feet, Black Feet factions, and a " Tharah-ma- 
 dhoel" set of labourers, Mr. Craig had a very unpleasant 
 prospect before him. 
 
 The government of the colony was absolute in Mr. 
 Vandeleur, who retained the right of summary dismissal of any 
 person brought upon the estate of whom he disapproved. Yet 
 during the three years and a half the Clare community (it was 
 situated in the county of Clare) lasted, he never had occasion 
 to use this summary power. It would not have been very 
 wonderful if he had, seeing that the members of the community 
 were elected by ballot among the peasants of Ralahine. The 
 business of the farm was regulated by a committee, also elected 
 by ballot. The committee assembled every evening, and 
 appointed to each man his work for the following day. There 
 was no inequality established among them. The domestic 
 offices, usually performed by servants, were assigned to the 
 members under seventeen years of age. 
 
 It seems quite incredible that the simple and reasonable 
 form of government should supersede the government of the 
 bludgeon and the blunderbuss the customary mode by which 
 Irish labourers of that day regulated their industrial affairs. 
 Yet peace and prosperity prevailed through an arrangement or 
 equity. From this quiet community, established in the midst 
 of terror and murder, Mr. Vandeleur received back in full all
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 181 
 
 the money he advanced for the wages of the labourers ; 200 
 a-year interest on the working capital, the stock, and farm 
 implements; and joo a year rent. 
 
 What induced the labourers to work with such profitable 
 zeal and good will was, that the members of all ages above 
 seventeen received an equal share in the division of profits 
 over the above payments. Besides, a co-operative store was 
 established similar to the one at New Lanark, whence they 
 obtained provisions of good quality and nearly cost price. 
 Pure food, honest weight, and reduced prices filled them with 
 astonishment. None had known such a state of things before. 
 None had conceived the possibility of it. The members ate 
 at one table, which saved much expense in cooking food and 
 serving meals. People who had always lived in doubt whether 
 they should have a meal at all, made no scruple of eating with 
 one another when a well-spread table was before them. In 
 addition, care was bestowed on the education of their children. 
 The school was conducted upon purely secular principles, and 
 the results were highly valued by the parents. As was the 
 habit of communities, spirituous liquors were not permitted on 
 the estate, and neither was smoking, which was gratuitous 
 and petulant prohibition. 
 
 Had the Ralahine farm continued, arrangements would 
 have been made for enabling the members to acquire the 
 property and hold the community as their own, by common 
 capital. 
 
 It was in the "enthusiastic period" when this Clare 
 community flourished, and needed enthusiasm to carry social 
 ideas to these desperate districts. Communism should no 
 longer be counted sentimental, since it did the stout-hearted 
 practical work it achieved in Ireland. It is a thousand pities, 
 all counted, that Vandeleur was a gambler, as otherwise the 
 merriest community in the world would have been established 
 in the pleasant land of Erin. Men who taught their new 
 steward to reply to the pious greetings of the peasantry by 
 telling them to go to the devil, had an infinity of fun in them. 
 In racier humour than this, and in harmless drollery and wit, 
 the Irish surpass all tribes of men ; and communism in their 
 hands would have been industry, song, and laughter. 
 
 Yielding to a necessity always adverse, experiments were
 
 i82 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 next attempted in the fens of Cambridgeshire. The projector, 
 Mr. Hodgson, was a handsome and lusty farmer, who heard 
 from clerical adversaries that a community might serve harem 
 as well as public purposes ; and as he had some land, a 
 little money, and plausibility of address, he turned out as a 
 peripatetic orator in favour of beginning the new world in his 
 native fens of Cambridgeshire. No one suspected his object, 
 he was regarded as an eager advocate for realising the new 
 system of society. Mr. Owen at once set his face against the 
 ingenious schemer, whose hasty and indefinite proceedings he 
 disapproved. Mr. Owen's high-minded instincts always led 
 him to associate only with men of honour and good promise. 
 He went down to Manea Fen, the name of the site chosen, 
 and, having acquaintance with landowners of the neighbour- 
 hood, was soon able to properly estimate the qualifications of 
 the new communist leader. Some gentlemen farmers, who 
 knew Hodgson's antecedents and unfitness for trust, did 
 Mr. Owen the service ot telling him the truth. Mr. Fleming, 
 the editor of the New Moral World wisely declined, on 
 business grounds, to sanction the Manea Fen project. It did 
 not add to the repute of the scheme that Mr. Rowbotham, 
 afterwards known as " Parallox," made himself the advocate of 
 the discountenanced projector. Many honest, and some able, 
 men, naturally thinking that the discontent with Mr. 
 Hodgson's plans originated in narrowness, and impatient to 
 try their fortunes on the land themselves, went down and 
 endeavoured to put the place in working order. Buildings 
 were erected and many residents were for a time established 
 there ; but the chief of the affair soon found that he had 
 misconceived the character of those whom he had attracted, 
 and they soon abandoned it. Those who had the smallest 
 means suffered most, because they remained the longest, being 
 unable to transfer themselves. The IVorkjng Bee^ the organ 
 of the association, edited by Mr. James Thompson, had 
 animation, literary merit, and the advantage of appealing to all 
 who were impatient of delay, and not well instructed in the 
 dangers of prematurity. 
 
 It was in August, 1838, that Mr. E. T. Craig made the 
 first announcement that Mr. Hodgson, who had the suspicious 
 address of Brimstone Hill, Upwell, had an estate of two
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 183 
 
 hundred acres within a few miles of Wisbech, which he 
 intended to devote to a community. Mr. Hodgson addressed 
 the readers of the Moral World as "Fellow Beings," the 
 only time in which that abstract designation was applied to 
 them. The editor prudently prefaced his remarks upon the 
 communications by quoting the saying of the Town Clerk of 
 Ephesus, " Let us do nothing rashly." Mr. William Hodgson 
 had been a sailor in his younger days and many things else 
 subsequently. He was acting in the character of the farmer 
 when he invented the Manea Fen community. It was 
 mortgaged, but this did not prevent him offering to sell it to 
 the Socialist party. This Fen Farm consisted of four fifty- 
 acre lots, divided by dykes, as is the Fen country plan. The 
 dykes acted as drains also. Three fifties lay together, the 
 fourth was somewhat distant half a mile. Twenty-four 
 cottages, twelve in a row built back to back, were single- 
 room shanties. There was a dining shanty, which would 
 accommodate one hundred people. 
 
 There were brave, energetic men attracted to this place. 
 To set up a paper, which was one of the features of the Fen 
 Farm, was to enter the ranks of aspiring cities. The members 
 were " working bees " in the best sense, and were capable of 
 success anywhere if moderate industry and patience could 
 command it. 
 
 Besides being disastrous to individuals, this Fen community 
 was a hindrance to the greater scheme of the Queenwood 
 community, which had then been projected, and which 
 represented what of unity, wisdom, and capacity the Socialist 
 party had. 
 
 The possibility of co-operation aiding in new forms of social 
 life was next destined to be illustrated in an unexpected 
 manner, and by a very unlikely person namely, Mr. Feargus 
 O'Connor. He soon became master of English Chartism; 
 and he and countrymen of his carried it clear away from 
 all the moorings to which the English leaders would have 
 held it secure. They vehemently protested against social 
 reform as digressive and impossible. Against all attempts to 
 obtain property for the purposes of community they urged, 
 you cannot get land laws of primogeniture and entail forbid. 
 If law did let you get land, government would not let you
 
 184 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 keep it ; and if law and government consented, how can those 
 get land who cannot get bread ? 
 
 Mr. O'Connor was a man of candour, had a mind susceptible 
 of new ideas, and ultimately came himself to project a "Co- 
 operative Land Scheme." He gave to it at one time the 
 name of "Co-operative." It was subsequently known as 
 the National Land Scheme. It was through contact with the 
 social advocates that the Chartist leaders turned their attention 
 to life upon the land. He bought four estates and contracted 
 for two others O'Connorville, near Rickmansworth, formerly 
 bore the name of Herinsgate, Herts ; Snigsend, near Staun- 
 ton, Gloucester ; Lowbands, near Tewkesbury, on the 
 borders of Gloucester and Worcester ; Minster Lovell, near 
 Whitney, Oxfordshire ; Bromsgrove, Worcestershire ; and 
 Mathon, near Great Malvern. The purchase of the two 
 last was not completed. O'Connorville cost ,9,736 ; Low- 
 bands, ^18,903; Minster Lovell, 22,978; Snigsend, 
 ^27,237 ; Dodford, 12,046 ; and there was a deposit on 
 Mathon of ^2,005. Mathon, however, did not come into 
 the occupation of the company. 
 
 There was confusion in making the allotments, which were 
 given by ballot. They fell, of course, often to the unprepared 
 and unfit. The properties, owing to an ill-devised mode of 
 purchase, came into Chancery. Nevertheless, there remained 
 several persons upon these estates who lived profitably upon 
 their holdings. Had the occupants had sufficient capital to 
 enable them to subsist while they built their habitations 
 and gathered in their first crops had the holdings been of 
 four acres instead of two acres only, the scheme might have 
 been of lasting benefit to many persons. The Newcastle Daily 
 Chronicle sent (1875) a special commissioner, Mr. Longstaffe, 
 to visit all these places. He recounts how the shares were 
 fixed as low as twentv-six shillings each. The member who 
 had paid up four shares (five pounds four shillings) was entitled 
 to ballot for two acres. It was assumed that good arable land 
 might be rented in the most fertile parts of the country at 
 fifteen shillings an acre, or bought outright at twenty-five 
 years' purchase at eighteen pounds fifteen shillings an acre. 
 As soon as the share capital realised 5,000, a hundred and 
 twenty acres were to be bought to locate sixty persons on two-
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 185 
 
 acre holdings, and leave a balance of ^2,750 ; this would 
 allow to each occupant a sum of forty-five pounds sixteen 
 and eightpence with which to start on his enterprise. It 
 was believed that thirty pounds would be sufficient to build 
 a commodious and comfortable cottage, and that the fifteen 
 pounds remaining would provide implements, stock, seeds, 
 and subsistence until the land became sustaining to its 
 occupiers. It was thought that the allotments with dwellings 
 might be leased for ever to the members at an annual rental 
 of five pounds. The Chartist land cry was : " A beautiful 
 cottage and four acres, with thirty pounds to work it, for a 
 prepayment of five pounds four shillings." 
 
 When the society had the amazing number of 70,000 
 members, the total sum they subscribed was a little over 
 ^36,000. It took ^78,000 to locate fewer than two hundred 
 and fifty persons. Seventy thousand members spread all over 
 Great Britain involved unforeseen cost to register it was 
 found to require ^6,000 to put their names upon the books. 
 The cost of land, the expense of conducting the great society 
 on Mr. O'Connor's plan, actually required an enormous sum 
 of money and time to carry out. When the subject was 
 examined before a Parliamentary committee, Mr. Finlason, 
 the actuary of the National Debt, calculated that it would 
 require twenty-one millions to place the whole seventy thousand 
 members on the land, and that, supposing Mr. O'Connor's 
 most sanguine scheme of profit could be realised, it would re- 
 quire every minute of three centuries to get all the shareholders 
 on their holdings. 
 
 Thus the politicians failed, as no social reformers ever did, 
 however, some advantages accrued from their efforts. The 
 attention of the great mass of working-class politicians, who 
 were mere politicians and nothing more, was turned to the 
 fact that progress had a social as well as political side, and 
 Mr. Ernest Jones, instead of opposing Co-operation in public 
 debates, became an advocate of it. 
 
 The last of the English attempts at community to be re- 
 counted here was the one at Oueenwood, in Hampshire. 
 This was the greatest effort of the kind made in this country. 
 
 For more than twenty years before it began the disciples 
 of Socialism had been forecasting the means of a decisive
 
 1 86 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 experiment in England. Rich men had believed in com- 
 munity as a reasonable commercial speculation. Benevolent 
 men with a turn for statesmanship had believed in these home 
 colony schemes as a means of easier and better government 
 of the people. After the rise of the socialistic agitation the 
 working people believed in community as a means of self-help 
 and self-government. Their idea was that moderate labour 
 on the part of the many, and moderate attainments in the 
 science of society on the part of the few, would bring 
 success. 
 
 The Socialists understood by communism simply a society 
 in which the fruits of intellect, art, and industry should be 
 diffused by consent, poverty made impossible, and ordinary 
 crime unnecessary. The laws of the universe were not 
 exclusive. Light and air were common. Life and death 
 were common. In the hour of his birth the young prince has 
 to scream for air like any infantine pauper; and unceremonious 
 Death walks into the parlour of the gentleman without sending 
 in his card. It had been proposed in Parliament that galleries 
 of art should be open to the gaze of the shoeblack as well as 
 to the connoisseur. Books of rare value were being made 
 accessible to all. Fire offices insured the cottage or the 
 mansion. The careless were made as secure as the careful. 
 Life insurance was a form of equality. The strong and the 
 temperate were made to use their prolonged lives to pay up 
 premiums which go to the progeny of the weak and the reck- 
 less. The virtuous and the vicious, the base and the noble, 
 had been all declared equal in the sight of the law. The 
 same police watch over the life of the scoundrel and the 
 patriot. Before civilisation began, the weak had to take care 
 of themselves. Now the feeble and the strong, the coward 
 and the brave, are equally protected. That personal daring 
 which made the inspiration of Homeric song, which made 
 Sparta a name of energy through all time, which makes the 
 blood tingle over the pages of Sir Walter Scott, is no longer 
 a daily requisite. A man need neither carry arms nor use 
 them. A set of men are paid to defend him. An old warrior 
 of the romantic days would rather die than call the police. 
 If a man gets into a disputation he is not allowed to settle it 
 in honest hot rage, but must refer his quarrel to the decision
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 187 
 
 of a cold-blooded magistrate, who will probably fine him for 
 his fervour. How the brave were abashed how courage 
 blushed with shame how the pride of manliness was stung, 
 when craven, cringing law first put valour down. There is 
 plenty of exercise for courage without expending it in broils 
 and bloodshed. The equality of the law conduces to justice 
 and the equality of competence may lead to security and 
 morality. 
 
 A Hall of Science was erected in Rockingham Street, 
 Sheffield, in 1839 : a commodious and handsome building for 
 the time. Mr. Joseph Smith had erected the first at Salford, 
 less pretentious, but a pleasant structure, costing 850, and 
 capable of holding six hundred persons. The Liverpool Hall, 
 a building of mark for those days, cost 5,000. The London 
 Hall, in John Street, Tottenham Court Road, cost 3,000. 
 Lawrence Street Chapel, Birmingham, built or held by the 
 Southcotians, was bought for 800. More than 22,000 
 was spent in one year in securing " Social Institutions," and 
 Mr. Pare, with that business wisdom in which he excelled, 
 had a deed drawn on the model of that by which Methodist 
 chapels are vested in the Conference. Had the community 
 plan at Queenwood succeeded, a powerful social organisation 
 had existed in England. A good-looking chapel was held in 
 Glasgow, in Great Hamilton Street. The present writer, the 
 last of the Social Missionaries, officiated in 1845. In other 
 places halls were continuously occupied. The most famous 
 and costly erection was that of the Hall of Science in Camp- 
 field, Manchester, which has since been purchased for the City 
 Free Library the most honourable use to which any of these 
 halls have come. Dr. John Watts was chiefly or mainly 
 instrumental in promoting this welcome destination of it. 
 In the early Queenwood days upwards of one hundred 
 thousand members of Socialist Societies could be counted upon 
 for Co-operation. The Community Society contributions 
 were fixed at threepence a week from each member. As 
 Mr. Owen calculated that 250,000 was the lowest sum 
 which would enable a successful experiment to be conducted, 
 the prospect of collecting it by threepence a week was a distant 
 one. The hope of increasing the fund more rapidly led to 
 a recurrence to the old co-operative store plan, and a store for
 
 188 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the sale of tea and groceries was opened at the Institution in 
 John Street, London. Thus the necessity of self-created 
 capital brought back the store, for years extinct in London. 
 In 1837, when the National Community Friendly Society was 
 formed, the subscription was fixed at one shilling a week, and 
 those only who had subscribed 50 were declared eligible to 
 go upon the land. In 1838, the members amounted to four 
 hundred. In 1839, 1,200 were collected in this way, which 
 in two hundred years or more would furnish the 240,000 
 Mr. Owen required. Nothing discouraged by this circum- 
 stance, a year before, Messrs. Wm. Clegg, John Finch, Joseph 
 Smith, by one of the formidable ukases from the Central Board, 
 were instructed to inquire for an estate, capable of sustaining 
 a colony of at least five hundred individuals. There was some 
 idea of going Fenwards again in search of a site for the new 
 world. They actually made an offer for an estate in Norfolk, 
 for which they were to pay 11,500. 
 
 The Community Committee contracted to buy the Wretton 
 estates, near Wisbech, of Mr. James Hill, but, as that gentle- 
 man had social and training views of his own, he stipulated 
 that he should have a paramount right to carry those out. As 
 this would confuse the public judgment of what was done by 
 two different sets of regenerators acting in the same field, 
 the purchase was not proceeded with. After much inquiry, 
 other negotiations, and more misgiving, land was rented 
 in Hants. 
 
 The estate consisted of two farms, one of 301 acres, named 
 Oueenwood, tithe free ; the other 232 acres, extra-parochial, 
 named Buckholt. The annual rent was 350, having been 
 fined down from 375 by payment of 750. The society 
 had the power to further fine down the rent to 300, 250, 
 and 200 on making three payments of 1,500 each at three 
 successive periods. Complaints were made that the land 
 selected at Tytherly was unsuited in several respects. It was 
 unfruitful, it was inaccessible for those needing to frequent 
 it ; it was too far from markets. 
 
 Even in London, where the vast number of people living 
 together necessitates a certain tolerance from the impossibility 
 of noticing the peculiarities of one another, it has been 
 difficult to obtain a site for a hall of science. In the town
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 189 
 
 of Bury, in Lancashire, chiefly possessed by the house of Derby, 
 who were not favourably disposed to Unitarians, it was impos- 
 sible for a long period of years to obtain a strip of ground on 
 which to erect a Unitarian church ; and those enterprising 
 religionists were under the necessity of waiting until they 
 could convert a gentleman who happened to possess a little 
 land, when they obtained a site. When the colony pro- 
 jectors have succeeded in securing some spot, it has generally 
 been one with many disadvantages, and conceded to them 
 because nothing better could be done with the place. The 
 calculation of the owners has sometimes been that the social 
 occupants would, after spending all their capital in improving 
 the land, be obliged to relinquish it, when it would return, 
 gratuitously improved, into their hands. 
 
 The most important accession which was made at this time 
 was that of Mr. William Galpin, a banker, of Salisbury, who 
 wrote to the New Moral World a modest, comprehensive, 
 business-like letter, saying, " he regretted that Mr. Owen did 
 not intend being himself a resident in the community formed 
 in his name " ; arguing properly that " he who knew most 
 should be at hand to give effect to what he knew, and that he 
 thought a joint-stock fund was possible to be formed for the 
 especial purpose of advancing the practical objects of the home 
 colony contemplated." The editor, who did not at all com- 
 prehend the quality of his correspondent, answered with more 
 confidence than judgment, that it was not probable that much 
 could be done in way of a joint-stock fund, till the members 
 of the proposed community had proved the success of their 
 undertaking ; which meant that when they had succeeded 
 without money they would be able to get it. The unseeing 
 and sanguine editor argued " they would get more than they 
 knew how to use." 
 
 In 1 84 1 the buildings were commenced at Tytherly, from 
 the designs of Mr. Hansom, a clever architect, who had a 
 sympathy with social views. He had erected a Philosophical 
 Museum in Leicester, not distinguished for gracefulness of 
 design, but it was never completed as he intended it. His 
 best known erection, the Birmingham Town Hall, was for 
 many years considered the handsomest town hall in the 
 kingdom. He was a man of mechanical resource. He was
 
 ioo HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the inventor of the hansom cab, and some machines which 
 were successful. It was probably through Mr. Pare's municipal 
 connection with Birmingham that he became architect of the 
 Queenwood Hall at Tytherly. A sketch of it appeared in the 
 New Moral World for October 9, 1841, about the time of its 
 completion. 
 
 The building was a pleasant semi-baronial structure, and had 
 a certain stateliness. The manner of the erection was more 
 creditable than many churches. It was built with the care 
 that befitted a sacred edifice. The parts out of sight were 
 finished as scrupulously as those that met the eye. Owing to 
 Mr. Galpin's wise and wholesome sense of thoroughness, the 
 laths which formed the partitions were of the best quality, 
 and the nails used in the obscurest part of the building were 
 the best that could be had. There was nothing hidden that 
 was mean. It is one of the pleasant recollections of the place, 
 that its directors endeavoured to make it honest throughout. 
 Seven or eight hundred pounds were spent in making roads 
 and promenades around it spacious and enduring. The old 
 Romans would have respected them. Even the kitchen and 
 basement rooms, used by the members for evening meetings, 
 were wainscoted with mahogany, many feet high. Comfort 
 and grace were consulted as far as means permitted in every- 
 thing. 
 
 To the credit of the English communists they were no 
 Barebones party. Had they succeeded in making a community, 
 it had been a pleasant one. They were not afraid of art, and 
 beauty had no terrors for them. Mr. Bate, who was an 
 artist, and who ultimately gave his fortune for the advance- 
 ment of the Queenwood experiment, sent eight original 
 drawings in water colours, framed and glazed, as a beginning 
 towards forming a gallery of drawings. Mr. Devonshire Saull 
 meditated bestowing his geological museum upon Tytherly. 
 Geology did not make much progress in his time, as the clergy 
 imagined there was something wrong with Nature. Indeed, 
 many suspected Sir Charles Lyell of thinking himself wiser 
 than Moses. To Mr. Saull belonged the merit of enthusiasm 
 for the suspected science, and according to his knowledge he 
 promoted it. 
 
 It being stated that 3,500 was required on loan for five
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 191 
 
 years, bearing interest at 5 per cent., intimations were at once 
 received that the following sums would be sent from the 
 following places : Oldham, 38 ; Birmingham, %o ; Shef- 
 field, ;6o; Worcester, 61 ; Coventry, 121; Leicester, 
 60; Nottingham, bo ; Northampton, 17; a London 
 Friend, jioo; Glasgow, ^20; Brighton, ^5; Chatham, 
 50; Suffolk, ;iOO; Edinburgh, ,230; Hyde, ^184; 
 Norwich, ^50 ; Ashton, ^56 ; Macclesfield, 24. ; Liver- 
 pool, 61 ; Boston, ^20 ; Hull, j ; Louth, 20. This 
 celerity of subscription is good evidence of the widespread 
 enthusiasm with which the Queenwood project was regarded. 
 
 In 1842 Mr. Owen resigned the governorship of Queen- 
 wood, and Mr. Finch became president of the society, 
 when a new executive was formed for carrying out the affairs 
 of Queenwood. At the Congress of 1843 Mr. Owen was re- 
 appointed president. Subsequently Mr. William Pare became 
 governor ; and his suavity, accessibility, and zeal rendered him 
 the most popular that held the office. 
 
 Among the new and honourable expedients for diverting 
 the mind of the public from the polemical character of the 
 communistic movement, was that of creating a Home Coloni- 
 sation Society, which proposed to take the affairs of Queen- 
 wood into its hands. It was thought that men of money 
 might be induced to join the society divested of controversial 
 names which proved a hindrance to the general investment of 
 capital. The projectors of the new Home Colonisation Society 
 contributed largely to its funds, and for some time the New 
 Moral World contained frequent announcements of the receipt 
 of a thousand pounds at a time from this society. But its 
 name had no enthusiasm in it, and its example produced very 
 little outside effect. The constitution of this society was 
 devised by Mr. W. H. Ashurst, an eminent solicitor in the City 
 of London. Struck with compassion for poor people in every 
 part of the empire who, by reason of the high rate of postage 
 subsisting, were prevented from receiving or giving information 
 affecting their interests or affections when separated from 
 members of their families, Mr. Ashurst rendered invaluable 
 and prolonged assistance to Sir Rowland Hill in the great 
 advocacy which gave the people the Penny Postage. No 
 writer made a more striking impression than he by a union of
 
 i 9 2 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 sympathy and facts. Many insurgent reformers sought his 
 protecting counsel ; he warned them against the pitfalls of the 
 law, and when in the course of what they thought theii 
 duty they fell into them, he stretched forth a strong and 
 generous hand to pull them out ; and his son and Mr. John 
 Morris, who succeeded him, continued like disinterested 
 service. 
 
 In 1843 came the resignation of Mr. W. Galpin, of his 
 office of general secretary. A certain grandeur of aim, which 
 he had in common with Mr. Owen, had led him to sanction 
 a scale of administration which promised soon to exhaust the 
 available funds of the party to which he had himself con- 
 tributed with notable liberality. His influence in rendering 
 the society neutral in matters of theology, destroyed the zeal 
 of many, whose activity was necessary to sustain the movement 
 among the branches, and his connection with the society was 
 of too short a period for the education of new supporters, who 
 should be content to advance economical projects by con- 
 siderations purely economical. Enforced neutrality, dictated 
 by policy, is different from the intelligent neutrality of dis- 
 cernment. Mr. Galpin took leave of the society, in a letter 
 of good taste and dignity. It was "enough for him," he 
 said, "that there existed a feeling that the cause might be 
 better served by his ceasing to be one of its officers." 
 
 Mr. Owen had had the Tytherly Hall made to bear con- 
 spicuously outside of it the mystic letters C. M., which meant 
 Commencement of the Millennium which, however, declined 
 to begin its career there. 
 
 Towards the end of 1845 the Standard announced that 
 "Mr. Owen had taken his leave of Rose Hall, Hampshire, 
 for America. The Queenwood enterprise, after 37,000 
 was spent upon it, proved a failure." 
 
 " Rose Hall " was the name of a house on Rose Hill, a 
 pretty little residence on the estate generally used for boarders, 
 or as the occasional residence of the governor. Many ladies 
 and gentlemen went down to Queenwood, and became 
 residents, and contributed pleasantly both to the funds and the 
 society of the establishment. 
 
 When affairs at Harmony (for Mr. Owen had given Oueen- 
 wood this unfortunate name, which served to exaggerate every
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 193 
 
 minor difference into discord) began to present financial com- 
 plications, the boarders gradually fell off. Members' meetings 
 ceased to be interesting, and credit was the agreeable but 
 insidious canker-worm which ate up Queen wood. Works 
 were undertaken, provisions ordered, accounts with tradesmen 
 augmented. Had the community begun on the principle of 
 co-operative stores of neither giving nor taking credit its 
 operations would have been humbler, but might have been 
 lasting. It came to pass in the process of Queenwood affairs, 
 that the branches in which poorer members predominated 
 were able to send delegates, who were able to elect a new 
 governor, who was unable from his own means to influence 
 capitalists who were wanted. Mr. John Buxton, the new 
 governor, was a man of honesty and courage, and, in more 
 solvent days, would have been successful. 
 
 The three trustees of this society (Messrs. Finch, Green, 
 and Clegg), being mainly or altogether liable, naturally became 
 solicitous to protect themselves. Had they proposed to take 
 the affairs of Queenwood into their own hands, undertaken 
 to conduct it first for their own security, subjecting their 
 administration to annual audit, and paying any profits they 
 could realise in proportion to all claimants, Oueenwood 
 would have ceased to be a public community, but it would 
 have ceased without discredit. Ultimately they hired labourers 
 and such stray ruffians as were to be had, and put Mr. 
 Buxton and his family forcibly into the lanes, where they all 
 remained, for days and nights, in courageous protest on behalf 
 of the humble community shareholders, who had subscribed 
 their money in as much good faith as the largest lender, and 
 were entitled to have some honourable treaty made with their 
 chief representative. Thus ended the affair of the Queenwood 
 community in 1846. 
 
 The trustees were assisted in their summary proceedings by 
 Mr. Lloyd Jones. Their only justification for their violence 
 was that they rescued the property with a view to do what 
 justice was possible to every class of subscribers. Instead, these 
 trustees used it for private purposes. They brought up the 
 claims of the tradesmen ; they met the demands of the 
 Goldsmids from whom the estate was leased ; they relinquished 
 portions of the estate, and let the Oueenwood Hall and 
 
 vol. 1. 14
 
 i 9 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 grounds for a school to Mr. Edmonson, a celebrated educator 
 of Lancashire. It was afterwards known as Queenwood 
 College ; it combined industrial with commercial and scientific 
 training. As a college it more resembled the famous school or 
 Fellenberg, of Hofwyld ; or that of Mr. Heldenmayor, of 
 Worksop, in Nottinghamshire, unrivalled among English 
 schools for the industrial, social, and classical education 
 imparted of which Charles Reece Pemberton gave a memor- 
 able account in the Monthly Repository when edited by 
 W. J. Fox. The Socialists were proud that Queenwood had 
 become a college so much in accordance with their own 
 conception of education. The best known teacher connected 
 with it was Dr. Yeats, of Peckham ; himself a writer or 
 authority on education. Professor Tyndall and others or 
 note in science and learning were teachers in it. 
 
 Many years elapsed, and it was found that the trustees, 
 Messrs. Finch, Green, and Clegg, who had seized the estate, 
 rendered no account of what proceeds they derived from it, 
 not even to the principal loanholders, and it came to pass that 
 Mr. Pare and others entered an action in Chancery to compel 
 them to render an account. The trustees held that no society 
 existed. But so long as a single branch of the community 
 society continued to pay subscriptions, the society had a legal 
 continuation. The Congress mentioned, of which Mr. Buxton, 
 the governor, was the legitimate officer, continued the society. 
 The present writer was appointed and continued to be the general 
 secretary, and for one had always continued a subscribing 
 member ; and he, on behalf of the humble community sub- 
 scribers, became a party to the action in Chancery. The case 
 was tried before Lord Romilly. Corrupted, it would seem by 
 immunity, the trustees resisted the honest demand to produce 
 their accounts, and, incredible to relate, they set up the plea of 
 the old enemies of social reform, that the society was constituted 
 for the propagation of immoral principles, and was therefore 
 illegal, and could not enforce accountability of its trustees. 
 This plea from men who had been vehement and passionate 
 defenders of this society, when other persons had brought this 
 vile charge against it, was a new scandal. One of the trustees 
 was certainly not of this opinion, for in 1841 Mr. C. F. Green 
 wrote a letter from Spithead, announcing to his dear brothers
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 195 
 
 and sisters of the New Moral World that he had given up 
 competition, and exclaimed 
 
 " Farewell, dear brothers, I have marked you well, 
 Nor yet for ever do I leave you now ; 
 And busy thoughts of thee my bosom swell, 
 And thronging recollections crowd my brow." 
 
 Mr. Green had no intention then of filing a statement in 
 the Court of Chancery that he and his dear brothers and 
 sisters were members of an immoral association. When 
 affidavits of the false trustees (too long to quote here) were 
 read by their counsel to Lord Romilly, he said : " Ah ! it is all 
 very well, my learned brother, but where is the money ? " 
 and when the learned counsel again implored the court to 
 listen to hackneyed extracts from Mr. Owen's ill-reported 
 lectures on marriage, Lord Romilly said: "The court is quite 
 aware of that, my learned brother, what we want is a state- 
 ment of receipts and expenditure since the trustees toolc 
 possession of this property." The reluctant accounts had to be 
 produced, and the balance withheld had to be paid into court. 
 Lord Romilly was a just judge, regardless of the speculative 
 opinions of those who sought justice at his hands. He had 
 known Mr. Owen from his youth, and was quite aware that 
 his opinions were not open to the imputations sought to be put 
 upon them by the apostate trustees. The Queenwood Hall 
 was sold by order of the court, and the proceeds equitably dis- 
 tributed among the loanholders and preference shareholders. 
 There was none to be divided among original contributors to 
 the community funds. Hundreds of men and women, who 
 invested all their savings in this generous and hopeless enter- 
 prise, received nothing. And thus Queenwood passed away as 
 a communistic scheme. 
 
 When the trustees seized upon the effects of the society, 
 they made an attempt themselves to sell it, and they actually 
 advertised Harmony Hall for sale in the Times^ suggesting to 
 purchasers that it might be made available for a lunatic asylum. 
 In the opinion of the public, it had been used for this purpose 
 already, and when such a use was officially pointed out for it in 
 the future, it was quite clear that the trustees themselves were 
 qualified to remain in it. 
 
 The Herald of Progress aforesaid, in which I was concerned,
 
 196 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 was the continuation of that official record of the proceedings 
 of the communist affairs which had been so long made in the 
 New Moral World. The society of many names Co- 
 operative, All Classes of All Nations, National Religionists, 
 but always communist at heart had been declared extinct by 
 lapse of members, at a congress at Rose Hill. This was not 
 true, as in London and Sheffield members continued to pay, 
 and therefore legally represented the interests of the society's 
 subscribers in every town, who held what was called com- 
 munity scrip, and the Herald in question was maintained from 
 a sense of duty to represent the interest of these superseded 
 but deserving members. To this end a new Central Board 
 was appointed, a president and general secretary. In the 
 Herald of Progress, which was published from October, 1845, 
 to May, 1846, the official addresses of the society appeared. 
 In May, 1846, the Reasoner was commenced, which continued 
 the official representation of the Queen wood society, and the 
 history of its final proceedings were given in that journal alone. 
 Thirty volumes of the Reasoner were issued between 1846 and 
 1872, edited by the present writer, in which the advocacy of 
 Co-operation, as contemplated by its founders, was continued. 
 The thirtieth volume was under the commercial charge of the 
 leaders of Co-operation in Lancashire and Yorkshire, who had 
 arisen since the Queenwood days, and who inherited the 
 traditions of those honourable and unsuccessful struggles. 
 
 The cessation of Oueenwood was primarily caused by 
 insufficient capital to last while the new order of life consoli- 
 dated itself, and the conditions of industrial profit were found. 
 Astute farmers sometimes find that they must vary the nature 
 of their produce to realise profit. It could be no argument 
 against a communistic estate that its managers did not all at 
 once make a profit by it. The chief charge brought against 
 the management was that too much money was spent upon 
 the Hall, which was but another form of saying that the 
 capital was too small since the Hall was not out of proportion 
 to the estate rented, the educational convenience required, and 
 the effect to be produced upon the alien and outside public. 
 Miscellaneous as were the members collected together, they 
 were all believers in the principle on which they associated ; 
 and there were none who did not deplore the day of parting
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 197 
 
 when it came. Working members said they would rather live 
 on an Irish diet of potatoes than go again into the old world, 
 of which they had had experience, if that would enable the 
 society to hold on. Mr. Ironside, who had a few thousand 
 pounds all his available means said he would throw it into a 
 common fund, if others who had similar means would do the 
 same, so that they might go on. Residents and there were 
 many who were boarders in the community all regretted the 
 end of their tenancy. To this day few who survive, who were 
 there in any capacity, but regret the loss of the happy days 
 which, till the end approached, were spent at Oueenwood. 
 Ladies, who are always difficulties in a new state of association, 
 came to prefer Queenwood life. Some who were at first 
 unhappy in the changed condition in which they found them- 
 selves there, and who made their husbands unhappy who 
 brought them there, eventually liked their new life exceedingly. 
 Others who were tartars in their social relations in the old 
 world just women at heart, but impatient of the crude way- 
 ward ways of domestics there became the most agreeable and 
 honoured of residents. It was not because they had to control 
 their tempers, but because the occasions of natural irritation no 
 longer existed under the happier circumstances of equality of 
 duties and enjoyment. 
 
 The inmates of Queenwood ate as they listed. No restric- 
 tion was put upon their preferences. There was a vegetarian 
 table, at which some twenty dined, and, to the credit of their 
 simple diet be it said, theirs was the merriest table in the hall. 
 At meal-times it resounded with laughter, and often others 
 came and surrounded it to listen to the pleasantries which 
 abounded there. The present writer published an account of 
 a personal visit to Harmony Hall. l My publication of it was 
 an error. At that time it was the duty of all members to 
 continue to support the executive who had hitherto governed, 
 since the party who would change the administration had not 
 the means to take affairs into their own hands. It was far 
 better to suffer disappointment at the limitation of community 
 objects than to witness the enterprise brought to a premature 
 end. It was long before I discovered for myself, that truth was 
 not relevant on all occasions because it was true. No man 
 " Visit to Harmony Hall," reprinted from the Movement, 1844.
 
 1 98 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 may speak a lie or act a lie ; but of all that he knows to be 
 true he is only warranted in stating that which is relevant and 
 useful. It may be a well-ascertained fact that the Home 
 Secretary has changed his bootmaker, but it would be irre- 
 levant in a debate upon the Budget. It was well known to be 
 true that Mr. Disraeli was "on the side of the angels"; nothing 
 came of it, and we were obliged to have Moody and Sankey 
 to put things right ; therefore, however true, it was no 
 use impressing upon public attention Mr. Disraeli's seraphic 
 alliance. 
 
 Inequalities of education and commercial experience were 
 great, and conflict soon arose between the prudent and the 
 infatuated. The " earnest," as they were called, were (as they 
 commonly are) anxious to go forward with other people's 
 money. The prudent were considered " timid," because the 
 prudent were generally those who would have to pay if the 
 project failed. The infatuated had only principle to put into 
 the concern, since if they lost their stock mayhap they could 
 acquire another ; but those who lost their fortune might not 
 be able so easily to repair that mischief. The enthusiastic 
 would themselves incur all the risks they advise, were they in 
 a position to do it. But this does not give them any right to 
 vote a liability to others which they do not and cannot equally 
 share. Yet this is constantly done in popular societies. The 
 cheap-tongued orators of mere " principle " talk tall, and carry 
 off all the applause, because their irresponsible followers are 
 the majority ; while the prudent, who " want to see their 
 way," are put down as " discouraging persons." There is yet 
 a subtler creature than the infatuated, to be encountered in 
 societies of progress the spontaneous enthusiast : sharp, quick, 
 fertile, unthinking, who sets schemes going because they ought 
 to go ; others who regard those who have money as persons 
 who should be made to pay, and calculate that if a good project 
 is started, many who would not join in commencing it will 
 subscribe rather than it should go down ; and that those who 
 have made advances will make more, in the hope of not losing 
 what has been already lost. These are not the architects, 
 they are the conspirators they are not the administrators, they 
 are the speculators of progress. The brilliant and plausible 
 operators in this line commonly end in diffusing an ineradicable
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 199 
 
 distrust in the minds of those who have been trepanned into 
 their enterprises. In matters of social progress, as in com- 
 merce, risks have to be run, and loss must be calculated upon. 
 Some may risk fortune, some health, some even life, as many 
 do in the public service ; and it will be an evil day for society 
 when people are wanting to do it. Whoever enter upon these 
 generous enterprises with their eyes open we honour as philan- 
 thropists, or patriots, or martyrs ; but they who trepan others 
 into these sacrifices without their knowledge and consent are 
 responsible for their ruin. Though a philanthropic motive 
 may mitigate indignation, it does not excuse the crime of 
 destroying others in the name of benevolence. 
 
 No social community in Great Britain had a long enough 
 time allowed to give it a reasonable chance of succeeding. 
 Had any gentleman supplied as much money to be experi- 
 mented with as Sir Josiah Mason, of Birmingham, supplied 
 during fruitless, disappointing, and perilous years to the Messrs. 
 Elkington for perfecting the discovery of electroplating, some 
 of these social colonies would have pulled through. Estab- 
 lishing a new world is naturally a more elaborate and protracted 
 work than establishing a new manufacture. Electroplating 
 turbulent and competitive man with pacific and co-operative 
 habits, is a more serious affair than electroplating metals. 
 
 The social movement, indeed, had at times the good fortune 
 to be countenanced and aided by persons of high position and 
 large means. When Mr. Owen held his great meeting in 
 Dublin in 1821, the Archbishops and other prelates and many 
 noblemen appeared on the platform to support him. At one 
 meeting Lord Cloncurry wrote to say that he was, to his great 
 regret, prevented being present. But this was no formal 
 evasion, though expressed in the well-known terms of avoid- 
 ance ; he wrote a letter intended to serve the object, and 
 afterwards sent ^500 to further it. Frequently when steps 
 were about to be taken likely to compromise the scheme 
 before the public, the prudent had the wisdom to come to the 
 front and dictate the steps which would lead to a surer success 
 than those about to be taken at the instigation of the eager and 
 uncalculating. 
 
 Despite all the eccentricities by which these new opinions 
 were accompanied, and by which all new opinions are accom-
 
 2oo HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 parried, it is right to honour these ardent agents of improve- 
 ment, who both made sacrifices and incurred discomfort and 
 disadvantages for no selfish end of their own, for their 
 enthusiasm arose from the belief that everybody would be 
 advantaged by the chance they sought. Though Coleridge 
 had warned them that it was vain to be sane in a world of 
 madmen, yet they resolved to run this risk, and do the best 
 they could to introduce sane arrangements of life. 
 
 Social progress, though an old historic dream, and an anxious 
 pursuit of so many persons, can hardly be said as yet to have a 
 policy. It cannot be presumed that the rich ought to aid 
 unless they are satisfied of the soundness of the plan put before 
 them. To assume that Brown ought to subscribe because 
 Jones thinks he should, is a sort of philanthropic confiscation of 
 Brown's property. All that can be reasonably done is to ask 
 Brown's attention to the scheme, with a full statement of the 
 chances against its success as well as those in favour of it, and 
 if he declines to take part in the affair it may be matter of 
 regret, but not of reproach. Scrupulous care should be taken 
 never to induce or allow any generous enthusiasts to advance 
 more than they are ready and able to lose in case of failure. If 
 they do more, and yet do not show regret when the day of loss 
 or ruin comes, their relatives will ; and an unknown party of 
 fierce and defamatory adversaries of social progress will be 
 developed in society, active perhaps for two or three gene- 
 rations. No less disadvantage occurs if humbler and poor 
 adherents are encouraged or suffered to do their utmost " for 
 the cause." The Jewish tribute of a tithe of their means is as 
 much as can be safely taken from the household resources. If 
 more be taken the family suffer, and, what is worse, the family 
 complain, and diffuse among all their neighbours and friends a 
 dislike and distrust of the philanthropy which puts upon them 
 privations without their consent. * And when the day of 
 reaction comes to the over-taxed contributor, he forms the 
 most dangerous disparager of the very undertaking he himself 
 
 1 My attention was engaged very early in popular movements by the 
 fact that the most discouraging persons were those who had suffered 
 losses in earlier enterprises. They had been heroes of forlorn hopes. 
 There was reason to believe that had their sacrifices been limited to a 
 tenth of their resources of time and money, they had never lost interest in 
 struggles which did them honour to engage in.
 
 THE LOST COMMUNITIES 201 
 
 has aided beyond his means. The extreme advocate commonly 
 becomes the extreme adversary defamatory, virulent, and 
 vindictive ; and his discouraging word goes farther than that 
 of the stranger who dislikes the thing offhand. Thus, as far 
 as social progress is concerned, it is wise to have a policy, 
 that it may be promoted by calculable methods. 
 
 When confident promises are made in the name of a new 
 project, the public expect some signal fulfilment, and when 
 nothing comes of the great pretension, their interest in it is no 
 more to be awakened in any generation which remembers its 
 failure. This should be a warning to those who believe they 
 have important untried truth on hand, never to risk the 
 experiment which is to decide its validity until they have at 
 command the best conditions known to be necessary for 
 realising it. Better to disappoint the eager by delay, than 
 premature action should cause failure. A great project will 
 live from age to age. Delay may damage, but it never kills ; 
 whereas inadequate action is always regarded by the majority 
 as the failure of principle rather than the failure of men. 
 
 All this care, patience, toleration, labour, generous sacrifice, 
 and endurance seemed fruitless. But these pioneers had, how- 
 ever, the proud consolation expressed for them by the great 
 Midland poetess : 
 
 "The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
 Is to have been a hero. Say we fail : 
 We feed the high traditions of the world, 
 And leave our spirit in our country's breast." x 
 
 1 George Eliot.
 
 202 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 
 
 " Look closer to't ; you make the evil first ; 
 A base, then pile a heap of censures on it. 
 'Tis your own sin supplies the scaffolding 
 And mason work : you skilful, rear the grim 
 Unsightly fabric, and there point, and say, 
 ' How ugly is it.' You meanwhile forget 
 'Tis your own handiwork." 
 
 Charles Reece Pemberton. 
 
 Some account of the adversaries which the social pioneers 
 had to encounter, will further elucidate the early history of 
 co-operative enterprise. 
 
 The system of challenging everybody to discuss the new 
 views produced some excitement. The clergy, who then 
 never discussed long with anybody who answered them, 
 naturally felt that these debates ought to be put down. 
 Other persons did not like controversy, and though they 
 would take no part themselves in suppressing it, were not 
 unwilling to see it done. The teetotalers of Liverpool, who 
 invented a new social crime, called Moderation, and rather 
 apologised for the sot, actually suspended [Mr. Finch, who had 
 done more than all of them put together to advance temperance, 
 and interdicted him from speaking on platforms in their name, 
 because of his social notions. In Birmingham an honest 
 Quaker shoemaker, named Empson, had to obtain a situa- 
 tion, but requiring testimony to his character as a sober man, 
 he applied to Mr. John Cadbury, a well-known, influential, 
 kind-hearted, and exemplary Quaker of the town, to give 
 him a testimonial. Mr. Cadbury being secretary to the 
 temperance society, who had known Empson many years as
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 203 
 
 a good teetotaler, was naturally sought to certify to the fact. 
 Mr. Cadbury (whose handsome calves were the admiration 
 of Birmingham, and who wore breeches the better to show 
 them) answered as only a conventional Quaker can, "William 
 Empson, I want to hold no communion with thee, and I have 
 ordered others to hold no communion with thee. Thou 
 recollects the conversation I had with thee about John 
 Finch, of Liverpool, when I told thee he was a blasphemer." 
 "Yes," said Mr. Empson, "I said if Mr. Finch comes to 
 Birmingham I will do all I can to get him a temperance 
 meeting ; but, Mr. Cadbury, you have long known me as 
 a prominent member of the temperance society, will you 
 give me a character for sobriety ? " Mr. Cadbury answered, 
 "No, William Empson." "But," said Empson, "are you 
 not a Christian, sir ? " Mr. Cadbury answered, " Yes, 
 William Empson, I am, and I always respected thee, but I 
 do not want to hold any communion with thee." 
 
 The chief reason why persecution is so hateful is that it so 
 frequently succeeds in putting down the truth. Well-directed 
 persecution is a great power, like assassination. The Bishop 
 of Exeter, whose claims for dignity in the Church were not 
 godliness, but vigorousness and virulence, well understood that. 
 Tory pamphleteering had done more for him than divinity, 
 and he naturally came forward in the House of Lords to revile 
 the grey-headed philanthropist, Mr. Owen, who had given his 
 fortune to mitigate the lot of the poor. Lord Normanby had 
 presented Mr. Owen at Court. Her Majesty, with that 
 queenly impartiality with which she recognised every man 
 of distinction who has served the nation, was glad to meet 
 the ancient friend of her father. In Owen's intimacy loans 
 had passed between him and the Duke of Kent, which the 
 Queen repaid when she knew it. Good taste, if good feeling 
 did not, should have kept the bishop silent concerning a pre- 
 sentation so honourably accorded, and which in no way 
 concerned him. The bishop's speech in the House of Lords 
 was thus reported in the Morning Chronicle^ of January 27, 
 1840, by George Wallis ("Pencil 'era"):- 
 
 " He wished of his task he could be rid : 
 For he felt a horror, indeed he did, 
 Yet had seen and heard with profound disgust, 
 Their deeds of shame, and their words of lust.
 
 204 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 He was able to tell them all, he said, 
 
 The nauseous tale, from A to Z. 
 
 And he thought the Marquis of Normanby 
 
 Might relish the tale as well as he. 
 
 The Socialists were the vilest race 
 
 That ever on earth or hell had place. 
 
 He would not prejudge them no, not he ; 
 
 For his soul overflowed with charity. 
 
 Incarnate fiends, he would not condemn ; 
 
 No, God forbid he should slander them ; 
 
 Foul swine, their lordships must confess, 
 
 He judged them with Christian gentleness. 
 
 He hated all show of persecution, 
 
 But why weren't they sent to execution ? 
 
 To hasty censures he objected, 
 
 But was not Lord Normanby suspected ? 
 
 He never believed a rash report, 
 
 But who took Robert Owen to Court ? 
 
 He would not offend, but would fain be knowing, 
 
 If Normanby was not as loose as Owen ? 
 
 And would ask, nought meaning by the hint, 
 
 Did he believe in God ? for Owen didn't." 
 
 This was the spirit in which the Church commended itself 
 to the people in those pleasant days. 
 
 The bishop made no idle speech. He meant mischief, and 
 he did it. This was the time when Mr. William Pare, the 
 registrar of Birmingham, lost his situation, and the town lost 
 a publicist of a quality of knowledge which has never been 
 replaced. All over the country working men of skill and 
 character were dismissed from their employment for attending 
 lectures upon the new principles of association. Some of the 
 men became masters, and blessed the day when they were 
 dismissed ; and, as they became capable and relentless rivals 
 of their former employers, the said employers did not bless 
 the Bishop of Exeter for his services. Many workmen were 
 ruined, others had to emigrate ; and I have heard them say 
 that if they can get at the Bishop of Exeter in the other 
 world, either above or below, they will make things very 
 uncomfortable to him. As the sharp-tongued bishop, clever 
 in all things, prolonged his life to a great age, some of them 
 thought he desired to delay the day of meeting them as long 
 as possible. 
 
 When bishops are angry the people are grateful, Mr. Pare 
 experienced this. On his leaving Birmingham, a dinner was 
 given to him, November, 1842. Mr. Pare was then coun- 
 cillor of the ward of St. Thomas. Mr. G. F. Muntz, M.P., 
 was present, and said, "if he was asked who he should appoint
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 205 
 
 to take charge of business requiring great care, great investiga- 
 tion, and great honesty, he should say Mr. Pare was the man 
 to do it. It was not the second, nor the third, nor the tenth 
 time he had made that statement. If every man had worked 
 in the cause of reform as Mr. Pare had done, no man could 
 calculate what would have been the effect. " 
 
 Men of mark who showed any civility to co-operators were 
 scolded in a grand way. One of the quarterlies was disagree- 
 able to the poet laureate. It said : " Mr. Southey brings to 
 the task two faculties which were never, we believe, vouch- 
 safed in measure so copious to any human being the faculty 
 of believing without a reason, and the faculty of hating without 
 a provocation. He seems to have an instinctive antipathy for 
 calm, moderate men for men who shun extremes and render 
 reasons. He has treated Mr. Owen, of Lanark, for example, 
 with infinitely more respect than he has shown to Mr. Hallam 
 and Dr. Lingard ; and this for no reason that we can discover, 
 except that Mr. Owen is more unreasonably and hopelessly in 
 the wrong than any speculator of our time." x Happily poet 
 laureates have succeeded Southey equally incapable of being 
 intimidated out of sympathy with the fortunes of honest, self- 
 helping industry, as Tennyson did. 
 
 A number of wandering and flockless preachers hawked 
 challenges from town to town. One was a Mr. John Bowes, 
 a pachydermatous believer, who was not without the gift of 
 imputation, and with whom many discussions were held. In 
 a discussion of some nights which I held with him in Bradford, 
 he gave me the idea that he was a species of moral rhinoceros. 
 Apart from the religious vices of imputation which passed in 
 those days for holy zeal, he was known as a friend of tem- 
 perance and political freedom, and died in 1874 in Dundee 
 well stricken in years, after forty years of Wesleyan-like 
 activity as a peregrinating preacher. 
 
 The best qualified adversary who occupied co-operative 
 attention for a long period was the Rev. Joseph Barker, a 
 restless Wesleyan local preacher, who had not been used 
 well by his own party, and he avenged himself by never 
 
 1 The student of social progress in this country scarcely needs to be 
 reminded that it was Southey who held out a helping hand to the 
 promoters of co-operation (Leigh Hunt).
 
 206 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 treating any other party well. He published pamphlets 
 against social principles, always readable for their invective, 
 but not instructive, as the objections he brought were entirely 
 theological. The social advocates, who always had an appetite 
 for an adversary, found Mr. Barker much occupation. He 
 excelled most men who as Christians destroyed respect for 
 Christianity. The overwhelming majority of social reformers 
 were believers in the precepts of Christ, and desirous of being 
 associated with what would now be admitted as practical 
 Christianity. Mr. Barker had great command of Saxon- 
 English and poetic imagination ; so that whatever side he 
 adopted, and he adopted every side in turns, he presented 
 it with a force of speech which commanded attention. 
 He was not a man who originated thought, but in 
 discerning all that could be made of thought which he 
 found originated, he excelled as a popular expounder of it. 
 The imputations he made upon those who differed from 
 whatever views he happened to hold at the time would have 
 amounted to a crime, had it been an intellectual act of his 
 mind ; but, as his rotary imputations were applied by turns 
 to every party to which he had ceased to belong, it was 
 merely the expression of an irresponsible extremist. He 
 left to the adherents of every opinion that he espoused, a 
 legacy of exposition and denunciation which no other man 
 contributed in his time. 1 
 
 Of all the opponents who were encountered, the most 
 impudent was a person known subsequently as Dr. Brindley. 
 Mr. Hawkes Smith, of Birmingham, having delivered some 
 lectures on phrenology, after a visit of Mr. George Combe 
 to that town, Mr. Brindley attacked it. The present writer 
 advised Mr. Hawkes Smith to answer him. Mr. Smith knew 
 all about the subject, and Mr. Brindley nothing. Not being 
 able to reply, Mr. Brindley attacked Mr. Hawkes Smith for 
 his advocacy of Mr. Owen's views. This excited the applause 
 of the clergy, who were willing that the new social principles 
 should be denounced by some one, and Dr. Brindley was 
 
 1 After years of defamation he wrote me a public letter, expressing his 
 regret and conviction that the views he had so strenuously opposed 
 were true. Afterwards he had correspondence with Mr. Owen to the 
 same effect, and sought an interview with him, which was readily granted. 
 See letters in Co-operative News, July 9, 1904.
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 207 
 
 engaged to do it. He became the Caliban of the Church. 
 He did not issue from a Cave of Adullam, where all who 
 were discontented were invited ; but from a Cave of Vitupera- 
 tion, where all who uttered rude words of Mr. Owen, or had 
 offensive imputations to make against his followers, were 
 welcome. He went on his mission of defamation to our 
 manufacturing towns, and counselled employers to dismiss 
 men of far honester repute than his own ; and scores of 
 families were brought into distress by his calumnious tongue. 
 His prayer was literally 
 
 " Lord, in thy day of vengeance try them ; 
 Lord, visit them who did employ them." 
 
 Brindley was originally a travelling comb-seller. It was to his 
 credit that he became a schoolmaster but he continued a 
 pedlar in piety. As a disputant he was not without some 
 good qualities. He was not afraid of discussion. He never 
 sheltered himself under German mysticism or occult or tran- 
 scendental interpretations, but stated and defended the broad, 
 vulgar, orthodox Christianity of the day, from which abler, 
 wiser men shrunk. He perished at last in the streets of New 
 York. Ministers of religion in America were more scrupulous 
 than in England, and did not adopt him. Dr. Hollick, a social 
 missionary who had debated with Brindley in England, was 
 living in New York, but did not hear of his fate until it was 
 too late, else, he wrote, he would have rendered succour to his 
 old adversary in his last extremity. Brindley had professed 
 to follow Mr, Bradlaugh to America. It is impossible not to 
 feel sympathy for the fate of the old combatant. He died 
 like the war horse, sniffing battle from afar, when age had 
 weakened his powers without being able to tame his spirit. 
 
 Moved by a generous eagerness to turn men's attention to 
 the power which dwelt in circumstances, Mr. Owen devised 
 the instructive phrase, that " man's character was formed for 
 him and not by him." * He used the unforgettable inference 
 that " man is the creature of circumstances." The school of 
 material improvers believed they could put in permanent force 
 
 1 This troublesome proposition, Mr. Bray relates, "was one upon 
 which his followers, without exception, took their stand." By a resolu- 
 tion of the proprietors of Orbiston, the tenants had to sign their assent 
 to it before admission into the society.
 
 208 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 right circumstances. The great dogma was their charter of 
 encouragement. To those who hated without thought it 
 seemed a restrictive doctrine to be asked to admit that 
 there were extenuating circumstances in the career of every 
 rascal. To the clergy with whom censure was a profession, 
 and who held that all sin was wilful, man being represented 
 as the " creature of circumstances," appeared a denial of moral 
 responsibility. When they were asked to direct hatred against 
 error, and pity the erring who had inherited so base a fortune 
 of incapacity and condition they were wroth exceedingly, and 
 said it would be making a compromise with sin. The idea of 
 the philosopher of circumstances was that the very murderer in 
 his last cell had been born with a staple in his soul, to which 
 the villainous conditions of his life had attached an unseen 
 chain, which had drawn him to the gallows, 1 and that the 
 rope which was to hang him was but the visible part. Legis- 
 lators since that day have come to admit that punishment 
 is justifiable only as far as it has preventive influence. To 
 use the great words of Hobbes, "Punishment regardeth not 
 the past, only the future." 
 
 Dr. Travis, an early and influential disciple of Mr. Owen, 
 proposed a new statement of the doctrine of character ; which, 
 while it recognises the causation of the will, admits a self- 
 determining power in man, which justifies instruction being 
 given to him, and appeals being made to him. One who is 
 in the foremost rank of those who have thrown light over 
 ravelled questions of controversy, remarks, " Instead of saying 
 that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer 
 the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance." 2 
 
 It would, therefore, be unjust to imply that adversaries, 
 clerical or lay, always gratuitously misunderstood questions. 
 There were statements made, which often left them open to 
 honest misconception. The great masters of statements some- 
 times fail to convey an exact impression of their meaning. I 
 have seen Mr. Cobden look at his words as though they were 
 palpable to him in the air, retracting doubtful terms, amplifying 
 the deficient, and qualifying those that went too far. Those 
 
 ' See this idea, which is better expressed by my old friend Thorn, the 
 poet, of Inverary, in the preface to his poems. 
 2 G. H. Lewes' " Life of Goethe."
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 200. 
 
 who had none of Mr. Cobden's experience and sagacity, must 
 have misled many fair-meaning opponents. 
 
 Mr. Owen gave emphasis to the doctrine of the mighty 
 influence of material things over man for good or evil, because 
 that was not acknowledged then. As far as belief was con- 
 cerned, that, he said, was so entirely commanded by evidence, 
 that a man could not be held responsible for conclusions which 
 evidence justified. 
 
 There is one town (Leicester) where social views early took 
 root where a few men of strong understanding, of unusual 
 dispassionateness, have, during more than two generations, 
 maintained public interest in social ideas. What may be called 
 the Leicester principle of controversy is to question and try all 
 assertions. No person in the society meetings there advances 
 any propositions except under the condition of submitting them 
 to discussion. Dr. Brindley, when I last met him on a plat- 
 form, proposed to debate the question of Atheism. This I refused 
 to do, as it would lead the public to confound atheistic with 
 secular principles. That the pretensions of dogmatic Theism 
 should not be advanced unquestioned, Mr. Josiah Gimson, 
 a resident engineer in the town, met Dr. Brindley several 
 nights in succession, contributing greatly to the public informa- 
 tion upon the subject. Elsewhere no instance has occurred 
 in which a private gentleman had stepped forward in this way 
 to discuss such a topic the town fully understood and 
 respected the courage and independence of the proceeding on 
 his part. This was in 1873. Professor Tyndall, after one of 
 his addresses at the Dundee meeting of the British Association, 
 which had somewhat amazed the Duke of Buccleugh, the 
 president for the year, said generously to the present writer, in 
 reference to the toleration of modern controversies, " We do 
 but reap where you [which included colleagues with whom I 
 had acted] have sown." 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, nearly two hundred years before Owen, 
 wrote : " No man can change his opinion when he will, or be 
 satisfied in his reason that his opinion is false, because dis- 
 countenanced. If a man could change his opinion when 
 he lists, he might cure many inconveniences of his life ; 
 all his fears and his sorrows would soon disband, if he would 
 but alter his opinion, whereby he is persuaded that such an 
 
 vol. r. 15
 
 210 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 accident that afflicts him is an evil, and such an object formid- 
 able ; let him but believe himself impregnable, or that he 
 receives a benefit when he is plundered, disgraced, imprisoned, 
 condemned, and afflicted, neither his sleep need be dis- 
 turbed, nor his quietness discomposed. But if a man cannot 
 change his opinion when he lists, nor ever does heartily or 
 resolutely but when he cannot do otherwise, then to use force 
 may make him a hypocrite, but never to be a right believer ; 
 and so, instead of erecting a trophy to God and true religion, 
 we build a monument for the devil." x 
 
 The conclusiveness of these authorities availed us nothing. 
 It was regarded as a new sin in the social party to show that 
 eminent men had agreed in principle with them. Vindictive- 
 ness of the enemy harmed the movement by making many 
 resentful and retaliative, prone to follow the advice of St. Just, 
 who destroyed many excellent reformers by his maxim that 
 they who attempt half measures dig their own graves. But St. 
 Just's maxim did not keep him alive long enough to observe 
 that they who insist upon whole measures while they are only 
 half supported, commonly get themselves and their cause into 
 the sexton's hands very early. 
 
 Only theorists talk of truth being immortal I have seen it 
 put to death many times. Lord Brougham in his day suc- 
 ceeded in terrifying Parliament into toleration of unpopular 
 opinions, by contending that nothing could extend them but 
 persecution. If brave men stand by unfriended truth, persecu- 
 tion will spread it. If the timid, or ease-loving, or the time- 
 serving, have truth in hand, persecution well directed, will 
 soon put it down. This is the real reason why persecution is 
 intrinsically hateful. 
 
 Other agitations brought into play the passions : of the 
 social agitation it must be owned that it appealed to the under- 
 standing only, and made men inquiring and reflective. The 
 intellect let loose proved no wild animal needing a chain to 
 restrain it, as Cardinal Newman 2 asserts, but a salutary and 
 self-managing agent, active in improving individual character. 
 
 Adversaries of the Socialists were not dainty in their imputa- 
 
 1 "Liberty of Prophesying." 
 
 - Cardinal Newman forgets altogether the wild animals reared in his 
 chosen Church, of which Torquemada was the chief.
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 211 
 
 tions. The Rev. Mr. Anderson, of Glasgow was a man of 
 character and talent, and of generous political sympathies, and 
 from whom in later years I oft had the pleasure, through my 
 friend Mr. William Logan, a wise city missionary, to receive 
 valued communications ; yet in his vehement days Dr. Ander- 
 son called the " Very Reverend and Preliminary Social Father " 
 an " Incestuous Profligate." But this was not very objection- 
 able, in a rhetorical sense ; for when an angry adversary departs 
 from the truth the farther he departs the better, and he is 
 placed by the concurrence of common judgment outside the 
 pale of those who are to be regarded. Some opponents did not 
 know the truth when they saw it, and did not speak it even by 
 mistake. Some of them did garble with an ability that would 
 have entitled them to a prize medal, had there been any board 
 of examiners to award distinction to that kind of merit ; but 
 in controversy he who recognises these peculiarities arrests 
 altogether the progress of his arguments, and invites attention 
 to the adversary instead of the subject. 
 
 In February, 1834, the "Rev. Dr. Redford " published 
 a letter in the Worcester 'Journal, against Mr. Owen. The 
 Crisis, following the policy of helping the enemy to abuse its 
 friends, published this letter, which I shall not reproduce. 
 
 In Worcester, the religious opposition to co-operative 
 speeches amounted to violence. It was only by the effort of a 
 strong-handed carpenter, whom I well knew, and in whose 
 house I subsequently lived, one Robert Jones, that Mr. Owen's 
 life was saved from an infuriated mob. 1 The Rev. Dr. Redford 
 was an adversary who went great lengths. In a public dis- 
 cussion, he committed upon Mr. Owen an indignity which 
 created a stronger hostility to Christianity than anything else 
 which had occurred in the Midland counties. He made a 
 motion of flinging the contents of his nose into Mr. Owen's 
 face. 
 
 Mr. Alexander Campbell, the most fatherly-minded of all 
 the missionaries, whose voice sounded like a truce, was forcibly 
 prevented preaching the new gospel of industry on Glasgow 
 Green on Sundays. It was a common thing to have halls 
 
 1 I have heard that Jones, as years advanced, joined the Methodists. If 
 so, he has a double chance of salvation if his creed be good, for he has 
 generous works to plead, as well as faith.
 
 212 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 refused after they had been duly let, and no County Court Judge 
 in those days would award any damages for a breach of faith. 
 Riots took place at the Broadmead Rooms, Bristol, upon the 
 " social innovators." No doubt the innovators often retaliated, 
 but the imitation generally fell far short of the original. 1 
 
 In Bristol there was a dangerous fight through the narrow 
 passage leading to the Broadmead Rooms, occupied by the 
 Socialists in that city. Workmen were sometimes dismissed 
 who were observed to have a copy of the New Morai 
 World in their possession. In some cases clergymen refused 
 to bury co-operators, and in one case a sexton refused to dig a 
 grave for a Socialist's child. Mr. Connard, a well-known 
 speaker, who became an insolvent, was stigmatised as deranged 
 because he honourably refused to make oath, as not in accord- 
 ance with his conscience, and Mr. Commissioner Reynolds sent 
 him back to prison with many words of outrage when he could 
 otherwise have discharged him. Mr. Connard was kept in 
 prison many months, as a punishment for his creditable 
 scruples. The Rev. Mr. Giles, a Baptist minister of dis- 
 agreeable ability, said " Socialism was a union of all practices, 
 save those of chastity and virtue." Had the showers of 
 denunciation been material, like hail or rain, the pioneers 
 would have lost their hats, and their garments would have 
 been sodden. 
 
 When Mr. Owen was a boy, he swallowed some scalding 
 food in his anxiety to reach his school early. His digestion 
 was very much weakened by it, he was obliged to be very 
 careful in the food which he took. In illustrating his belief of 
 the influence of circumstances, he related this event as one 
 which early disposed him to observation and care. With his 
 oft indifference to what advantage might be taken of a casual 
 expression, he mentioned that the food which he partook, 
 
 1 Indeed, piety was not always self-respecting in its company, nor very 
 dainty in its invitations. There were those who remember the Rev. W. 
 Cooper, for instance, reading in hymn-books sturdy verses beginning 
 
 " Come dirty, come stinking, come just as you are " 
 
 an invocation of fine Saxon vigour, but not remarkable for delicacy. Nor 
 did noblemen and clergymen then shrink from countenancing such style 
 of address, any more than they have done in the case of Moody and 
 Sankey and the Salvation Army, and if not deeming it good enough for 
 themselves, at least thinking it might do the people good.
 
 SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES 213 
 
 common in Wales in his youth, was called flummery. As this 
 word was a slang term for untrustworthy speech, clerical 
 speakers thought it an excellent point to say that the social 
 system began in flummery. 1 This was deemed very witty, and 
 always produced peals of laughter. 
 
 In Runcorn, a Mrs. Johnson left the Established Church and 
 went over to the Wesleyan chapel. She was called upon to 
 explain her proceeding. She replied that it was on account of 
 her Sunday pie being exactly done when the Methodist chapel 
 came out ; whereas when she attended the church it was 
 always overdone. The good woman regulated her piety by 
 her pastry, a circumstance which influenced her faith. When 
 the familiar vehicle we now see in the streets without terror 
 first appeared in a university county, a peasant, in the vicinity 
 of an Oxfordshire village, ran one night to warn the inhabi- 
 tants that a frightened monster with saucer eyes, and making a 
 strange noise, was coming towards the place. Those who had 
 courage got behind the hedge to look. The monster turned 
 out to be a post-chaise, 2 with two lamps. The clergy always 
 mistook social science for an Oxford post-chaise, and ran out to 
 alarm the people. 
 
 A fair, a clever, and gentlemanly opponent met with great 
 respect and regard when one appeared, which was very seldom. 
 The Rev. J. H. Roebuck held a public discussion with Mr. 
 Owen, in Manchester, in 1837. He was a Wesleyan of 
 remarkable ability and remarkable fairness, and the distinctness 
 of his objections were well seen in consequence. Though he 
 was, therefore, a more influential adversary than vituperative 
 ones, he was always spoken of with respect, and his early death 
 was sincerely deplored. 
 
 The old pioneers of Co-operation stood up for liberty and 
 and relevance of speech. Some thought toleration meant 
 indifference to what opinion prevailed. This was the mistake 
 which some still make. Toleration means anxiety for the 
 
 1 Charles Knight, in his " Passages of a Working Life," gives an 
 account iof his tour in 1828, to gain support for the Useful Knowledge 
 Society. He tells us that at Liverpool he found a few clerical opponents, 
 and one of them preached also against mechanics' institutes ; at Man- 
 chester no clerical support could be obtained ; and at York he could do 
 little. " He found the commercial atmosphere better adapted for the 
 diffusion of secular knowledge than was the ecclesiastical." 
 
 2 Joseph Brosbridge, 1824.
 
 214 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 truth : it means ardour for the truth : it means confidence in 
 the truth. It believes that truth, like fire, is excited by colli- 
 sion, and that no truth can be known to be true, save that 
 which has passed through the ordeal of controversy. Tolera- 
 tion means giving new truth fair play. Intolerance, which is 
 prohibition, gives it none. The conditions of truth are now 
 well ascertained to be liberty of expression, and of criticism ; 
 it is not he who is tolerant of these, but he who is intolerant 
 of them, who is indifferent to the truth, and upon whom the 
 stigma of looseness and latitudinarianism of mind ought to fall.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 215 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 
 
 "So when the Parthian turned his steed, 
 And from the hostile camp withdrew, 
 With cruel skill the backward reed 
 He sent ; and as he fled he slew." 
 
 Louis Blanc has described the Jacobin as powerful, original, 
 sombre ; half agitator and half statesman ; half Puritan 
 and half monk ; half inquisitor and half tribune. The 
 co-operative advocates were not wanting in some of these 
 qualities ; and in perseverance and propagandist capacity they 
 surpassed all working-class advocates of their time. They 
 certainly were not demagogues, as any one may see from the 
 definition of a modern writer who comprises in one short 
 passage a complete study of those troublesome persons. 1 Our 
 early advocates chose the unpopular side, which was ill- 
 requited ; they believed in their measures themselves, their 
 lives and industry alike commanded respect, and their dis- 
 interestedness was shown in persisting in a course which was 
 far from bringing them flattering recognition. The Duke of 
 Wellington, when they were brought under his notice, 
 admitted they were clever, but added, in his coarse, vindictive 
 way, " they were clever devils." With more discrimination 
 
 1 " The demagogue, in all ages and in all countries, is a man voluble and 
 vehement in speech expansive and popular in his humour more 
 plausible in advocating measures than wise in choosing them unscrupu- 
 lous in his alliances with all who will serve his immediate objects extreme 
 in his views magnificent in his promises ready with specious theories 
 and proposals of sweeping change restless in agitation, but impatient of 
 obscure labour aiming at immediate and showy results and, from a 
 loose and random way of living, often not a safe man in pecuniary affairs, 
 although he may have no inclination for deliberate dishonesty " (C. 
 Morrison, "Labour and Capital," p. 126).
 
 216 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 and courtesy, as befitted his station, the Bishop of London said 
 of these social reformers, that, though thev were generally men 
 of "some education," their deficiency was that "they were 
 wanting in humble docility, that prostration of the understanding 
 ana wi/I, which are indispensable to Christian instruction." No 
 doubt they were open to this charge ; want of " humble 
 docility" was conspicuous in them. It never occurred to 
 them to "prostrate their understanding." The use of it 
 seemed to them the only way of making out how things 
 stood. 
 
 These adventurous and unskilled social navigators had to pull 
 their frail skiffs through rough waters. At that time society 
 abounded with persons they are not yet quite extinct who 
 would never do anything for the workman except think for him. 
 They would neither find him work nor bread, but they would 
 supply him with opinions, either religious or political, ready- 
 made. These people gave a very poor account of social 
 projects. The political economist considered them the dream 
 of folly the clergyman, of wickedness the statesman, of 
 insubordination the employer, of idleness the rich man, of 
 plunder the capitalist, of confiscation the journalist, of 
 demagogism. 
 
 Co-operation in its early days was somewhat ramshackle. 
 Mostly pale and thin, these amateur shopmen looked as though 
 they needed themselves to eat up the commodities they tried to 
 sell. What business they did was done in an unusual way. 
 Every crotchet that thickened the air of Utopia was proclaimed 
 at their doors. Poets, enthusiasts, dreamers ; reformers of all 
 things, and the baser sort of disbelievers in any, gave them a 
 turn : for, as we all know, a nimble eccentricity always treads 
 on the heels of change. 1 There was nobody so mad but their 
 right to improve the world was respected ; there was not a 
 regenerating lunatic at large who did not practise upon them. 
 The philosophers were scandalised at them, the political 
 economists shook their heavy heads at them the newspapers 
 were scornful politicians in Parliament proposed to put them 
 down bishops interdicted them in the House of Lords and 
 the clergy consigned them individually and collectively to per- 
 
 1 "Licentiousness always treads on the heels of reformation " (R. W. 
 Emerson).
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 217 
 
 dition. Luckily the honest fellows had a well-instructed 
 patience. Their advocates served them well, teaching them 
 that every creature must be allowed to articulate after its kind, 
 and would do better if it only knew how. The heretics, who 
 were their only friends, eventually silenced the clamour ; and 
 the men of sense and purpose made their way to the front, and 
 Co-operation got a hearing, and grew in favour with men. 
 
 As in all new parties, and as for that in old ones too, at 
 times there were figures in the social landscape that attracted 
 attention, without enticing adherents. Fastidious friends of 
 progress were not pleased that the prominent advocate of the 
 system should be an Irish philosopher Mr. Thompson, of 
 Cork who was against large families, and in favour of dissec- 
 tion. Social Reformers, not knowing how to subordinate 
 without discouraging the just efforts of others, became the 
 Nursing Mother of all the "Crazes" of the day. 
 
 There was a Dr. McCormac, of Dublin, who, being like 
 Bentham, a philosopher above vulgar prejudice, prominently 
 advocated that all co-operators should leave their bodies for 
 anatomical purposes. He was called the " Skeleton- Man " of 
 the movement; and some Christian partisans did not hesitate 
 to say that Mr. Owen wanted to get men into communities in 
 order to sell their bodies for dissection. Every friend of the 
 new system was supposed already to have sold his soul to a 
 certain eminent and enterprising contractor for that article. 
 As to Mr. Owen, it must be owned charity was his sole 
 religion, and this was a religion which God may recognise but 
 which has not found favour in the world yet; and one which had 
 no followers in Mr. Owen's days except a few perilous persons, 
 of whom the Rev. Robert Hall, with his fine talent for con- 
 temptuousness, said " lived in the frigid zone of Christianity." 
 Mr. Owen himself was called the "Circumstantial Philosopher" 
 a name not without honour, for circumstances were in very 
 bad want of a philosopher. 
 
 One of the strange and inexplicable figures that flitted 
 about the early co-operative movement was a gentleman who 
 usually signed himself as P. Baume, "reforming optimist." 1 
 
 1 The profession of principles of the Reforming Optimist was that 
 though everything is for the best at this instant, everything will be 
 better upon the whole surface of our planet at every one of its diurnal 
 revolutions nay, at every pulsation of the human heart.
 
 218 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 In after-years two or three other initials would appear 
 between the P. and the B. Who, indeed, he was, or 
 whence he came, nobody ever knew. Common repute 
 said he acquired a fortune as a foreign spy. If so, it was 
 doubtless in the interest of freedom, for he always appeared 
 to care for it. He had spent the greater part of a long 
 and wondrously active life in bequeathing property which 
 nobody ever came to possess. For thirty years there was 
 hardly any meeting held anywhere in reference to social 
 reform at which he was not present in some part. He 
 was ubiquitous. In distant towns, in Manchester or Liver- 
 pool, the eyes in search of mysterious faces would be sure 
 to light, in some quarter of the room, upon a disguised 
 figure, whose brilliant, penetrating eye alone revealed his 
 identity. 
 
 Mr. Baume had what he called Experimental Gardens, 
 in the New North Road, leading from Battle Bridge to 
 Holloway, where he invited all practical men and women 
 to meet him, with a view to agree upon something which 
 would settle everything. The presumption is that they 
 never did agree upon anything, since everything has not 
 been settled yet. His proposal at that time was to establish 
 a Co-operative College, for which purpose he said he would 
 unhesitatingly and most cheerfully give up to them his most 
 valuable leases and ground rents several extensive plots for 
 building and gardening ground, fourteen acres altogether, his 
 funded property, his ready money, in a word, everything he 
 possessed; "including his most unrelenting exertions through 
 life." Mr. Baume had made a proposition to advance money 
 to any amount, and on the most liberal terms, to any car- 
 penter or bricklayer willing to build cottages on his land, on 
 speculation, or for the location of their families. He stated 
 then that all his property was vested in the hands of trust- 
 worthy characters ; his unremitting exertions being devoted 
 to the establishment of a Co-operative College and Com- 
 munity. 
 
 At one of Mr. Owen's Sunday lectures he sent a little 
 boy with a note, saying the lad had been born three years 
 before, and had been entrusted to his care, but he had never 
 allowed him to be christened because he had never found
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 219 
 
 any character in history sufficiently perfect to warrant him 
 in adopting his name ; but now Julian Hibbert was dead, 
 he requested Mr. Owen to christen him by that name. Mr. 
 Owen, and many of his disciples after him, were accustomed 
 to christen children who were brought to them, and they 
 commonly made little speeches to the parents, counselling 
 them to remember how much sensible treatment and pure 
 material conditions might influence the child for good. 
 
 This gentleman continued to give his property away. He 
 gave it to nearly every community that was formed. He gave 
 it to the United Kingdom Alliance. He has given it to the 
 co-operators, and to other persons and parties, certainly too 
 numerous to mention. A considerable portion of his property 
 lay in the neighbourhood of Colney Hatch. He always 
 professed to be afraid that some one would confine him in 
 a lunatic asylum, and yet he established himself in the 
 neighbourhood of one. There was not the slightest fear 
 for him. There was no aslyum which would have under- 
 taken to manage him. He would have driven the governors 
 and directors all mad in a month, by the inexhaustible fertility 
 of his projects. He was quite sincere in saying he would 
 give the whole of his possessions away, as well as his " un- 
 relenting life exertions," for he appeared never to require 
 anything whatever to live upon. A few peas, which he 
 commonly carried in his pocket, seemed to be his chiet 
 source of subsistence. With ample means he would live in 
 one obscure room, or rent a railway arch, and deposit himself 
 there, and he did not, like the parties in Mr. Pickwick, select 
 the dry ones, but took a damp one as being the cheapest. 
 He would carry about with him bundles of bank-notes in 
 a dress-coat pocket, and keep a small live monkey there ; 
 so that if any adventurous hand found its way there, it would 
 meet with a very unexpected remonstrance. His property, 
 at the site of the Experimental Gardens, lay over what is 
 now known as the Caledonian Road, and the Pentonville 
 Prison part, and had he retained it a few years longer than 
 he did, he might have derived an immense income from it. 
 At that time his land was covered with furze and mysterious- 
 looking cottages, in one of which he lived. It was known 
 as the " Frenchman's Island," where very unpleasant visitors
 
 220 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 were frequently attracted ; but as he was known to go about 
 at night with a pistol in his pocket, and as he was very likely 
 to fire it, and knew perfectly well how to do it, a good deal 
 of curiosity was repressed by that peculiar reputation. He had 
 projects for a community experiment there, and he brought 
 more scandal upon the cause by his eccentric proposals than 
 any other man. 
 
 One of the curious enthusiasts of 1837 was Samuel Bower, 
 of Bradford. He was one of the abstemious co-operators who 
 lived, like the Reforming Optimist, chiefly upon grey peas, 
 of which he carried a supply about, and strenuously insisted 
 that that peculiar diet should be universally adopted. Never- 
 theless, he was a strong-thinking man, and had many useful 
 and self-denying views, which he illustrated in many curious 
 and impracticable papers. 
 
 There were many among the advocates whose position 
 and attainments commanded respect, else the movement 
 could never have attained the ascendancy it did. One who 
 remained longest known was " Dr. King, of Brighton." * 
 This gentleman was educated for the Church, at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge. He married a daughter of Dr. Hook, 
 Vicar of Rottingdean. He subsequently adopted the medical 
 profession, from intellectual preference, and settled in 
 Brighton, where he originated and edited the first publication, 
 called the Co-operator. He was a man of notable friendships, 
 and promoted many liberal movements in conjunction with 
 Dr. Birkbeck, Ricardo, Owen, and Lord Brougham. His 
 daughter married Mr. John Robertson, well known as one 
 of the early editors of the Westminster Review^ during Mr. 
 Mill's connection with it. Dr. King was justly considered 
 one of the founders of Co-operation. 
 
 Dr. King continued his interest in Co-operation until 
 the end of his life. On entering his eightieth year he 
 wrote to the Co-operator a letter as enthusiastic as those he 
 wrote half a century earlier, and which might have been 
 
 1 Dr. William King was born at Ipswich in 1786. Gaining con- 
 siderable distinction at Cambridge, he was elected a Fellow. He settled 
 at Brighton. He assisted a co-operative society then established in 
 West Street. On May 1, 1828, he issued the first number of the 
 Co-operator, and continued it monthly until 1830. Dr. King died at 
 Brighton in 1865.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 221 
 
 written by a young convert. He had the honour of being 
 consulted by Lady Noel Byron, who had contributed ^300 
 towards the success of a productive association established 
 among those Brighton societies. 
 
 Dr. King's Co-operator was a source of inspiration in many 
 parts of the country, mere fragments of numbers being 
 treasured up by the recipients. Stores have been founded in 
 consequence of their perusal. The fairness, temper, and the 
 certain moderation of tone rendered Dr. King's little paper, 
 all the articles being written by himself, one of the wisely- 
 influential precursors of Co-operation. 
 
 P. O. Skene, Esq., who is always mentioned as an "Esq.," 
 appears frequently in early co-operative reports as a promoter, 
 contributor, and medium by whom ladies and others made 
 contributions. There was also a Mr. G. R. Skene, his 
 brother ; but being less personally distinguished he is 
 described as Mr. G. R. Skene. Being very watchful and 
 workful as a secretary, he deserves equal mention in these 
 pages. In those days, when Co-operation was struggling, 
 it was no doubt necessary to mark when one of its adherents 
 held a position of more conventional respectability than others. 
 " Philip O. Skene, Esq.," was really a very accomplished 
 gentleman, an eminent teacher of languages in his day. He 
 held a German class in the upper room of the first-named 
 London Co-operative Store, 19, Greville Street, Hatton Garden. 
 Mr. J. S. Mill and Mr. J. A. Roebuck, when young men, 
 were among the remarkable pupils who attended. 
 
 The Times of 1837 gave a very honourable notice of 
 Philip Orkney Skene. "His father, Major Skene, and 
 grandfather, Governor Skene, were both attainted of high 
 treason against the United States, as British Loyalists ; and 
 his great-grandfather was attainted of high treason in the 
 rebellion of 1 715. The Times stated that the Earl of Fife, 
 who is a branch of the Skene family, had taken the estate 
 which had previously descended from father to son for eight 
 hundred years in the Skene family. Before Philip O. Skene 
 was twenty years of age, he was sent to superintend the 
 erection of the military fortification at Hoy Island, in the 
 Orkneys. He joined the English army, entering Paris, in 
 1 8 15, and from his great knowledge of the French and
 
 222 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 German languages, was appointed to attend the Crown 
 Prince of Prussia, whose sovereign, in distinction of his 
 services, presented Mr. Skene with a valuable ring, set with 
 numerous brilliants. After attaining much scientific dis- 
 tinction abroad, he returned to England, entered the Middle 
 Temple, and ate several terms ; when Mr. Owen's efforts 
 at New Lanark, in its best days, so impressed his mind, 
 that he devoted afterwards much of his time and means to 
 promoting similar objects. Mr. Skene died at the age or 
 44, at Lewes, from exhaustion, after a protracted state of 
 debility, brought on by over-exertion in his duties as 
 surveyor of roads, a post which he had held for several 
 years." The Times added, that " he left elementary works 
 in German, Italian, French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, 
 besides works which bear other names than his." 
 
 At the (Third) Co-operative Congress, of 1832, a very 
 remarkable letter was received from a distinguished man, 
 Leigh Hunt, who dated it from 5, York Buildings, New 
 Road, London. He alleged that " increasing avocations and 
 ill-health alone prevented his attendance." Happily neither 
 killed him until nearly thirty years later. He stated he 
 believed he was the first journalist who endeavoured to 
 impress upon the public the propriety of considering Mr. 
 Owen's views. Touching the supposed contradiction between 
 the claims of this life and a future one, he cited what was 
 said by a wise man, " that it would be a very strange and 
 ungrateful thing if we behaved ourselves gloomily or in- 
 differently in a beautiful garden which some friend gave 
 us, because by and by he had promised us a better." 
 
 Another name, always one of interest and respect, was 
 that of Mr. Thomas Allsop, who, to the manners and 
 cultivation of a gentleman, united an originality of sentiment 
 and generous enthusiasm for political as well as social change, 
 displayed with the same force and boldness by no other 
 adherent of social views. A member of the Stock Exchange, 
 he understood the conditions of business as well as those 
 of the social state contemplated. He was the adviser of 
 Feargus O'Connor in his best days, and conferred upon him 
 the necessary property qualification which Mr. O'Connor did 
 not possess when he was first elected a member of Parliament
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 223 
 
 viz., 300 a year derived from land. On one occasion Mr. 
 Allsop, who was also connected with a large and fashionable 
 business in Regent Street, alarmed the law courts and the 
 press by refusing to be sworn upon a grand jury, on which 
 he had often served, on the ground that he objected to find 
 a prisoner guilty, alleging as a reason that in every part of 
 London the criminal class was recruited by flagrant social 
 neglect. This was done for the express purpose of forcing 
 public attention to the subject. Such an act by one in Mr. 
 Allsop's position produced a great impression. 1 In the late 
 Mr. Justice Talfourd's memorial of Charles Lamb, the reader 
 will find graceful acknowledgments of Mr. Allsop's long and 
 helpful friendship to the great Essayist. 
 
 Another writer, who impressed society with the opinion 
 that persons of taste and means were favourable to social 
 views, was Mr. John Minter Morgan, author of " Hampden in 
 the Nineteenth Century." This work appeared in two handsome 
 volumes, and was printed in the costliest manner of books, with 
 original copperplate illustrations of great skill, of good design, 
 and finished execution, in mezzotint. Some of the scenes, 
 dramatic and communistic, surpass in conception anything 
 produced either before or since. The events of the story 
 carry the reader into the highest society, and the dialogues 
 conducted with the most eminent men of the day are 
 gracefully rendered their known and published sentiments 
 being skilfully interwoven in the speeches made. If co- 
 operative views had always been presented with as much 
 judgment, they would have made wider way in the world. 
 Mr. Morgan wrote other works, as the "Reproof of Brutus," and 
 the "Revolt of the Bees," which attracted considerable attention 
 in their day. The "Reproof of Brutus" was written in verse, 
 but excited no jealousy among the poets of his time. 
 
 When a young man, Mr. Morgan displayed more courage 
 than was to be expected from his gentle character. He 
 appeared as a lecturer in the theatre at the Mechanics' In- 
 stitution in defence of Mr. Owen's Sunday lectures. Mr. 
 Morgan's lecture was delivered on Thursday, May 6, 1830. 
 Mr. Owen had been permitted to deliver Sunday lectures in 
 
 He is the author of " Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," who 
 was his periodic Sunday guest for a great number of years.
 
 224 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 that theatre morning, afternoon, and evening, on the " Moral 
 and Social Duties of Man." The clergy, however, had 
 interfered. Bishop Blomfield had spoken at King's College, 
 and said that " all other sciences and acquirements than those 
 of the Church of England and Ireland ought to be held 
 subservient to those principles of action furnished by the 
 doctrines of the Gospel." The members of the Mechanics' 
 Institution were compelled, in deference to clerical opinion, 
 to recommend a discontinuance of the Sunday morning 
 lectures, as they were delivered during the hour of divine 
 service. Mr. Tooke, the eminent solicitor of the institution, 
 gave it as his opinion that the lectures were illegal, besides 
 being calculated to compromise the usefulness of the in- 
 stitution. Mr. Tooke is mentioned by Mr. Morgan, who 
 said that he had consulted with Mr. Brougham on the 
 subject, who entirely concurred in that view. Mr. Morgan 
 said that if Mr. Brougham was right in his opinion as to 
 the lectures being illegal, it was incumbent on him, who 
 stood so committed to the cause of mental liberty, to move 
 the repeal of the Act. The Act is still unrepealed. Lord 
 Amberley boldly endeavoured to procure its repeal. By 
 ignominious evasions, lectures have continued to be delivered 
 in London since; but as often as Christianity opens its 
 dangerous eyes, and chooses to make itself offensive, it sends 
 the philosophers home mute, with their lectures in their 
 pockets. 1 Those who think that social reformers have at 
 times troubled themselves needlessly with theology should 
 take into account that their way has been blocked up by it 
 all their days. Mr. Morgan, later in life, took fruitless 
 trouble to induce the clergy to interest themselves in social 
 reform. Gentlemen who were his guests at Sackville Street 
 still tell how they were always escorted after dinner to see 
 his model of a community, in which a church formed one 
 of the ornaments. Mr. Morgan made his fortune as a paper- 
 maker, which is. probably one reason why he excelled other 
 social writers in producing elegantly-printed books, whose 
 clear and thick leaves and broad margins felt in the hand 
 like a lucid and substantial argument. 
 
 Mr. William Pare was the first recognised co-operative 
 1 This was done to Professor Huxley.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 225 
 
 lecturer, and the most persuasive and persistently practical 
 of them all. The editor of The Co-operative Miscellany^ of 
 1830, introduced him for the first time to its readers in 
 curious deferential terms as being their " very respectable 
 and indefatigable friend." His first lecture was delivered 
 where he spoke three times, in the Music Hall, Bold Street, 
 Liverpool. There were four co-operative societies established 
 in Liverpool at that time. 
 
 Mr. Thompson, of Cork, had the merit of satisfying Mr. 
 William Pare of the utility and practicability of the co- 
 operative system. His conviction was converted into ardour 
 by Mr. Thompson's "Enquiry into the Distribution of Wealth." 
 Mr. Pare first appears in co-operative literature at the 
 anniversary of the first Birmingham Co-operative Society, 
 at which he presided, on the 28th of December, 1829, at 
 the Vauxhall Tavern, Ashted. Nearly a hundred persons 
 were present, including some thirty of the members' wives, 
 for co-operative tea-parties were from the first sociable, and 
 included wives and children as well as husbands. Mr. Pare 
 began by proposing the health of " the king in his social 
 capacity of father of his people," which denoted the 
 benevolence rather than the accuracy of the social imagina- 
 tion of the period. Mr. Pare quite understood then, and 
 expressed at that early date, the policy of Co-operation as 
 being " a scheme of voluntary equality " ; and contended 
 that the English were not to be confounded with French 
 agitators. "The French," he said, "worked by force, the 
 English by persuasion. The French cried ' Down with the 
 aristocrats ! ' the co-operators said ' Let them alone.' " Mr. 
 James Guest, the well-known bookseller of Birmingham, 
 was vice-president on the occasion, and gave " Success to 
 the numerous co-operative societies then established in 
 England, Scotland, and America." One of the toasts was 
 "The immortal memory of John Bellers, the first known 
 projector of a co-operative community in England." 
 
 The sixth number of the United Trades' Co-operative 
 Journal records that on Tuesday evening, March 30, 1830, 
 Mr. Pare, the corresponding secretary to the First Birmingham 
 Co-operative Society, delivered his first public lecture at the 
 Mechanics' Institution, Manchester, remarking " Mr. Pare 
 
 vol. 1. 16
 
 226 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 is a young man of very extensive practical information, deeply 
 impressed with the evils which afflict the working classes of 
 this country, and most zealous in his endeavours to disseminate 
 that information which he thinks must ultimately produce a 
 beneficial effect." 
 
 At Manchester, later in the year, he held a meeting at 
 the house of one of the members of the first society, which 
 was well attended, several persons were present belonging 
 to the Stockport society. On three successive evenings he 
 spoke in the theatre of the Mechanics' Institution. At his 
 first lecture there were not less than one thousand persons 
 present. Mr. Owen seldom distinguished any of his adherents 
 by notice, but in Mr. Pare's case he did. He said, describing 
 a visit he (Mr. Owen) made to Birmingham : " I found him 
 engaged in the business of railways, which he appears to 
 understand in his department of it, if we are to judge from 
 the approbation he has received from the committees of both 
 Houses of Parliament." s This instance shows with what 
 judgment Mr. Owen could praise when he chose. Nothing 
 could be more delicate, indirect, and uncompromising. Had 
 he said more, or said it differently, it might have been 
 disastrous to Mr. Pare. For more than forty years Mr. 
 Pare was the tireless expositor of social principles. He 
 learned early from Robert Owen the golden principle which 
 Leigh Hunt so finely expressed, that " the errors of mankind 
 proceed more from defect of knowledge than from defect 
 of goodness." All the acerbities which ever arise in any of 
 our societies arise from members who do not know this, 
 or who forget it if they do. Mr. Pare seldom forgot it. 
 His angerless voice and his pleasant patience were an endow- 
 ment as strong as his general zeal, which never hasted 
 and never rested until envious death took him from us. 
 
 Besides Mr. Pare, Mr. Hawkes Smith, and Mr. Murphy, 
 there was Mr. John Rabone, also of Birmingham, whose 
 pen was often to be met with in early co-operative literature. 
 His letters in the volumes of the Crisis were always earnestly 
 and pleasantly written, mainly appealing to Christians to 
 recognise the spirit of Christianity in co-operative effort. 
 It was his writings which first caused the name " Christian 
 1 New Moral World, October r, 1836.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 227 
 
 Socialist" to be used, and in 1837 persons began to sign 
 themselves by that name. 
 
 Another man of mark and promise in the early social 
 movement was Rowland Detrosier, who died prematurely 
 very much regretted by all politicians of the people in every 
 part of Great Britain. Though well cared for at times by 
 opulent friends, he had no sustained support, and exposure 
 upon a coach, after a night lecture, when he was in a weakly 
 state, brought on inflammation of the lungs, which killed 
 him. 1 He was a man of greater promise than any who 
 arose among the political and co-operative classes, and had 
 he lived he would have been a leader. He had all the qualities 
 of knowledge, enthusiasm, geniality, respect tor the convictions 
 of others, and powers of commanding address. Detrosier was 
 the natural son of Mr. Robert Norris, of Manchester, and 
 was abandoned, when a boy, by his French mother, whose 
 name he bore. He was put to the trade of a fustian cutter. 
 At nineteen he unfortunately married. By self-study, con- 
 tinued when he and his family were nearly famishing, he 
 taught himself French and Latin, and acquired a knowledge 
 of the sciences, which enabled him to lecture upon them 
 in a manner which few professional lecturers of the day could 
 excel, in communicating animated knowledge. He preached 
 in a Swedenborgian chapel in Hulme, where he used to 
 astonish the congregation by filling his pulpit with geological 
 specimens, and placing electric and galvanic machines on 
 the desk where his Bible and hymn-book should lie. He 
 had the distinction of founding the first two Mechanics' 
 Institutions ever established in England. As he had no 
 support but that which his daily labour brought him, he 
 often suffered extreme distress. His reputation, however, 
 reached London, where he was welcomed. Jeremy Bentham 
 had been so struck by some of his discourses that he sent 
 him a present ot his books, and showed him marks of 
 flattering regard until his death. Lady Noel Byron sent 
 him 20, and often invited him to her house in London. 
 Mr. Mordan is said to have bestowed some of the earlier 
 proceeds of his gold pens upon him, and Mr. John Stuart 
 
 1 He had been delivering the opening lecture at the Mechanics' 
 Institution, at Stratford, near London.
 
 ?28 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Mill not only befriended him while he lived, but befriended 
 his family for many years after his death. It was, however, 
 Leigh Hunt to whom he was indebted for his introduction 
 to London : his name was first mentioned in a generous 
 and discerning article in the Examiner, Leigh Hunt being 
 greatly struck, as everybody was at that time, by his lecture 
 on the Necessity of the Extension of Moral and Political 
 Instruction among the Working Class. Detrosier had a voice 
 and eloquence resembling Lord Brougham's, and his mind was 
 distinguished by rapidity and power. 
 
 Mr. James Watson, one of those few publishers of forbidden 
 literature, who gave consideration how far the reputation of 
 his party might be promoted by his judgment in the books 
 he sold, and by his personal probity, came up from Leeds, 
 when a young man, to take the place of one of Carlile's 
 shopmen, 500 of whom were imprisoned for selling unstamped 
 publications, a fate which very soon befel Mr. Watson. He 
 is recorded as acting as a co-operative missionary in Leeds, 
 Halifax, Barnsley, Todmorden, and other places in connection 
 with the British Association for Promoting Co-operative 
 Knowledge. He is spoken of as " the first missionary to 
 the country, and as having done great and permanent good." 
 In one of his speeches Mr. Watson put the case of the 
 working class co-operators in a suggestive form, thus : 
 "The co-operators would have those who had hitherto lived 
 upon the labour of others henceforth live upon their own 
 capital. They would then discover how long it would last " 
 unless recruited by the exertions of the industrious. 
 
 The name of Mr. Henry Hetherington appears as far back 
 as the report of the fourth quarterly meeting of the British 
 Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge, 
 1830, when he was elected one of the committee of the first 
 Soho society. He was another publisher distinguished by a 
 long career of peril. Straightforward, intelligent, hearty, 
 genial, he was best known by the Poor Mans Guardian, 
 which he edited, printed, and published, when no one else 
 out of prison could be found to undertake the peril of it. 
 Another man of subsequent note, who took part in the 
 early Congresses, was Mr. James Bronterre O'Brien, then 
 the editor of the Midland Representative. He subsequently
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 229 
 
 suffered imprisonment in the cause of Chartism. An 
 animated and able speaker, of very varied information, and 
 possessing a considerable knowledge both of French and 
 English literature, he was regarded as the political school- 
 master of the Chartists, but, like most Irishmen, his genius 
 lay much in suspicion, in which he excelled ; and he undid, 
 by the distrust which he diffused, the good he was capable of 
 accomplishing by his generous fervour. He it was who 
 translated Buonarroti's " History of Baboeuf," as we have said 
 elsewhere. Bronterre had all the geniality of his countrymen. 
 It was pleasant to be his friend. 
 
 Among other qualifications for the millennium displayed 
 by energetic Socialists, was that of originality in figures of 
 speech. One of the greatest masters in the rhetoric of the 
 "New Moral World" was Mr. Joseph Smith, of Salford. When 
 the Queenwood community was in force he went about the 
 country collecting sheep with which to stock the farm. His 
 plan was to rise at the end of a public meeting, and propose 
 that all who had enthusiastically passed communist resolutions 
 should prove their sincerity by joining there and then in 
 subscribing a sum sufficient to buy a sheep. The most ardent 
 who had held up their hands in favour of the motion of the 
 evening, were not always prepared to put them in their pockets. 
 To incline the surprised enthusiasts to that operation, Mr. 
 Smith would apprise them that he had ordered the doors to 
 be locked, so that no one could leave until the price of the 
 sheep arrived on the platform. Then he would say they had 
 bought a community, they must pay for the community, and 
 they must stock the community, "else they would all fall 
 into the abyss which was hanging over their heads." In 
 view of this unforeseen calamity, reluctant shillings were 
 produced until the market price of the coveted sheep was 
 made up. When this was done, they were rewarded by 
 being assured by Mr. Smith that " now they would all 
 sail into port on the top of their watch-towers," a kind 
 of vessel quite unknown to Her Majesty's constructor of 
 the navy. This inventive rhetorician was described in the 
 organ of the society as " the high priest of the c New Moral 
 World.' " 
 
 On other occasions he proved himself not deficient in old-
 
 230 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 world illustration. He had been descanting with his accus- 
 tomed fervour upon the deceptions of competitive commerce, 
 when a curious auditor put the question what did he mean 
 by deception ? The ardent and good-natured orator, who was 
 commonly right when he felt, and wrong when he thought, 
 had probably never given a public definition in his life, and 
 was without any idea how to define deception. The meeting 
 was large, hostile, and impatient, and the hesitation of the 
 lecturer was loudly resented, when it suddenly occurred to 
 Mr. Smith that his head was quite bald, and his black, curly, 
 and unsuspected locks were not his own, so he boldly snatched 
 off his wig and exclaimed : " That is deception." His raven 
 hair, hanging in his hand like a scalp, and the sudden sight or 
 his unimagined and naked pate was so ludicrous, that his 
 adversaries were confounded and convinced, and with the 
 generosity of an English audience, the enemy applauded him 
 as heartily as his friends. 
 
 In those exalted days social editorial art went for nothing. 
 No one troubled himself as to how the world would regard his 
 language. Just as the early apostles never reflected how 
 distracted fathers of the future Church would labour to 
 reconcile their sayings (believing, as they did, that the end of 
 all things was at hand, and there never would be any fathers to 
 be perplexed), so these social seers expected that the " old 
 immoral world " was played out, and that nobody in the new 
 substitute they had in hand could ever heed anything said or 
 done in it. Their least impulsive writer called the attention 
 of two counties " to the active, the energetic, the devoted 
 Fleming," * and the editor asked " Where did Joseph Smith 
 get his superior spirit of prophecy, and give us tablets of 
 remembrance chiselled as it were in alabaster for purity, and 
 gold for splendour and endurance." 2 I first visited him in 1879 
 at Wissahiccon, in America, where he kept a hotel whose 
 great attraction was a large room, where ranging around it 
 were small bushes of the district, on the branches of which he 
 had carved, with his own hand, hundreds of political coteries, 
 known to all the land so life-like and natural, with likenesses 
 so unmistakable, that they were the wonder and diversion ot 
 
 1 New Moral World, December 31, 1836, p. 75. 
 ' Ibid., February 4, 1837.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 231 
 
 thousands of visitors. Afterwards I sent him the first edition 
 of these volumes, which he had never seen, and his sudden joy 
 at the remembrance of him when he thought he had been 
 forgotten killed him. He had left England more than 
 thirty years then. 
 
 Mr. Finch was the earliest and greatest pamphleteer of the 
 party. Mr. Owen first introduced Mr. Finch to the co- 
 operative public at his institution, in Charlotte Street, in 1834, 
 as " a new labourer in the field." The " new labourer " 
 actually got inserted in the Liverpool Albion a series of letters 
 on the " Fooleries of Sectarianism." These " fooleries " 
 were sincerities to those who entertained them, and they 
 naturally resented this mode of describing them. But it is 
 always your religious man who is most offensive to pious 
 people. A man who dissents from the newspaper religions is 
 respectful to them ; and if he cares to oppose them, reasons 
 against them without offensive imputation : but your religious 
 man, who has a little infallibility of his own, can venture to 
 commit outrages on others, knowing that his rudeness will pass 
 for holy wrath. 
 
 In 1842, Mr. John Gray, of Faldonside, Galashiels, published 
 " An Efficient Remedy for the Distress of Nations." Mr. 
 Owen having set a fashion of devising " an entirely new system 
 of society," Mr. Gray put forth one. Society profits in a silent, 
 sulky way, by suggestions made to it : yet it dislikes any one 
 who proposes to overhaul it. Mr. Gray had a great plan of a 
 Standard Bank and Mint. The Duke of Wellington made 
 known this year, in one of his wonderful notes, that " he 
 declined to receive the visits of deputations from associations, 
 or of individual gentlemen, in order to confer with them on 
 public affairs ; but if any gentleman thinks proper to give 
 him, in writing, information or instruction, on any subject, he 
 will peruse the same with attention." The modest, painstaking 
 duke had not Mr. Gray before his eyes when he said this. 
 That gentleman would have taken the duke at his word, and 
 soon have brought him to a standstill. The pleasantest part of 
 Mr. Gray's " Efficient Remedy " is where he tells the reader that 
 he had published a previous work which had not sold, so that 
 in issuing another he could only be actuated by a desire to 
 advance the interests of mankind, and this was true. He
 
 232 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 was a well-meaning, disinterested, and uninteresting writer. 
 His books never sold, nor could they be given away ; and 
 there was for long a stock at two places in London where 
 they could be had for the asking, and those who applied were 
 looked upon with favour. 
 
 Those who have read much of the rise and career of new 
 opinions will be aware that religious history would present a 
 plentiful series of ridiculous situations and deplorable absurdities. 
 And one reason why similar eccentricities are continually 
 being reproduced in new movements is because party historians 
 do not think it a duty to relate them. If they did, they 
 would be warnings to ardent adherents to consider how they 
 may best guard the truth they represent from misapprehension 
 or dislike. It is true that many of the disciples of social 
 science were flaccid, dreaming people, possessed of a feeble 
 goodness ; but there were also a larger number of strong, wise, 
 cultivated, and determined adherents who sustained the move- 
 ment when only men of courage would espouse it. 
 
 Eccentricities are not confined to any party ; but when a 
 party becomes established, vagaries are set down to the conduct 
 of irresponsible individuals, by whom nobody is bound ; but in 
 the case of an unpopular association every act of folly is 
 considered as its natural outcome. 
 
 Of the accredited representatives of Socialism who put S.M. 
 after their names, the first in order of editorial service is Mr. 
 George Alexander Fleming, who was the chief editor of the 
 official journal of the party. Mr. Fleming was a native or 
 Scotland, a man of considerable energy and maturity of self- 
 acquired talent. He wrote as well as he spoke. He was the 
 first in office, and he kept there. He was under no delusions 
 of fervour, as others were liable to be. His talent lay in 
 making the movement safe rather than great, and certainly 
 there was room for his order of skill. He was afterwards 
 connected with journals immediately under his own manage- 
 ment, always consistently giving effect to the principles he 
 early entertained. He died in the service of the Morning 
 Advertiser. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd Jones, who ought to be named next in order of 
 platform distinction, had the repute of having the best voice of 
 any of the social lecturers, and that readiness of speech which
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 233 
 
 seems the common endowment of Irishmen. He was always 
 regarded as the best debater who appeared on the platform ; 
 and if it was possible to perfect that talent by practice, he 
 certainly had the opportunity, for more discussion fell to his 
 lot than to any other of his compeers. To Mr. Jones belongs 
 the distinction of being the most active to defend social views 
 when its adherents were weakest, and to meet more of the 
 enemy when the enemy were strongest than any other 
 missionary. While he was a Manchester district missionary 
 he had continually to be despatched to meet furious adversaries, 
 or furious audiences. After a venomous tirade was delivered, 
 he would present himself to answer it, when it was matter or 
 common experience that the confident adversary, who had 
 gone up like a rocket in his lecture, came down like a stick in 
 the discussion. Mr. Jones joined the Salford Co-operative 
 Society as early as 1829, and was all his days an influential 
 leader of the movement. 
 
 Mr. James Rigby was one of the earliest, merriest, and 
 pleasantest speakers among the missionaries. His vivacity of 
 illustration was remarkable. He had genuine imagination ; 
 not, perhaps, always well in hand. If he did not obscure the 
 facts by the fecundity of his fancy, he cast such a glamour over 
 them that the hearer forgot to look for them. As an expositor 
 of Socialism, he was the most fascinating of all his compeers. 
 His vivacity, his graphic language, his brightness of imagination, 
 his agreeable garrulity, always made him a popular speaker. 
 He was long remembered for his happiness of expressing the 
 immense hopes and prospects of the party without any sense 
 whatever of the limited means which alone were at the 
 command of social reformers to realise them. He first came 
 into notice from the active part he took in the laborious 
 agitation for the Ten Hours' Bill. After the fall of Queenwood, 
 he was associated with Mr. Owen as a personal attendant, 
 having charge of his manuscripts. He was entirely a communist, 
 echoing literally Mr. Owen's material views on that subject ; 
 but when a semi-spiritualism came in after-days to be engrafted 
 upon them by the master, Mr. Rigby proved that, though he 
 was a disciple, he was not a follower in the sense of departing 
 from the ancient way. He was with us when we buried Mr. 
 Owen at Newtown. Among all who stood at that grave, none
 
 234 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 were so assiduous, so faithful, so wary, as he. When I went 
 down to relieve him late at night, as he kept watch over his 
 master's tomb, it was with difficulty that he could be induced 
 to go home, until I satisfied him that certain fears which he 
 entertained were all anticipated, and that no unauthorised 
 hands could disturb those honoured remains. His faithful fears 
 dated as far back as the days of Julian Hibbert, at whose death 
 Mr. Baume interfered by virtue of some personal warrant 
 which he was understood to hold, and his head was preserved 
 for purposes of science. All his life Mr. Rigby remained 
 constant to the abstemious habits of his youth, and died at 
 fifty-six years of age, without having tasted animal food. Up 
 to the day of his burial no change from life was observable in 
 his pleasant and placid countenance. Since I have often 
 doubted whether he was really dead when I made an oration 
 over his coffin. 
 
 The missionary who excelled all in vigour of speech, in wit, 
 boldness, and dramatic talent, was Charles Southwell, or 
 London, the youngest of thirty-six children, with activity 
 enough on the platform for them all. 
 
 The Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bathurst, was the youngest of 
 thirty-six brothers and sisters. 1 So there was nothing heretical 
 on Mr. Southwell's part in this peculiarity, for which, other- 
 wise, he might have been held accountable. He was more 
 brilliant than relevant. On one occasion he volunteered a 
 lecture on behalf of imprisoned colleagues, from which myself, 
 Maltus Questell Ryall, and William Chilton expected that 
 some aid would arise. A good audience was assembled at the 
 City Road Hall of Science, the same that Mr. Mordan 
 provided for Detrosier. After Southwell had spoken three- 
 quarters of an hour it was remarked by us that he had not 
 arrived at his subject. Half an hour later he concluded amid 
 a storm of applause, when we said to him, " Why, Southwell, 
 you never mentioned your subject." No," he added, " it did 
 not occur to me." And, to do him justice, neither did it 
 occur to his audience till next day, so much had he diverted 
 and entertained them. 
 
 Ultimately Mr. Southwell left England, and settled in New 
 Zealand, a singularly unsuitable retreat for so fiery and 
 ' Norwich Mercury, 1837.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 235 
 
 active a spirit, unless he intended to set up as a chieftain. On 
 the stage, on the platform, or in the secular press, he might 
 have found a congenial sphere ; but nothing fell to him 
 available except the editorship of a Wesleyan newspaper. It 
 must have been a livelier publication in his hands than its 
 readers had known it before. Its orthodox articles must have 
 been written by proxy. When death befel him, as it did after 
 a few years' sojourn there, he was waited on by members of the 
 proprietary whom he served, to offer him the religious consola- 
 tions available to that body, and were surprised to be told by 
 their patient that he had edited their paper because no other 
 employment was open to him, but he never undertook to edit 
 their tenets. He, however, preferred to die in his own 
 principles, which were atheistic. He probably never professed 
 to be a Wesleyan, and they took his silence for concurrence. 
 
 Frederick Hollick was a young Birmingham man, who 
 cast his lot with the social movement in 1837-8. He and the 
 present writer were townsmen, each engaged in mechanical 
 industry, were fellow-students in the same Mechanics' Institu- 
 tion, both became speakers in the same movement, and were 
 nearly of the same name. But to Mr. Hollick belonged the 
 palm of seeing more things at once, seeing them soon, seeing 
 them clearly, and stating them with a lucidity beyond any compeer 
 of the social platform. When the missionaries were dispersed 
 he went to America, where he studied dentistry and medicine, 
 and published many works on physiology, and acquired both 
 fortune and reputation ; sixty years of absence have not 
 diminished the regard in which he was held in England. 
 
 Thomas Simmons Mackintosh was a Socialist lecturer of note 
 and popularity. He was a man of considerable scientific read- 
 ing, and published a book entitled the " Electrical Theory of 
 the Universe," which attracted attention. The simplicity and 
 boldness of his theory seemed true to those who did not under- 
 stand it, or who did not possess that reach of knowledge necessary 
 to verify so vast a theory. It certainly showed originality and 
 great capacity in focussing the limited electrical knowledge 
 which then existed. Mr. Mackintosh was a ready and animated 
 speaker, with a faculty for vivid and humorous scientific illustra- 
 tion. He ultimately perished in Ottawa, being drowned 
 while bathing; in the river in the cold season.
 
 236 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Mr. Alexander Campbell was an earnest, pacific advocate. 
 He was, as most of the co-operative missionaries were, early 
 connected with trade unions. He shared the mystic doctrines 
 of " Being " of Mr. Greaves, and was one of the vegetarians 
 of the Concordium at Ham Common. He trusted himself 
 among the White Quakers. Mr. Campbell is remembered as 
 one of the managers of the Orbiston community ; one of his 
 daughters married Mr. William Love, known as the chief 
 Liberal bookseller of Glasgow. Mr. Campbell discovered the 
 principle of distributing profits in stores in proportion to 
 purchasers as early as 1829 ; which was acted upon in some 
 stores in Scotland. The principle was re-discovered fifteen 
 years later in Rochdale by James Howarth. Mr. Campbell 
 was many years connected with the Glasgow Sentinel^ a paper 
 established by Robert Buchanan, the social missionary. An 
 excellent three-quarter portrait, in oil, of Mr. Campbell hangs 
 in the hall of the Secular Society, Glasgow, where he was a 
 valued speaker. 
 
 Coventry furnished two missionaries, Dr. John Watts and 
 Mr. John Colier Farn. Dr. Watts became distinguished for 
 high character and practicable ability. When two of the 
 editors of the Oracle of Reason were in prison, he conducted a 
 publication of an alarming name. 1 The repeal of the taxes 
 upon knowledge was accelerated by the lucid and powerful 
 speeches he made in London and elsewhere upon the economical 
 folly of those imposts. In Manchester he received a valuable 
 testimonial in acknowledgment of political and educational 
 services. Of the Economy of Co-operation he was an original 
 and very suggestive expositor. 
 
 Mr. Farn was known as an animated lecturer, familiar alike 
 with co-operative, trades-union, and political questions. He 
 was subsequently connected with newspaper journalism, and at 
 one time held the position of editor of the Co-operative News. 
 He continued all his life the same ardent and zealous worker 
 on behalf of the principles which first brought him into 
 distinction. 
 
 One of the pleasantest advocates of early Co-operation was 
 Henry Jacques Jeffery, a bright, quick-speaking, energetic 
 
 1 The Blasphemer. There was no blasphemy in it. The title was in 
 defiance of the Bishop of Exeter.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 237 
 
 lecturer, distinguished for ardour and variety of exposition. He 
 made generous exertions for the defence of his colleagues who 
 incurred imprisonment. Mr. Jeffery was equally known in 
 Edinburgh and London for the fervour with which he espoused 
 social principles. He long held a place of considerable trust in 
 one of the greatest publishing houses in London. 
 
 John Green was one of the early lecturers, some time 
 stationed at Liverpool. He was a useful advocate, and took an 
 honest interest in the movement. My recollection of him is 
 very distinct. When a very young man, I had been wandering 
 on foot for purposes of health for some three weeks, and 
 embarking at Liverpool for a short voyage, which, as I had 
 never seen the sea, seemed an immense adventure, a pleasant, 
 homely voice called out to me from the quay, " Mr. Holyoake, 
 Mr. Holyoake." As I had not heard my name for three 
 weeks, I felt like Robinson Crusoe, when he was first addressed 
 by his parrot, and thought so at the time. I was grateful to 
 Mr. Green for that greeting. He afterwards went to America, 
 where, before he had acquired the faculty of seeing two ways 
 at once, necessary in that land, he was cut into halves by a 
 railway train. He held some official position upon the line. 
 
 Robert Buchanan was another Scotch advocate who joined 
 the missionary propaganda of 1837. An ardent and ready 
 speaker, he was also addicted to poetry, in which he succeeded 
 better than any of the competitors in verse by whom he was 
 surrounded. After the social movement subsided, Mr. Bu- 
 chanan became connected with journalism, both in Glasgow 
 and London, until his death a few years ago. His son, Robert 
 Buchanan, had far more than his father's genius, and was a 
 poet, a novelist, and dramatist of accredited reputation. 
 
 Another poet who made some noise, and obtained consider- 
 able notice among those for whom he sang, was John Garwood, 
 whose protracted performance, "The Force of Circum- 
 stances," appeared in many numbers of the weekly publications 
 of the party. 
 
 Eben Jones was a young poet, who made several contribu- 
 tions to the New Moral World. He really could write readable 
 verses. His poems being, like Shelley's, heretical, contributed 
 strongly to impart that character to the party publishing them, 
 without distinguishing them as unofficial contributions.
 
 238 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 One speaker, a man of real capacity, was a tailor, named 
 Robert Spiers. In social condition he, too, was a person to 
 whom any form of the millennium would have been welcome. 
 I first met him at the opening of the Social Institution in 
 Huddersfield, at which I was to speak morning and evening ; 
 but when I saw my name in large letters, rainbow-coloured, 
 on the walls of the town, I was dazed and abashed, and did not 
 make much of the speaking, except for one ten minutes in the 
 evening, when I forgot the placard. I had walked from 
 Sheffield, twenty-six miles, the preceding day, which did not 
 conduce to energy of speech or imagination. But I well 
 remember that Mr. Spiers, who spoke in the afternoon, he 
 being regarded as a secondary person to the luminary who was 
 imported to speak in the morning and evening, amazed me by 
 the mastery of statement which he displayed. In capacity or 
 logical, not merely subtlety of, sequence, but of obvious 
 dependence of one part on the other, and all the parts leaving 
 one whole impression upon the mind, I still think him the 
 ablest lecturer we had. 
 
 Napier Bailey was a strange figure, who flitted across the 
 social platform. He had been a Lancashire schoolmaster, and 
 he always remained a schoolmaster. He had not a particle or 
 imagination, but possessed more literary information than any 
 other of his platform colleagues. He was the first and only 
 contributor to the New Moral World who quoted Greek. It 
 would be a fortunate thing if everybody who knew Greek and 
 Latin could be allowed to wear some intimation of the fact 
 upon them, that the general public might honour them accord- 
 ingly without being obliged to recognise the acquirement by 
 quotations which, being assumed to be highly rare and interest- 
 ing, are therefore presented to ordinary readers in a language 
 they do not understand. Mr. Bailey's article must have been 
 delayed a fortnight while the printer, in a Midland town, where 
 Greek is not the language of the inhabitants, sent to London 
 for the necessary type. Mr. Bailey was an active writer, and 
 communicated a great deal of interesting information to all 
 who read or heard him. As he had far more literary know- 
 ledge than the majority of opponents in his time, he silenced 
 more adversaries than any other lecturer by overwhelming 
 them with quotations which they could not answer, because
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 239 
 
 they could not understand them. Mr. Bailey was the writer 
 of the " Social Reformers' Cabinet Library." He passed away 
 suddenly from the view of men, and has never been heard or 
 since. 
 
 G. Simkins, whose name frequently occurs in early reports 
 of the Charlotte Street Institution, was a shoemaker by trade ; 
 a tall, pale, spare-looking man, who looked as if the old world 
 had not done much for him. Like some other lecturers of that 
 time, he took the principles pretty much as he found them ; 
 but if he did not make them plainer he did not obscure them, 
 nor compromise them by extravagance of statement. 
 
 Henry Knight was another young speaker, who after a few 
 years of activity went to America. He wrote a series of short 
 letters in explanation of the principles he represented as a 
 missionary, which were by far the freshest and most interesting 
 statement of them produced by any advocate of the time. His 
 papers appeared under the title of " Short Essays on Socialism." 
 Though a very young man, he had the merit of being the first 
 lecturer who attempted to select from the collection of principles 
 set forth by Mr. Owen, those which were essential to the 
 community scheme. 
 
 J. R. Cooper, an active newsagent and bookseller of Man- 
 chester, was favourably known as a lecturer on social questions. 
 His younger brother, Robert Cooper, became a Social Mis- 
 sionary. He (Robert Cooper) wrote several pamphlets, chiefly 
 on theological subjects, which had a considerable sale. In later 
 years he came into possession of a fortune which was intended 
 for Mr. Southwell, to whom it was first bequeathed. But on 
 his leaving for New Zealand, Mr. Fletcher, in his disappoint- 
 ment, bequeathed it to the present writer, who was Mr. 
 Southwell's coadjutor on the Oracle of Reason^ who held 
 Mr. Fletcher's will two years. Acting on treacherous inform- 
 ation, which Mr. Fletcher did not know to be untrue, he 
 altered the will in favour of Mr. Cooper, and, dying suddenly, 
 Mr. Cooper inherited it. The giver honourably remembered 
 Mrs. Emma Martin's children by a small legacy to each. 
 
 One of the writers who contributed most to the pleasant 
 information and poetic amusement of the New Moral IVorld^ 
 was a gentleman who signed himself " PenciPem," with a 
 knowledge of, and a taste tor, art and literature. His verses had
 
 2 4 o HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 a pleasant sparkle of wit and humour, which often relieved the 
 perennial disquisitions upon the Five Fundamental Facts, and 
 Twenty Laws of Human Nature. Some who have acquired 
 distinction have owed the inspiration and practice of art to him. 
 He held an official situation at South Kensington, in which his 
 attainments were beneficial to the nation. 1 
 
 Mrs. Wheeler attracted considerable attention by well- 
 reasoned lectures, delivered in 1829, in a chapel near Finsbury 
 Square. 
 
 Miss Reynolds was another lady lecturer who excited great 
 admiration for her effective speaking. She afterwards became 
 Mrs. Chapel Smith, went to America, and is understood to be 
 the same lady who frequently wrote to the Boston Investigator^ 
 and whose letters are dated from New Harmony, Indiana. 
 
 Among the new writers of 1835 appears one under the 
 signature of " Kate," afterwards the wife of Mr. Goodwyn 
 Barmby. " Kate's " papers were always fresh, pleasant, and 
 sensible. 
 
 In 1841, Mary Hennell wrote an interesting "Outline or 
 the various Social Systems and Communities which have been 
 founded on the principle of Co-operation." It appeared as an 
 appendix to Charles Bray's " Philosophy of Necessity." Sara 
 Hennell, her sister, has written many works of considerable 
 originality and literary completeness. 
 
 Madame D'Arusmont was the most accomplished and dis- 
 tinguished woman, who personally identified herself with the 
 propagation of social views. As Frances Wright, her lectures 
 were popular both in England and America. She was known 
 as the friend and associate of General Lafayette, and in the 
 days of slavery she bought lands and endeavoured to establish 
 a free negro community at Nashoba. She had a commanding 
 presence, and was a cultivated and eloquent lecturess in days 
 when only women of great courage ventured to lecture at all. 
 She is reported as declaring, in 1836, in favour of the immediate 
 abolition of Southern slavery. This occurred at Tammany 
 Hall. Mr. J. S. Mill held her in regard as one of the most 
 
 1 Mr. George Wallas ("Pencil'em") was an artist in Bilston. As a 
 Social Missionary it was my duty to examine all persons joining a branch. 
 I remember passing Mr. Wallas, about 1841, who probably knew more of 
 most things than I did myself. My brother William, who became Curator 
 of the Art Schools of the Royal Academy, and a painter of repute in his 
 day, owed his art education to Mr. Wallas.
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 241 
 
 important women of her day, and pointed this out to the 
 present writer on her last visit to England. 1 
 
 Notable among the ladies who have been social lecturers was 
 Mrs. Emma Martin, who had wit and the courage of several 
 men, and delivered lectures in the stormiest times and to the 
 most dangerously disposed audiences. She was a small lady, 
 of attractive expression, with dark luminous eyes, a pleasant, 
 far-reaching voice, and a womanly woman. The vivacious 
 " Vivian," of the Leader, whom the public now know as 
 G. H. Lewes, with various admiration under his own name, 
 used to say that he disliked " bony priestesses, learned in all the 
 ologies and destitute of hips." Co-operators have not been 
 wanting in beautiful advocates ; but they remembered that 
 wise men were not always beautiful, and they esteemed greatly 
 a pleasant mind. Mrs. Martin studied medicine and practised 
 with success, and during the cholera of 1849 displayed great 
 courage, as she did in everything. 
 
 Among the well-known pioneers of the earlier period was 
 E. T. Craig, mentioned for the intrepidity shown by him at 
 Ralahine. The following letter from Lady Noel Byron to 
 him serves to explain the diversified nature of the social work 
 done in those days, and the respect in which Mr. Craig was 
 held by eminent persons. The honourable and practical 
 interest Lady Byron took in promoting the betterment of the 
 humbler classes led her to give him the direction of an industrial 
 agricultural school, which she founded at Ealing Grove, on 
 land formerly belonging to the Duke of Newcastle. Her 
 ladyship's letter was as follows : 
 
 " Sir, I had the satisfaction of receiving your letter yester- 
 day. After Mr. Finch had informed me of the possibility or 
 obtaining your valuable assistance I addressed you on the sub- 
 ject, directing my letter to Mr. Barry's residence (Glandore, 
 Ireland), where you were supposed to be. I am, however, glad 
 to find that you are not so far distant, and if you feel disposed 
 to enter into the scheme, of which I send you the prospectus, 
 I shall be happy to defray the expenses of your journey from 
 Manchester, in order that you may communicate with the 
 gentlemen who are engaged in the undertaking. I do not con- 
 
 1 Her famous career as a foundress of a community was described by 
 Mrs. Trollope in 1829. See Co-operative News, July 30, 1904. 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 242 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 sider myself as having a right to settle anything individually, as 
 I am only one of the parties concerned, and have not the know- 
 ledge requisite to direct the arrangements of such an institution. 
 It has, however, been my advice that the master should be 
 found before the land was bought or rented (for that point is not 
 decided), and before any of the economical details were finally 
 determined upon ; because I thought that the person chosen to 
 conduct the establishment would be the best adviser on such 
 questions. The locality will be within eight miles of London. 
 The amount of funds not yet ascertained. You will therefore 
 perceive that there is not at present an absolute certainty of the 
 whole of the above plan being carried into effect ; but there can 
 scarcely be a doubt that the day-school, with land attached to it, 
 might be speedily established if a competent director were found. 
 
 "I am strongly impressed with the belief of your possessing 
 the energy, experience, and benevolence necessary to execute 
 our design. The remuneration to be afforded you must de- 
 pend in part on the success and extension of the school. You 
 will be enabled to form your own judgment if you take the 
 trouble to come to London. I could see you either there or 
 here, and will refer you in the first place to a friend of mine, 
 who feels great interest in the agricultural school plan." 
 
 Mr. Craig accepted the appointment from Lady Byron, and 
 while the buildings were being prepared he went on a com- 
 mission to the Continent to examine the industrial schools of 
 Rotterdam, and of Switzerland, including the famous one of 
 E. de Fellenburg, at Hofwyl, near Berne. Lady Byron's school, 
 which he organised at Ealing Grove, on the plan pursued at 
 Ralahine, obtained considerable distinction, and was much 
 visited. The Duchess of Roxburgh, the Lady Lytton Bulwer, 
 Ada Byron, Lord King, Sir William Molesworth, and Mrs. 
 Somerville were among those who came. 
 
 In the course of this narrative it will necessarily happen that 
 many persons will be omitted who really are entitled to a place 
 in it. A difficulty which besets every writer is, that whatever 
 trouble he takes to be well informed, he will not escape giving 
 evidence that he does not know everything. My care has 
 been to include all those whose services were most obvious and 
 influential in the movement. 
 
 Many will remember the familiar names of Mr. Vines and
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 243 
 
 Mr. Atkinson, who promoted associated homes, as they did in 
 earlier years ; Mr. Alger and Mr. Braby, long actively con- 
 nected with the movement ; Walter Newall, long held in 
 regard as one of the general secretaries of the central board ; 
 Mr. Nash, a familiar name to the friends of Labour Exchanges ; 
 Mr. Ardell, one time treasurer in community days ; Lawrence 
 Pitkeithly, of Huddersfield, alike regarded by Chartists and 
 Socialists ; H. Constable, an earlier and later friend of the old 
 cause ; J. Cross, of Shoreditch, who lost two fortunes in his 
 later years, and gallantly earned a third, and equally, rich or 
 poor, worked for the promotion of social ideas ; Mr. Austin, 
 who, like Philip O. Skene, wore himself out with his enthusiasm; 
 Robert Adair, whom the poet Wordsworth selected to give 
 the first appointment he bestowed, when he became Her 
 Majesty's Distributor of Stamps. Many others in the chief 
 towns of England and Scotland might, if space permitted, be 
 named for services by which this generation is benefited, and 
 for which they obtained no requital. 
 
 Several of the missionaries were remarkable instances of 
 monotony of power. As young men they manifested sudden 
 and unusual ability. They " struck twelve all at once," and 
 never struck anything after. They were a sort of petrified 
 publicists. Some of these social apostles were pleasant persons 
 to know, but a few of the most endurable were the least worthy, 
 inasmuch as they gave thought and talent to their cause, but 
 did not consider how far they could advance it by giving it also 
 the tribute of their conduct. They did not consider that their 
 credit and connections belonged to it. 
 
 Others adorned their principles by their career ; they took, 
 as it were, the weight of the disordered world upon their 
 shoulders. I remember one, and he was an outlying propagan- 
 dist, who had the martyr-spirit without the martyr-manner. 
 Like Talleyrand, he waited for the hour of action, and never 
 acted before it came. He knew that things were going round, 
 and he watched until the turn came for him to do his part, and 
 he did it with the full force those only can exert who have re- 
 served their strength for the blow. He was thin, poor, and 
 seedy ; but even his seediness had a certain charm of taste, 
 cleanness, and care. There was no seediness in his soul. His 
 spirits were always bright.
 
 244 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 The majority of these social advocates had clear, strong, 
 worldly sense. Their principles and conduct refuted every- 
 thing which the world commonly alleged against communists. 
 They were innovators without hatred, advocating change 
 without bitterness or selfishness. 
 
 Mr. Fleming challenged Richard Carlile to discussion ; 
 Lloyd Jones also met him. Mr. Green challenged a Mr. 
 Halliwell, of Oldham. Mr. Haslam "challenged all the 
 ministers of the Gospel in the country," and other missionaries 
 challenged everybody else who had been omitted. Mr. Booth 
 has collected statistics of the propagandist activity of this party 
 from 1839 to 1 841. In two years and a half two millions of 
 tracts were circulated. At Manchester one thousand were dis- 
 tributed at public meetings every Sunday. In London 40,000 
 were given away in one year. During the Birmingham Con- 
 gress half a million were dispersed. Fifty thousand copies of 
 Mr. Owen's manifesto in reply to the Bishop of Exeter were 
 sold. The outline of the rational system was translated into 
 German, Polish, and Welsh. At one meeting ^50 was 
 received for the sale of pamphlets. During one year fifty for- 
 mal discussions were held with the clergy. During another 
 1,450 lectures were delivered, of which 604 were upon theology 
 and ethics. Three hundred and fifty towns were regularly 
 visited by missionaries, and the country was divided into four- 
 teen missionary districts. This was genuine-propagandist activity 
 and intrepidity. If collision of thought leads to enlightenment, 
 the co-operators certainly promoted it. Every hall in the king- 
 dom that could be hired resounded with debate ; the corner of 
 every street had its group of disputants ; every green and open 
 place where speakers could hold forth was noisy with contro- 
 versy ; no fireside was silent ; pulpits were animated ; the press 
 abounded with articles ; Unitarians in those days were less 
 Evangelical than now and mercifully helpful of secular im- 
 provement, and at all times more liberal than any other English 
 sect, often opening their chapels and schoolrooms to lectures 
 and even discussions. Often social lectures had to be delivered 
 in the streets, in the market-place, and often in a field 
 belonging to some fearless friend of free opinion in the town. 
 Though most of the social reformers were total abstainers, they 
 had to occupy rooms in public-houses. Respectable innkeepers
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 245 
 
 were afraid of the licensing magistrates, who commonly 
 threatened them with the loss of their license. The leading 
 advocates of temperance had often to go down obscure, 
 miserable passages, jostling against beery people frequenting 
 the house. 
 
 Theologians would accept an act of liberality from others, 
 but would not show it in return. When the Rev. Edward 
 Irving and his followers were deprived of their own church, 
 they were admitted into the Gray's Inn Institution ; but when 
 the co-operators wanted to hold a meeting only in the school- 
 room of the Rev. J. Innes, of Camberwell, a minister of the 
 same church, they were refused it. It was frequently the lot 
 of the social advocates to find themselves in the streets ; some- 
 times they met in an old barn, or a back room, lying far down 
 a mysterious court, where the audience could ill find their way, 
 and had often more trouble to get out than get in. Persons 
 were often sent to break up the meeting by violence, and attack 
 the speakers outside on leaving the place. The ascent to the 
 lecture-room was often up a rickety ladder, with a penny 
 candle outside, which was always blowing out, to indicate to 
 the public the Hole in the Wall, through which they were to 
 enter. Inside, two or three miserable candles, stuck up among 
 the rafters with soft clay, shed flickering and precarious light 
 over the interior. The lecturer (on the subject of the New 
 World) had to stand upon an old table, which, when he mounted 
 it, was discovered to have but three legs, which was generally 
 propped up by some enthusiastic disciple, who put his knee 
 under it ; but when he was carried away by some point which 
 his friend on the table made successfully, he joined in the 
 applause, which altered his position, and let the orator down. 
 In some towns a desolate theatre was the only place that could 
 be obtained, and it was sometimes necessary, as in Whitehaven, 
 when the present writer lectured there, to fortify it the day 
 before the lecture, and to select, as a sort of body-guard, those 
 converts to the new views who had the thickest heads, in the 
 event of bludgeons being employed ; as the audience threatened 
 to assemble with stones in their pockets, I left my friends in the 
 wings, and presented myself on the platform alone, judging 
 that only good marksmen would be able to hit a single target. 
 Mr. Owen, Alexander Campbell, and other lecturers incurred
 
 246 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 far more serious danger. Sometimes the lecture-room was 
 situated, as in Leeds, over a series of butchers' shops, which in 
 summer-time gave a carnivorous odour to the principles promul- 
 gated above. It was a common thing to find the place of 
 meeting over a stable, when a stranger entering would be struck 
 by the flavour of the principles before hearing them explained. 
 
 Two movements of great hope failed through very opposite 
 conduct the associative colonies and the mechanics' institu- 
 tions. The co-operators opened their doors to all sorts of 
 discussion, and the mechanics' institutions closed theirs 
 against any. 
 
 As social speakers welcomed all comers, they had to 
 encounter a strange assortment of adversaries. Now and 
 then a fat disputant appeared, and very welcome his presence 
 was. We never had a large speaker among our advocates, 
 which was a great disadvantage. It would have suggested a 
 well-fed system. Obesity has weight in more senses than 
 one. A fat look is imposing. A mere self-confident turn of 
 a rotund head has the effect of an argument. An attenuated 
 visage always seems illogical to the multitude, while a mellow 
 voice rolls over an audience like a conclusive sequence. 
 
 The early advocates, like many others, who have done the 
 world some service, and made a lasting name in it, were 
 better inspired than informed. Many of them had no 
 more notion than Jesus had of political economy, or the 
 Apostles had of the manufacturing system, and often talked 
 beside the time and needs of the day. It was, nevertheless, 
 freely owned that the missionary representatives of Mr. 
 Owen's views not only held their own, but made important 
 captures from the enemy. Mr. Owen himself, when he had 
 relinquished public life, continued the most untiring travelling 
 advocate of the time ; and his addresses were undoubtedly 
 successful, and excited both interest and enthusiasm wherever 
 he appeared. When adversaries appeared after his lectures, he 
 always proved equal to returning a prompt and effective reply. 
 For instance, when lecturing in Edinburgh in 1838, one of 
 the acute opponents, always to be met with in that city, 
 derided Mr. Owen's statement, that human beings could be 
 trained to believe anything ever so absurd and contradictory. 
 "Is it possible," demanded a sharp-tongued querist, "to train
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 247 
 
 an individual to believe that two and two make five ? " " We 
 need not, I think," said Mr. Owen, " go far for an answer. 
 I think all of us know many persons who are trained to believe 
 that three make one, and think very ill of you if you differ 
 from them." This was a good instance of his repartee. The 
 answer seemed most obvious when it was made, but it occurred 
 to nobody till it was given. 
 
 It was no uncommon thing for an adverse hearer to be 
 wantonly offensive, and plead that " he was the creature of 
 circumstances over which he had no control," when a 
 vigorous adherent of ready wit would reply " That's very 
 true, we are all in the same case, and your behaviour is a 
 circumstance which compels me to knock you down " and 
 in a moment the adversary would be reflecting on the floor. 
 Anon a disputant shot like a meteor over the darkness of 
 debate. Some men's thoughts are like matches, they ignite 
 by the mere attrition of sentences, and throw light on the dim 
 places of an argument. Other men's never ignite at all. 
 Some have fusee ideas, and smoulder merely. Others have tar 
 minds, and give out more odour and smoke than flame. Now 
 and then a man would get up and strike his arguments 
 together like the old flint and tinder box, producing more 
 noise than sparks. Occasionally a speaker burnt with a strong, 
 steady, flame of speech, which both lighted and warmed every 
 one, and the hearer saw clearer ever after. There are hearers 
 with indiarubber minds, which stretch with a discourse. 
 Some understandings are like porcelain, and crack if you hit 
 them with a hard syllogism and the parts never unite any 
 more. There are speakers whose influence, if not their 
 intellect, is in their throats, and their wild, strong, musical 
 cadences charm the ear. They who listen do not well know 
 what they have said, and speakers do not know themselves, 
 and do not need to know. Their speech is applauded like a 
 song, of which no one knows the words. Others speak like 
 a railway whistle, and impart knowledge and the headache 
 together. The scatter-brained men would come forward in 
 force, and some with no brains at all. Not infrequently a 
 disputant did not know what the point was he was replying 
 to ; or if he did, his speech, like Mrs. Gamp's, went elsewhere, 
 and not there. We had all sorts of opponents, lay and
 
 248 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 clerical. Some would swell the truth until the audience 
 thought there was something the matter with it ; others 
 thinned it until it seemed in a decline, while the rough- 
 handed dislocated it and made it appear out of joint. 
 
 Many people are inclined to take a poetic view of life : and 
 so long as they keep their feet upon the earth they are the 
 most agreeable persons to know. Their innovatory vivacity 
 renders progress brilliant. When, however, they leave the 
 earth it is not worth while looking up in the air after them. 
 There is nothing to gain until they alight. There used to be 
 whole meetings in which there were no persons on the ground, 
 they were all up above. A man thoroughly sane is a very 
 interesting person. He stands firm upon the earth, and you 
 know where to find him. He sees things as they are, and the 
 people who do that are rare. They are the spectacles of their 
 friends, enabling the dim or dazed to look discerningly and 
 steadily at what is before them. A wise man consults the 
 sane seeing man as he would a telescope, when he wishes 
 to make out the danger appearing in the uncertain distance. 
 
 It is one of the lessons of party experience to perceive that 
 the loftiest precepts have but limited force, as a rule hearers 
 need to be educated to receive them. Only partial results 
 ought to have been expected until this was done, whereas no 
 doubt was entertained of the immediate and permanent effect 
 of right principles. It was thought that reason would operate 
 at once, and for ever influence the mind which apprehended it. 
 It was not foreseen that only very powerful minds act on 
 principles from energy of personal insight. New opinion is a 
 burden which few men continue to carry unless they are 
 instructed in all its advantages as well as disadvantages, and 
 enter upon the duty with their eyes fully open to what will 
 follow, then hostility gives them no surprise. In the 
 enthusiastic period of a movement principles are masters of 
 the advocates, instead of the advocates being masters of the 
 principles. It was debate, and debate alone, that taught 
 co-operators this lesson ; and where they have learned it 
 Co-operation advances. 
 
 Off-hand advocates trusted to a sort of Wesleyan readiness 
 and impulse, and accomplished what they did more by fervour 
 than by art. On the canvas on which they worked they put
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 249 
 
 in some figures of great force, but they executed no finished 
 picture of power. Cabet, who succeeded Mr. Owen in order of 
 time, was an equable, but mild, delineator of social life ; he 
 was the most practical and coherent of French world-makers. 
 Nothing was produced in the literature of English Socialism 
 comparable to the writings of Louis Blanc. 
 
 At times learned lecturers appeared among us. Some were 
 lawyers, who endowed the new system with attributes of 
 categorical profundity, which held us all in amazement. 
 There was, in what they said, a protracted coherence, an 
 illimitable lucidity, which compelled ordinary hearers to fall 
 out of the line of proof on the way, exhausted, and enthusiastic. 
 
 No one continues a propagandist unless he be a person of 
 courage, industry, and self-denial. In the case of new thought 
 most people do not like to think at all ; others, who have no 
 minds to think with, are still more difficult to deal with. You 
 cannot convert vacuity ; and you have to create mind by 
 teaching the very elementary principles of thinking. 
 
 If a man's mind moves on some hinge of prejudice, you 
 have to provide that it turns on some pivot of principle. In 
 Co-operation new objects, new feelings, new habits had to be 
 proposed. Men had to be shown that their welfare and 
 security were best attained by an arrangement of business, 
 which gave fair advantages to others. 
 
 A propagandist is an agent of ideas, a cause of change, a 
 precursor of progress. To do his work well, he must have 
 some mastery of his own language, for grammar is merely the 
 law of intelligible speech. He must know how to set his facts 
 in the order in which they can be seen as he sees them ; and 
 able to reason upon his facts, when he has set them forth, else 
 their purport can never be enforced. The practical effect of 
 grammar is economy in speech ; the practical effect of logic is 
 economy in thinking. The propagandist has to remember that 
 his life is an argument. A man may give good advice who 
 never follows it, as a finger-post may point the right way 
 though it never moves in that direction. But he who is seen 
 to do himself what he counsels, will always have more 
 influence over men than those who say one thing and 
 do another. There is a sin of consistency when a man 
 professes opinions after he sees their error, not liking to own
 
 250 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 his altered convictions. But consistency between conviction 
 and conduct is a very different thing. Inconsistency between 
 belief and practice is hypocrisy, whether before man or God. 
 He who urges others to be true, should be true himself. 
 Hence he must be at the service of the principles he proposes 
 to advance. The Italian proverb says, thoughtfully, " Beware 
 of being too good." There seems that no harm could come 
 of that. When a man acts disinterestedly among others who 
 do not, they will disbelieve him, for none believe heartily in 
 what they do not feel capable of themselves ; and these persons, 
 finding the conduct of others a reproach to themselves, descry 
 it. A propagandist must take this as he takes other risks, and 
 do the best he can. He will be believed in the end if he keeps 
 doing the right thing to the best of his power. So that a 
 propagandist should either incur no family obligations like 
 Mazzini, or count upon the pain of involving them in conse- 
 quences of his own convictions, which they may not share, and 
 yet will have to bear the penalty, and he be helpless to 
 prevent it. The wife and children may be nobly willing 
 to share any consequences which may result through the 
 father maintaining his convictions, and count the bearing of 
 an honest name an honourable inheritance. But these cases 
 are not common. Privation, the consequence of social 
 exclusion, comes in so many ways that, however bravely borne, 
 it must be painful to the propagandist to contemplate. He 
 who chooses to embark in the service of mankind must make 
 up his mind to this ; and he had better know it from the 
 beginning. There may come regard and honour, before 
 which all days of peril and labour pale in the memory ; but 
 these are happy accidents on which no man may count. 
 
 The reader can now form his own opinion of the school of 
 Social Improvers, whose careers and fortunes we have now 
 followed through the Pioneer Period. They fought not for 
 their own hand, but for the hand of the people. They taught 
 the new doctrine of self-help and industrial emancipation. 
 Milton, who had a militant spirit, who could not think of 
 heaven without thinking of the fighting there, whose spirit 
 strode the earth in stormy times, understood better than most 
 men, as he wrote 
 
 " Peace hath her victories, 
 Not less renowned than those of war."
 
 EARLY ADVOCATES 251 
 
 And this is the victory the Social Pioneers won ; Louis Blanc, 
 in his " Organisation of Labour," began with the impassioned 
 cry, " Christ has come ; but when cometh salvation ? " It 
 has been this long-promised, much-needed, long-delayed, 
 material salvation, which these social propagandists have 
 advanced.
 
 252 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FORGOTTEN WORKERS 
 
 " By my hearth I keep a sacred nook 
 For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves 
 Who stitched and hammered for the weary man 
 In days of old. And in that piety 
 I clothe ungainly forms inherited 
 From toiling generations, daily bent 
 At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, 
 In pioneering labours for the word." 
 
 George Eliot, A Minor Prophet. 
 
 The Pioneer Period in every great movement best displays the 
 aims, the generosity of service, the impulse of passion, the mis- 
 takes of policy, the quality and force of character, of leaders 
 and followers. Any one conversant with struggling move- 
 ments knows that most of the errors which arose were due 
 to the actors never having been told of the nature and responsi- 
 bilities of their enterprise. Ten men err from pure ignorance 
 where one errs from wilfulness or incapacity. How often I 
 have heard others exclaim, how often have I exclaimed myself, 
 when a foolish thing had been said, or a wrong thing had been 
 done, why did not some one who had had this experience 
 before tell us of this ? Co-operators who master and hold fast 
 openly, and always, to a policy of truth, toleration, relevance, 
 and equity, succeed. 
 
 The unremembered workers described in the words of the 
 poetess, placed at the head of this chapter, have abounded in 
 the social movement. Less fortunate than the religious de- 
 votee, who sailed more or less with the popular current, the 
 social innovator has few friends. Rulers distrusted him. His 
 pursuit of secular good, caused him to be ill-spoken of by 
 spiritual authorities, and he had no motive to inspire him save
 
 FORGOTTEN WORKERS 253 
 
 the desire or doing good to others. Too much is not to be 
 made of those who die in discharge of well-understood duty. 
 In daily life numerous persons run risks of a like nature, and 
 sometimes perish in the public service. To know how to 
 estimate those who stand true we must take into sight those 
 who never stand at all who, the moment loss or peril is fore- 
 seen, crawl away like vermin into holes of security. These 
 are the rabbit-minded reformers, who flee at the first sound of 
 danger, or wait to see a thing succeed before they join it. 
 Those who flee a struggling cause are a great army compared 
 with those who fight. 
 
 Yet the world is not selfish or cold. It is like the aspects of 
 Nature : large parts are sterile, bleak, inhospitable ; yet, even 
 there, the grandeur of view and majestic grimness delight the 
 strong. In other parts of physical Nature warmth, light, 
 foliage, flowers, make glad and gay the imagination. So in 
 society strong, tender, wise men will give discriminating aid 
 to strugglers below them ; strugglers, indeed, perish unhelped, 
 ofttimes because they are unnoticed, rather than because of the 
 inhumanity of the prosperous. There are, as experience too 
 well tells, men who do not want to help others ; while there 
 are more who do not help, simply not knowing how. But 
 there are others, and it is honest to count them, whom afflu- 
 ence does not make insensible, and who feel for the poor. 
 
 The agitation had for leaders many disinterested gentlemen 
 who not only meant what they said in sympathy, but were 
 prepared to give, and did give, their fortunes to promote it. 
 There was not a man of mark among them who expected to, 
 or tried to, make money for himself by these projects of social 
 improvement. Some, as Abram Combe and William Thomp- 
 son, gave not only money but life. Others absolutely divested 
 themselves of their fortunes in the cause. They indeed be- 
 lieved that they were founding a system of general competence, 
 and that such share as was secured to others would accrue to 
 them ; and with this prospect they were content. Some or 
 them might have retained stately homes and have commanded 
 deference by the splendour of their lives. And when their 
 disinterested dream was not realised, their fortune squandered, 
 and disappointment, and even penury overtook them, as hap- 
 pened in some cases, they never regretted the part they had
 
 254 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 taken, and died predicting that others would come after them, 
 who, wiser and more fortunate than they, would attain to the 
 success denied to them. Gentlemen connected with Co-opera- 
 tion were not wanting in the spirit of self-sacrifice, who 
 died, like Mr. Cowell Stepney, of caring for everybody's 
 interest but their own. 1 This is not at all a common disease in 
 any class, and takes very few people off. Yet few are remem- 
 bered with the reverence accorded to those who die these 
 deaths. Were their services understood they would receive 
 honour exceeding that of those greeted by 
 
 " The patched and plodding citizen, 
 Waiting upon the pavement with the throng, 
 While some victorious world-hero makes 
 Triumphant entry ; and the peal of shouts . . . 
 Run like a storm of joy along the streets ! 
 He says, ' God bless him ! ' . . . 
 As the great hero passes. . . . 
 Perhaps the hero's deeds have helped to bring 
 A time when every honest citizen 
 Shall wear a coat unpatched." 2 
 
 Ignoring certain noisy adherents, who infest every move- 
 ment, whose policy is conspicuousness, and whose principle is 
 " what they can get " ; who seek only to serve themselves, 
 never, except by accident, serving anybody else ; who clutch 
 at every advantage, without giving one grateful thought, 
 or even respectful word, to those who have created the advan- 
 tage they enjoy my concern is not for these adherents, whose 
 very souls are shabby, and who would bring salvation itself into 
 discredit were it extended to them. My last care is for the 
 honest, unobtrusive workers, who drudged, without ceasing, in 
 the "cause" who devoted the day of rest to correspondence 
 with unknown inquirers. The just-minded took the services 
 with gratitude ; the selfish took them as their right, never 
 asking at what cost it was accorded. Knowing that self-help 
 meant self-thinking, and that no deliverance would come if the 
 people left it to others to think for them these advocates 
 counted it a first duty to awaken in their fellows the inspira- 
 
 1 Eldest son of Sir Cowell Stepney, who, until his death, attended all 
 the co-operative and international congresses of working men wherever 
 held in England or in Europe, and who corresponded with all the social 
 reformers of the world, and sent them publications bearing upon the 
 movement. 
 
 1 " A Minor Prophet," by George Eliot.
 
 FORGOTTEN WORKERS 255 
 
 tion of self-action. But in thus making themselves so far the 
 Providence of others, the most generous of them had no time 
 left to be a Providence to themselves. But it is not for us to 
 forget the self-forgetting, whose convictions were obligations, 
 and whose duty was determined by the needs of others. 
 During the ninety years over which this history travels there 
 have been humble compeers who drudged in stores during 
 what hours fell to them after their day's work was done. 
 They travelled from street to street, or from village to village, 
 on Sundays, to collect the pence which started the stores. 
 They gave more than they could afford to support periodicals, 
 which never paid their conductors, for the chance of useful 
 information thus reaching others. For themselves, they reaped 
 in after-days dismay and disregard at their own fireside, for 
 their disinterested and too ardent preference of others' interests. 
 Many gave their nights to the needful, but monotonous duties 
 of committees, and to speaking at meetings at which few 
 attended, returning late and weary to cheerless rooms. Some 
 were worn out prematurely, and died unattended in obscure 
 lodgings. Some lingered out their uncheered days on the 
 precarious aid occasionally sent them by those who happened 
 to remember that they were benefiting by the peril which had 
 brought the old propagandists low. Not a few of them, after 
 speeches of fiery protest on behalf of independence, in political 
 movements to which they were also attracted, spent months 
 and years in the indignity of prison, and at last died on a poor- 
 house bed, and were laid in a pauper's grave. 1 I have met 
 
 1 One might give many instances. One is that of George White, of 
 Bradford, who died in the poor-house in Sheffield. Had I known of his 
 death at the time I would have asked Mr. Gathorne Hardy, who was then 
 Home Secretary, for leave to remove his body and lay it by the side of 
 Holberry, the Chartist, who died in prison and was buried with public 
 honour in Sheffield. White was well known to Mr. Hardy's father, who had 
 some respect for the vigorous and turbulent Irish Chartist. We were both 
 in prison at the same time, and it was arranged that he who was out first, 
 his wife should make pies and take to the other. As I was at liberty first, 
 many savoury pies found their way to White's prison. I have no doubt 
 he died dreaming that more pies were coming to him, for he died very 
 desolate. For years, if danger threatened us in public meeting, George 
 White brought up his Old Guards. On one occasion, when the great 
 discussion in which the Birmingham Socialists were concerned, White's 
 detachment of the Old Guards attended five nights, and, although poor 
 men, paid for admission to the best places ; and when the final fray came 
 the respectable pious belligerents in every part of Beardsworth's Reposi- 
 tory found a strong-handed Chartist behind them, and the enemy found 
 themselves outside the hall on their way home before they knew where
 
 256 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 their names in struggling periodicals advocating social and 
 political progress. Many of them were my comrades. Fore- 
 seeing their fate, I often tried to mitigate their devotion. I 
 stood later by the dying bed of some of them, and spoke at the 
 burial of many. They lie in unremembered graves. But 
 there was inspiration in their career which has quickened the 
 pulses of industry. Though the distant footfall of the coming 
 triumph of their order never reached their ear, they believed 
 not less in its march. 
 
 they were. George White gave the signal to the Old Guards from the 
 platform, where he and his trusty colleagues did execution among the 
 clerical rioters there, who, when the police were introduced, had all dis- 
 appeared. Honour to the generous Old Guards, who stood up for fair 
 play although they were not partisans of the doctrines in dispute !
 
 PART II 
 
 THE CONSTRUCTIVE PERIOD 
 1845-1878 
 
 VOL. I. l8
 
 THE STORY OF A DEAD MOVEMENT 259 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE STORY OF A DEAD MOVEMENT 
 
 "A new mind is first infused into society; . . . is breathed from individual 
 to individual, from family to family it traverses districts and new men, 
 unknown to each other, arise in different parts. ... At last a word is 
 spoken which appeals to the hearts of all each answers simultaneously 
 to the call a compact body is collected under one standard, a watchword 
 is given, and every man knows his friend." The First Lord Lytton. 
 
 Movements, like men, die some a natural, some a violent, 
 death. Some movements perish of intellectual rickets, from 
 lack of vitality ; or, falling into blind hands, never see their 
 opportunities. It is true of movements as of men those who 
 act and do not think, and those who think and do not act 
 alike require an early coffin. In days of social storm, insur- 
 rection, revolution, every word of counsellors entitled to be 
 heard has significance. Change is but a silent storm, ever 
 beating, ever warning men to provide for it, and they who 
 stand still are swept away. But movements do not often die 
 in their beds they are assassinated in the streets. Error, fed 
 upon ignorance, and inspired by spite, is commonly strong and 
 unscrupulous. Truth must fight to live. There is no 
 marching on without going forward and confronting the 
 enemy. Those who know the country and are resolute, may 
 occupy more of it than they foresee. It is a delusion to think 
 that pioneers have all the ground to clear. Men's heads are 
 mostly vacant, and not a few are entirely empty. In more 
 cases than are imagined there is a brain-hunger for ideas. 
 Co-operation, after thirty years of valorous vicissitude, died, or 
 seemed to die, in 1844-5. 
 
 The busy, aspiring movement of Co-operation, so long 
 rhequered by ardour and despondency, was rapidly subsiding
 
 260 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 into silence and decay. The little armies on the once 
 militant plain had been one after another defeated and dis- 
 banded. The standards, which had been carried defiantly 
 with some daring acclaim, had fallen one by one ; and in 
 many cases the standard-bearers had fallen with them. For 
 a few years to come no movement is anywhere observable. 
 Hardly a solitary insurgent is discernible in any part of the 
 once animated horizon. The sun of industrial hope, which 
 kept so many towns aglow, has now gone down. The very 
 air is bleak. The Northern Star, 1 lurid and glaring (which 
 arose in Leeds, to guide the Political Pioneers of Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire), is becoming dim. The Star in the East 
 promising to indicate that among the managers of Wisbech a 
 new deliverer 2 has come, has dropped out of the firmament. 
 The hum of the Working Bee is no more heard in the fens 
 of Cambridgeshire. The Morning Star that appeared at 
 Ham Common, shining upon a dietary of vegetables and 
 milk has fallen out of sight.3 "Journals" are kept no 
 more " Calendars " no longer have dates filled in " Co- 
 operative Miscellanies " have ceased " Mirrors " fail to 
 reflect the faces of the Pioneers The Radical has torn up 
 its roots The Commonweal has no one to care for it 
 believers in the New Age are extinct The Shepherd is 
 gathering his eccentric flocks into a new fold 4 readers 
 of the Associate have discontinued to assemble together 
 " Monthly Magazines " forget to come out " Gazettes " are 
 empty " Heralds " no more go forth " Beacons " find that 
 the day of warning is over the Pioneer has fallen in the 
 last expedition of the forlorn hope which he led there is 
 nothing further to " Register," and the New Moral World 
 is about to be sold by auction Samuel Bower has eaten all 
 his peas Mr. Etzler has carried his wondrous machines of 
 Paradise to Venezuela Joseph Smith has replaced his wig 
 Mr. Baume has sold his monkey and the Frenchman's Island, 
 where infants were to be suckled by machinery, has not 
 
 1 Of Feargus O'Connor. 
 
 2 Edited by Mr. James Hill, related by marriage to Dr. Southwood 
 Smith. 
 
 3 This was many years before the appearance of the London Morning 
 Star newspaper, which was never so much appreciated as when it was 
 missed. 
 
 The Family Herald.
 
 THE STORY OF A DEAD MOVEMENT 261 
 
 inappropriately become the site of the Pentonville Penitentiary. 
 The " Association of All Classes of All Nations " has not a 
 member left upon its books. Of the seventy thousand Chartist 
 land-dreamers, who had been actually enrolled, nothing is to 
 remain in the public mind save the memory of Snigg's End ! 
 Labour Exchanges have become bywords the Indiana com- 
 munity is as silent as the waters of the Wabash by its side 
 Orbiston is buried in the grave of Abram Combe Ralahine 
 has been gambled away the Concordia is a strawberry 
 garden Manea Fen has sunk out of sight the President of 
 Queenwood is encamping in the lanes the blasts of the 
 " Heralds of Community " have died in the air the notes of 
 the " Trumpet Calls " have long been still, and the trumpeters 
 themselves are dead. It may be said, as the Lord of the 
 Manor of Rochdale x wrote of a more historic desolation : 
 
 " The tents are all silent, the banners alone, 
 The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown." 
 
 Time, defamation, losses, distrust, dismay, appear to have 
 done their work. Never human movement seemed so very 
 dead as this of Co-operation. Its lands were all sold, its 
 script had no more value, its orators no more hearers. Not 
 a pulse could be felt throughout its whole frame, not a breath 
 could be discerned on any enthusiastic mirror held to its 
 mouth. The most scientific punctures in its body failed to 
 elicit any sign of vitality. Even Dr. Richardson would have 
 pronounced it a case of pectoral death. 2 I felt its cold and 
 rigid hand in Glasgow the last " Social Missionary " station 
 which existed. Though experienced in the pathology of 
 dead movements, the case seemed to me suspicious of decease. 
 Wise Americans came over to look at it, and declared with a 
 shrug that it was a " gone coon." Social physicians pro- 
 nounced life quite extinct. Political economists avowed the 
 creature had never lived. The newspapers, more observant of 
 it, thought it would never recover, which implied that, in 
 their opinion, it had been alive. The clergy, content that 
 
 1 Lord Byron. 
 
 2 Ur. B. W. Richardson maintains that men may recover from glacial 
 death, from pectoral death never.
 
 262 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 " Socialism " was reported to be gone, furnished with delighted 
 alacrity uncomfortable epitaphs for its tombstone. 
 
 Yet all the while the vital spark was there. Efforts beyond 
 its strength had brought upon it suspended animation. The 
 first sign of latent life was discovered in Rochdale. In the 
 meantime the great comatose movement lay stretched, out of 
 the world's view, but not abandoned by a few devoted Utopians, 
 who had crept from under the slain. Old friends administered 
 to it, familiar faces bent over it. For unnoted years it found 
 voice in the Reasoner t which said of it one thing always " If it 
 be right it can be revived by devotion. Truth never dies except 
 it be deserted." Then a great consultation arose among the 
 social medicine men. The regular physicians of the party, 
 who held official or missionary diplomas, were called in. The 
 licentiates of the platform also attended. The subscribing 
 members of the Community Society, the pharmaceutists of 
 Co-operation, were at hand. They were the chemists and 
 druggists of the movement, who compounded the recipes of 
 the social doctors, when new prescriptions were given out. 
 Opinions were given by the learned advisers, as the symptoms 
 of the patient seemed to warrant them. As in graver con- 
 sultations, some of the prescriptions were made rather with a 
 view of differing from a learned brother than of saving the 
 patient. The only thing in which the faculty present in 
 this case agreed was, that nobody proposed to bleed the invalid. 
 There was clearly no blood to be got out of him. The first 
 opinion pronounced was that mischief had arisen through want 
 of orthodoxy in Communism. It was thought that if it was 
 vaccinated, by a clergyman of some standing, with the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, it might get about again ; and Mr. Minter 
 Morgan produced a new design of a parallelogram with a 
 church in it. It was shown to Mr. Hughes. Some Scotch 
 doctors advised the Assembly's ''Shorter Catechisms." A 
 missionary, who had been a Methodist, thought that an 
 infusion of Wesleyan fervour and faith might help it. A 
 Swedenborgian said he knew the remedy, when " Shepherd " 
 Smith l persisted that the doctrine of Analogies would set the 
 thing right. Then the regular faculty gave their opinions. 
 
 1 The Rev. J. E. Smith, who edited the Shepherd before he edited the 
 Family Herald.
 
 THE STORY OF A DEAD MOVEMENT 263 
 
 Mr. Ironside attested with metallic voice that recovery was 
 possible. Its condition was so weak that, Pater Oldham J 
 with a beard as white and long as Merlin's prescribed for it 
 celibacy and a vegetarian diet. Charles Lane raised the 
 question, Should it be " stimulated with milk " ? which did 
 not seem likely to induce in it any premature action. James 
 Pierrepont Greaves suggested that its " inner life " should be 
 nurtured on a preparation of Principles of Being, of which he 
 was sole proprietor. Mr. Galpin, with patriarchal stateliness, 
 administered to it grave counsel. Thomas Whittaker pre- 
 sented a register of its provincial pulsations, which he said had 
 never ceased. Mr. Craig suggested fresh air, and if he meant 
 commercial air there was need of it. George Simpson, its 
 best financial secretary, advised it neither to give credit nor 
 take it, if it hoped to hold its own. Dr. John Watts prescribed 
 it a business dietary, flavoured with political economy, which 
 was afterwards found to strengthen it. John Colier Farn, 
 who had the Chartist nature, said it wanted robust agitation. 
 Alexander Campbell, with Scotch pertinacity, persisted that 
 it would get round with a little more lecturing. Dr. Travis 
 thought its recovery certain, as soon as it comprehended the 
 Self-determining power of the will. Charles Southwell chafed 
 at the timorous retractations of some of his colleagues, avowed 
 that the imprisonment of some of them would do the move- 
 ment good. William Chilton believed that persecution alone 
 would reanimate it, and bravely volunteered to stand by the 
 cause in case it occurred. Maltus Questell Ryall, generously 
 indignant at the imprisonment of certain of his friends, spoke 
 as Gibbon was said to have written " as though Christianity 
 had done him a personal injury " predicted that Socialism 
 would be itself again if it took courage and looked its clerical 
 enemies square in the face. Mr. Allsop, always for boldness, 
 counselled it to adopt Strafford's motto of " Thorough." 
 George Alexander Fleming surmised that its proper remedy 
 was better obedience to the Central Board. James Rigby tried 
 to awaken its attention by spreading before its eyes romantic 
 pictures of Communistic life. Lloyd Jones admonished it, in 
 sonorous tones, to have more faith in associative duty. Henry 
 
 1 The attenuated and picturesque Principal of the Ham Common 
 Concordium.
 
 264 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Hethenngton, whose honest voice sounded like a principle, 
 advocated a stout publicity of its views. James Watson, who 
 shook hands, like a Lancashire man, from the shoulder, with a 
 fervour which you would have cause to remember all the day 
 after, grasped the sinking cause by the hand, 1 and imparted 
 some feeling to it. Mr. Owen, who never doubted its vitality, 
 regarded the moribund movement with complacency, as being 
 in a mere millennial trance. Harriet Martineau brought it 
 gracious news from America of the success of votaries out 
 there, which revived it considerably. John Stuart Mill inspired 
 it with hope, by declaring that there was no reason in political 
 economy why any self-helping movement of the people should 
 die. Mr. Ashurst looked on with his wise and kindly eyes, to 
 see that recovery was not made impossible by new administra- 
 tive error. But none of the physicians had restored it, if the 
 sagacious men of Rochdale had not discovered the method of 
 feeding it on profits the most nutritious diet known to social 
 philosophy which, administered in successive and ever-in- 
 creasing quantities, gradually restored the circulation of the 
 comatose body, opened its eyes, and set it up alive again, with 
 a capacity of growth which the world never expected to see it 
 display. 
 
 It was not until a new generation arose that co-operative 
 enthusiasm was seen again. The Socialists were not cowards 
 in commerce. They could all take care of themselves in 
 competition as well as their neighbours. The police in every 
 town knew them as the best disposed of the artisan class. 
 Employers knew them as the best workmen. Tradesmen 
 knew them as men of business, of disquieting ability. These 
 societarian improvers disliked the conspiracy against their 
 neighbours which competition compelled them to engage in, 
 and they were anxious to find some means of mitigating it. 
 
 Of two parties to one undertaking, the smaller number, the 
 capitalists, are able to retain profits sufficient for affluence, 
 while the larger number, the workers, receive a share 
 which, by no parsimony or self-denial, can secure them 
 competence. No insurrection can remedy the evil. No 
 sooner shall the bloody field be still than the same system 
 
 1 I am not sure whether a " cause " has a " hand " ; perhaps it has, as it 
 certainly has a heart.
 
 THE STORY OF A DEAD MOVEMENT 265 
 
 will reproduce the same inequalities. But a better course is 
 open by producers giving security and interest for capital, and 
 dividing the profits earned among themselves, a new distribu- 
 tion of wealth is obtained which accords capital equitable 
 compensation, and secures labour enduring provision. Thus 
 the advocates of the new form of industry by concert tried to 
 combat competition by co-operation. 
 
 The Concordium had a poet, James Elmslie Duncan, a young 
 enthusiast, who published a Morning Star in Whitechapel, 
 where it was much needed. The most remarkable specimen 
 of his genius, I remember, was his epigram on a draped statue 
 of Venus 
 
 "Judge, ye gods, of my surprise, 
 A lady naked in her chemise ! " 
 
 We had poets in those days unknown to Mr. Swinburne or 
 Sir Lewis Morris. 
 
 The Ham Common Concordium fell as well as 
 Harmony Hall. The Concordium represented celibacy, 
 mysticism, and long beards. One night, I and Maltus 
 Questell Ryall walked from London to visit it. We found it 
 by observing a tall patriarch's feet projecting through the 
 window. It was a device of the Concordium to ensure 
 ventilation and early rising. By a bastinado of the soles of 
 the prophet with pebbles, we obtained admission in the early 
 morning. Salt, sugar, and tea were alike prohibited ; and 
 my wife, who wished salt with the raw cabbage supplied 
 at breakfast, was allowed to have it, on the motion of Mr. 
 Stolzmeyer, the agent of Etzler's "Paradise within the Reach 
 of all Men." When the salt was conceded it was concealed 
 in paper under the plate, lest the sight of it should deprave 
 the weaker brethren. On Sundays many visitors came, but 
 the entertainment was slender. On my advice they turned 
 two fields into a strawberry garden, and for a charge of nine- 
 pence each, visitors gathered and ate all they could. This 
 prevented them being able to eat much at other meals, for 
 which they paid and thus the Concordium made money.
 
 266 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 BEGINNING OF CONSTRUCTIVE CO-OPERATION 
 
 None from his fellow starts, 
 But playing manly parts, 
 And, like true English hearts, 
 Stick close together. 
 
 Drayton. 
 
 Those who sleep on the banks of the Thames, near Temple 
 Bar, as I did several years, hear in the silence of the night 
 a slow, intermittent contest of clocks. Bow Bells come 
 pealing up the river ; St. Dunstan, St. Clement, St. Martin, 
 return the answering clangour. Between the chiming and the 
 striking there suddenly bursts out the sonorous booming of 
 Big Ben from the Parliament clock tower, easily commanding 
 attention in the small Babel of riverside tinklings, and the 
 wakeful hearer can count with certainty the hour from him. 
 To me Rochdale was in one sense the Big Ben of Co- 
 operation, whose sound will long be heard in history over 
 that of many other stores. For half a century Co-operation was 
 audible on the banks of the Humber, the Thames, and the 
 Tyne; but when the great peal finally arose from the banks 
 of the Roche, Lancashire and Yorkshire heard it. Scotland 
 lent it a curious and suspicious ear. Its reverberations travelled 
 to ranee, Italy, Germany, Russia, and America, and even at 
 the Antipodes settlers in Australia caught its far-travelling 
 tones, and were inspired by it. The men of Rochdale had 
 the very work of Sisyphus before them. The stone of Co- 
 operation had often been rolled up the hill elsewhere, and as 
 often rolled down again. Sometimes it was being dragged 
 up by credit, when, that rope breaking, the reluctant bell 
 slipped into a bog of debt. At length some enthusiasts gave
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE CO-OPERATION 267 
 
 another turn, when some watchful rascal made away with its 
 profits, which had acted as a wedge, steadying the weight on 
 the hill, and the law being on the side of the thief, let the 
 great boulder roll back. Another set of devotees gave a turn 
 at the great boulder, but having theological questions on hand, 
 they fell into discussion by the way, as to whether Adam was 
 or was not the first man ; when those who said he was refused 
 to push with those who said he was not, and Adam was the 
 cause of another fall in the new Eden, and the co-operative 
 stone found its way once more to the bottom. 
 
 At length the Rochdale men took the stone in hand. They 
 invented an interest for everybody in pushing. They stopped 
 up the debt bogs. They mainly established a Wholesale Supply 
 Society, and made the provisions better. They got the law 
 amended, and cleared out the knaves who hung about the till. 
 They planned employment of their profits in productive manu- 
 factures, so that the store and workshop might grow. They 
 proclaimed toleration to all opinions religious and heretical 
 alike and recognised none. They provided for the education 
 of their members, so that every man knew what to push for 
 and where to place his shoulder, and were the first men who 
 landed the great stone at the top. 
 
 When Co-operation recommenced there, Rochdale had no 
 hall which Co-operators could afford to hire. There was, 
 however, a small, square-shaped room, standing in the upper 
 part of Yorkshire Street, opposite to St. James's Church, and 
 looking from the back windows over a low, damp, marshy 
 field. It belonged to Mr. Zach Mellor, the Town Clerk, 
 whose geniality and public spirit were one of the pleasant 
 attributes of official Rochdale. He was, happily, long of 
 opinion that any townsmen, however humble, desirous of 
 improving their condition by honest means, had as much right 
 as any one else to try. He treated as town clerks should 
 with civic impartiality all honest townsmen, without regard 
 to their social condition or opinions. Through the personal 
 intervention of Mr. Alderman Livesey, always the advocate of 
 the unfriended, this place was let to the adventurous party of 
 half Chartists and half Socialists who cared for Co-operation. 
 It was in this small Dutch-looking meeting-house that I first 
 spoke on Co-operation, in 1843. I well remember the murky
 
 268 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 evening when this occurred. It was the end of one of those 
 damp, drizzling days, when a manufacturing town looks like a 
 penal settlement. I sat watching the rain and mists in the 
 fields as the audience assembled which was a small one. 
 They came in one by one from the mills, looking as damp 
 and disconsolate as their prospects. I see their dull, hopeless 
 faces now. There were a few with a bustling sort of con- 
 fidence, as if it would dissolve if they sat still who moved 
 from bench to bench to say something which did not seem very 
 inspiring to those who heard it. When I came to the desk to 
 speak I felt that neither my subject nor my audience was a 
 very hopeful one. In those days my notes were far beyond 
 the requirements of the occasion ; and I generally left my 
 hearers with the impression that I tried to say too much in 
 the time, and that I spoke of many things without leaving 
 certainty in their minds which was the most important. The 
 purport of what I said, as far as it had a purport, was to 
 this effect : 
 
 I. 
 
 Some of you have had experience of Chartist associations, 
 and you have not done much in that way yet. Some of you 
 have taken trouble to create what you call Teetotalers, but 
 temperance depends more upon social condition than exhorta- 
 tion. The hungry will feel low, and the despairing will 
 drink. You have tried to establish a co-operative store here 
 and have failed, and are not hopeful of succeeding now. Still it 
 ought to be tried again, and will not interfere with Chartism ; 
 it will give it more means. It will not interfere with tem- 
 perance ; it will furnish more motives to sobriety. Many of 
 you believe Co-operation to be right in principle, and if a thing 
 is right you ought to go on with it. Cobbett tells you the 
 only way to do a difficult thing is to begin and stick at it. 
 Anybody can begin it, but it requires men of a good purpose 
 to stick at it. To collect money from people, who to all 
 appearance have little, is not a hopeful undertaking. Some- 
 body must collect small subscriptions until you have a few 
 pounds. A few rules to act upon, a small room to serve as a 
 sort of shop, and small articles such as you are most likely to 
 sell, as good as you can get them ; weigh them out fairly ;
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE CO-OPERATION 269 
 
 then a store is begun. There may be trouble an home; wives 
 prefer going to the old shops, not knowing that credit is 
 catching and debt is the disease they get. A wife will not 
 always have money to buy at the store, and will want to go 
 where she can do so without ; you must provide for this, for 
 buying at the store is the only way to make it grow and yield 
 profit. What you save will be you own, and your stock will 
 grow, and you will get things as good as your neighbours, 
 and as cheap as your neighbours. Besides, when you have a 
 shop as large as that of ten shops, you will save the shop- 
 keeping expenses of ten shops, and that will make profit which 
 will be shared by all members. If you want to help the 
 Community in Hampshire, you will then be able to do it. 
 You may be able to set apart some portions of your profits for 
 a news-room and little library where members may spend their 
 evenings, instead of going to the public-house, and save money 
 that way, as well as get information. This is the way stores 
 have been begun. Co-operators have been instructed that all 
 men are different by nature, and come into the world with 
 passions and tendencies they did not give themselves. Igno- 
 rance and adversity make the bad worse. Noble self-denial, 
 pettiness, and selfishness will mingle in the same person. 
 Those who understand this are fit for association. Anger at 
 what you do not like, or what you do not expect, can only 
 proceed from ignorance taken by surprise. Tolerance and 
 steadfast goodwill are the chief virtues of association. The 
 rhyme which tells the young speaker to speak slowly, and 
 emphasis and tone will come of themselves, has instruction for 
 you if we change a word to express it 
 
 " Learn to unite all other graces 
 Will follow in their proper places." 
 
 If you do not regard all creeds as being equally true and 
 equally useful, you will regard them as equally to be respected. 
 In co-operative associations success is always in the power of 
 those who can agree. There the members have no enemies 
 who can harm them but themselves ; and when a man has no 
 enemy but himself, he is a fool if he is without a friend. 
 Pope tells you that 
 
 " The devil is wiser now than in the days of yore ; 
 Now he tempts people by ranking rich, and not by making poor."
 
 270 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 There is certain consolation in that. He has been with you 
 on that business. Your difficulties will lie, not in negotiating 
 with him, but in stating your case to your neighbours, that 
 they shall see the good sense of your aims. The main thing 
 you have to avoid is what the Yankees call " tall statements." 
 We are all agreed that competition has a disagreeable edge. 
 But if we should be betrayed into saying that we intend to 
 abolish it, we go beyond our power. But we can mitigate it. 
 When they open a store to sell at market prices, opponents 
 will ask you how you will find out the market price when 
 there are no markets left. There are people who would ask 
 the Apostles how they intended to apply the doctrine of the 
 atonement for sin, when the millennium arrives and all people 
 are perfect. Beware of inquirers who are born before their 
 time, and who spend their lives in putting questions which 
 will not need answering for centuries to come. If workmen 
 increase in numbers the tradesman does not like it. It means 
 more poor rates for him to pay. The gentry do not like it. 
 It means that they would have to cut you down, if riot should 
 follow famine. The only persons whom over-population 
 profits are those who hire labour, because numbers make it 
 cheap. Your condition is so bad that fever is your only friend, 
 which kills without exciting ill-feeling, thins the labour 
 market, and makes wages rise. The children of the poor are 
 less comely than they would be were they better fed, and their 
 minds, for want of instruction, are leaner than their bodies. 
 The little instruction they get is the bastard knowledge given 
 by the precarious, grudging, intermitting, humiliating hand of 
 Charity. 1 Take notice of the changed condition of things 
 since the days of your forefathers. The stout pole-axe and 
 lusty arm availeth not now to the brave. The battle of life is 
 fought now with the tongue and the pen, and the rascal who 
 has learning is more than a match for a hundred honest men 
 without it. Anybody can see that the little money you get 
 is half wasted, because you cannot spend it to advantage. The 
 worst food comes to the poor, which their poverty makes them 
 buy, and their necessity makes them eat. Their stomachs are 
 
 1 There were no School Boards in those days, and the Dissenters pre- 
 vented there being any, and offered us instead good-natured but shabby, 
 limping, inefficient voluntary education, which never could, and never did 
 educate a quarter of the people.
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE CO-OPERATION 271 
 
 the waste-baskets of the State. It is their lot to swallow all 
 the adulterations in the market. In these days you all set up 
 in a way as politicians. You go in for the Charter. You 
 allow agitators to address you as the " sovereign people." You 
 want to be electors, and counted as persons of political conse- 
 quence in the State, and be treated as only gentlemen are 
 now. Now, being a gentleman does not merely mean having 
 money. There are plenty of scoundrels who have that. 
 That] which makes the name of gentleman sweet is being a 
 man of good faith and good honour. A gentleman is one who 
 is considerate to others ; who never lies, nor fears, nor goes 
 into debt, nor takes advantage of his neighbours ; and the 
 poorest man in his humble way can be all this. If you take 
 credit of a shopkeeper you cannot, while you owe him money, 
 buy of another. In most cases you keep him poor by not 
 paying him. The flesh and bones of your children are his 
 property. The very plumpness of your wife, if she has it, 
 belongs to your butcher and your baker. The pulsation of 
 your own heart beats by charity. The clothes on your backs, 
 such as they are, are owned by some tailor. He who lives in 
 debt walks the streets a mere mendicant machine. Thus all 
 debt is self-imposed degradation, and he who incurs it lives in 
 bondage and shabbiness all his days. It is worth while trying 
 Co-operation again to get out of this. 
 
 II. 
 
 Is there any avenue of competition through which you 
 could creep ? If there be, get into it. In another country you 
 might have a chance ; in England you have none. Every 
 bird in the air, every fish in the stream, every animal in the 
 woods, every blade of grass in the fields, every inch of ground 
 has an owner, and there is no help except that of self-help in 
 concert, for any one. If you say you failed through trying to 
 be honest, nobody will believe you ; so few run that risk. It 
 is not considered " good business." Be sure of this. Honesty 
 has its liabilities. There are those who tell you of the advan- 
 tages of truth, but never of its dangers. Truth is dignity, but 
 also a peril ; and unless a man knows both sides of it, he will 
 turn into the easy road of prevarication, lying, or silence, when
 
 272 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 he meets the danger he has not foreseen, and which had not 
 been foretold to him. When you have a little store, and have 
 reached the point of getting pure provisions, you may find 
 your purchasers will not like them, nor know them when they 
 taste them. Their taste will be required to be educated. 
 They have never eaten the pure food of gentlemen, and will 
 not know the taste of it when you supply it to their lips. 
 The London mechanic does not know the taste of pure coffee. 
 What he takes to be coffee is a decoction of burnt corn and 
 chicory. 1 A friend 2 of mine, knowing this, thought it a pity 
 workmen should not have pure coffee, and opened a coffee- 
 house in the Blackfriars Road, where numerous mechanics and 
 engineers passed in the early morning to their work at the 
 engine shops over the bridge. They were glad to see an early 
 house open so near their work. They tried the coffee a 
 morning or two and went away without showing any marks of 
 satisfaction. They talked about it in their workshops. The 
 opinion arrived at was, " they had never tasted such stuff as 
 that sold at the new place." But before taking decisive 
 measures they took some shopmates with them to taste the 
 suspicious beverage. The unanimous conclusion they came to 
 was that the new coffee-house proprietor intended to poison 
 them, and if he had not adulterated his coffee a morning or 
 two later they would have broken his windows or his head. 
 As it was, the evil repute he had acquired ruined his project ; 
 and a notice "To let," which shortly after appeared on 
 the shutters, gave consolation to his ignorant indignant 
 customers.3 
 
 III. 
 
 What of ambition or interest has industry in this grim, 
 despairing, sloppy 4 hole of a town, where the parish doctor 
 
 1 This was sixty years ago, and Metropolitan coffee has improved. 
 a George Huggett, secretary of the Middlesex Reform Association, well 
 known in Liberal and co-operative movements from 1830 to 1850. 
 
 3 It ought to be explained that imbecility of taste is not confined to 
 workmen. Some years later a West End brewer, well known as a 
 member of Parliament and as a scrupulous man of business, tried the 
 experiment of producing the purest beverages chemistry could prescribe. 
 Soon, however, such notices of dissatisfaction came in from his respectable 
 customers of all classes that he was fain to desist. Many wine merchants 
 make fortunes out of the ignorant palates of their customers. 
 
 4 Rochdale has improved since those days. It has now a Town Hall 
 worth a day's journey to see. The Pioneers' Central Store is a Doge's
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE CO-OPERATION 273 
 
 and the sexton (who understand each other) are the best known 
 friends the workmen has. Are there not some here who have 
 lost mother or father, or wife, or child, whose presence made 
 the sunshine of the household which now knows them no 
 more ? Does not the very world seem deserted now that voice 
 has gone out of it ? What would one not give, how far would 
 one not go, to hear it again ? Death will not speak, however 
 earnestly we pray to it ; but we might get out of living 
 industry some voice of joy that might gladden thousands of 
 hearts to hear. In all England industry has no tone that 
 makes any human creature glad. Listen with the mind's ear 
 to the cry of every manufacturing town. What is there 
 pleasant in it ? * Co-operation might infuse a more hopeful 
 tone into it. 
 
 If you really think that the principle of the thing is wrong, 
 give it up, announce to your neighbours that you have come 
 to a different opinion. This you ought to do as candid men 
 of right spirit, so that any adopting the opinion you have 
 abandoned may understand they must hold it for reasons of 
 their own, and cannot any longer plead such sanction or 
 authority as your belief might lend to their proceedings. If, 
 however, you have convictions that this is a thing that can 
 be put through, put it through. Progress has its witches, as 
 Macbeth had, but the bottom of their old cauldron is pretty 
 well burnt out now. There are still persons who will tell 
 you that others have failed, again and again, and that you 
 pretend to be the wise person, whom the world was waiting 
 for to show it how the thing could be done. 2 But every 
 discoverer who found out what the world was looking for, and 
 
 palace compared with any town building which existed when it was 
 erected, and it does not seem to rain so much in Rochdale as in pre- 
 co-operative times. Let the reader see reports made to Parliament of its 
 condition when Sharman Crawford represented it. 
 
 1 Increase of wages, or prospect of competence, there was none in the 
 minds of workmen. Had some said there would be no more reduction of 
 wages, they would have thought the millennium had come. I know it, 
 for I lived long in workshops and never knew a man who had hope of 
 the kind. I never knew the news of self-help was in the world, until I 
 found it in Co-operation. 
 
 2 In a review of Dr. H. Travis's book on " Effectual Reform.''' 
 "There is," the writer says, "just one little drawback in all these 
 charming pictures ; the model village is not built yet, and nobody has 
 ever set about it quite the right way, says our projector, but only let ' me ' 
 set about it, and this time you really shall see!" Saturday Review, 
 October 16, 1875. 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 274 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 never met with ; every scientific inventor who has persisted in 
 improving the contrivance, which all who went before him 
 failed to perfect, has been in the same case, and everybody has 
 admitted at last that he was the one wise man the world was 
 waiting for, and that he really knew what nobody else knew, 
 and saw what none who went before him had seen. If you 
 were to take one of those microscopes which are now coming 
 into use, and gather the stem of a rosebud and examine it, you 
 would see a number of small insects, called aphis, travelling 
 along it, in pursuit of some object interesting to its tiny mind. 
 The thing is so small that you can scarcely discern it with the 
 naked eye, but in a microscope you see it put forth its little 
 arms and legs, carefully feeling its way, now stretching out a 
 foot, moving slowly along the side, touching carefully the 
 little projections, moving the limb in the outer air, feeling for 
 a resting-place, never leaving its position till it finds firm 
 ground to stand upon, showing more prudence and patience 
 before it has been alive an hour, than the mass of grown men 
 and women show when they are fifty years of age. The aphis 
 begins to move when it is a minute old, and goes a long way 
 in its one day of life. It does not appear to wait for the 
 applause of surrounding insects. So far as I have observed, 
 it does not ask what its neighbours think, nor pay much 
 attention to what they say after it has once set out. Its wise 
 little mind seems devoted to seeing that in every step forward 
 its foothold is secure. If you have half the prudence and 
 sagacity of these little creatures, who are so young that their 
 lives have to be counted by minutes, and are so small you 
 might carry a million of them in your waistcoat pocket, 1 you 
 might make Co-operation a thing to be talked about in 
 Rochdale. Do not, like crabs, walk sideways to your graves, 
 but do some direct, resolute thing before you die. 
 
 I expressed, as I had done elsewhere, my conviction that 
 the right men could do the right thing. My final words were 
 as positive as those used by a great master in the art of express- 
 ing wilfulness 2 : 
 
 1 These prompt little people, born in the morning, marry before break- 
 fast, are grandfathers by the afternoon, and rank as city fathers before 
 the sun goes down. 
 
 2 "Bothwell," by A. C. Swinburne.
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE CO-OPERATION 275 
 
 " This I cannot tell, 
 Whence I do know it ; but that I know it I know, 
 And by no casual or conjectural proof ; 
 . . . but I know it 
 
 Even as I know I breathe, see, hear, feel, speak, 
 And am not dead," 
 
 that I shall see Co-operation succeed here or elsewhere. 
 
 The audience were glad it was over ; something was said 
 which implied the impression that a real fanatic had come to 
 Rochdale at last. Other advocates oft visited the town. 
 This address was one of that propagandist time, and will give 
 the reader the arguments of the pre-Rochdale days. 1 For 
 twenty years after that time, whenever I arrived in Rochdale, 
 some store leaders met me at the railway station, and when I 
 asked, " Where I was to go to ? " the answer was, " Thou 
 must come and see store." My portmanteau was taken 
 there, my letters were addressed there, my correspondence was 
 written there, and my host was commonly James Smithies, or 
 Abram Greenwood. My earliest recollection is of having 
 chops and wool at Smithies', for he was a waste dealer, and the 
 woolly odour was all over the house. 
 
 The ascendancy of a new movement seems natural in large 
 towns. The larger the town the greater the need of stores, 
 and the less is the chance of success. In a large town there is 
 diversity of life and occupation, greater facilities for diversion, 
 greater difficulties of business publicity, greater mobility of 
 employment among workmen, and less likelihood of a dozen 
 or two men remaining long enough together, pursuing one 
 object year after year, necessary to build up a co-operative 
 store. Glasgow is a town where a prophet would say Co- 
 operation would answer. The thrift, patience, and clanship 
 of the Scottish race seem to supply all the conditions of economy 
 and concert. But though the Scotch are the last people to 
 turn back when they once set out, their prudence leads them 
 to wait and see who will go first. They prefer joining a 
 project when they see it succeeding. There are men in 
 Scotland ready to go out on forlorn hopes, but they are 
 exceptions. 
 
 1 I might add, and traditions of their own town, for some knew what I 
 did not know then, of struggles and stores and old endeavours which had 
 purpose in them. As far back as 1830 a co-operative workshop was 
 started in Rochdale.
 
 276 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 It came to pass that the men of Rochdale took the field, 
 and Co-operation recommenced with them. Alderman Livesey 
 aided the new movement by his stout-hearted influence. 
 William Smithies, whose laugh was like a festival, kept it 
 merry in its struggling years. William Cooper, with his 
 Danish face, stood up for it. He had what Canon Kingsley 
 called the " Viking blood " in his veins, and pursued every 
 adversary who appeared in public, with letters in the news- 
 papers, and confronted him on platforms. Abram Greenwood 
 came to its aid with his quiet, purposing face, which the 
 Spectator 1 said, "ought to be painted by Rembrandt," possibly 
 because that artist, distinguished for his strong contrasts, would 
 present the white light of Co-operation emerging from the dark 
 shades of competition. And others, whose names are elsewhere 
 recorded, 2 contributed in that town to the great revival. 
 
 1 London Spectator. 
 
 2 " History of Co-operation in Rochdale," Parts I. and II.
 
 RE-CREATED CO-OPERATION 277 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE DISCOVERY WHICH RE-CREATED CO-OPERATION 
 
 " They gave me advice and counsel in store, 
 Praised me and honoured me more and more ; 
 
 But, with all their honour and approbation, 
 I should, long ago, have died of starvation ; 
 Had there not come an excellent man, 
 Who bravely to help me along began. 
 
 Yet I cannot embrace him though other folks can : 
 For I myself am this excellent man ! " 
 
 Heine, translated by Leland. 
 
 The men of Rochdale were they who first took the name of 
 Equitable Pioneers. Their object was to establish equity in 
 industry the idea which best explains the spirit of modern 
 Co-operation. Equity is a better term than Co-operation, as 
 it implies an equitable share of work and profit, which the 
 word Co-operation does not connote. Among the Pioneers 
 was an original, clear-headed, shrewd, plodding thinker, one 
 Charles Howarth, who set himself to devise a plan by which 
 the permanent interest of the members was secured. It was 
 that the profits made by sales should be divided among all 
 members who made purchases, in proportion to the amount 
 they spent, and that the shares of profits coming due to them 
 should remain in the hands of the directors until it amounted 
 to ^5, they being registered as shareholders of that amount. 
 This sum they would not have to pay out of their pockets. 
 The store would thus save their shares for them, and they 
 would thus become shareholders without it costing them 
 anything ; so that if all went wrong they lost nothing ; and if 
 they stuck like sensible men to the store, they might save in
 
 278 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 the same way other ^5, which they could draw out as they 
 pleased. By this scheme the stores ultimately obtained 100 
 of capital from each twenty members. For this capital they 
 paid an interest of 5 per cent. Of course, before any store 
 could commence, some of the more enterprising promoters 
 must subscribe capital to buy the first stock. This capital in 
 Rochdale was mostly raised by weekly subscriptions of two- 
 pence. In order that there might be as much profit as possible 
 to divide among purchasers, 5 per cent, has become to be 
 regarded as the Co-operative standard rate of interest. The 
 merit of this scheme was that it created capital among men 
 who had none, and allured purchasers to the store by the 
 prospect of a quarterly dividend of profits upon their outlay. 
 Of course those who had the largest families had the largest 
 dealings, and it appeared as though the more they ate the 
 more they saved a fortunate illusion for the hungry little 
 ones who abounded in Rochdale then. 
 
 The device of dividing profits with purchasers was 
 original with Mr. Howarth, although seventeen years in 
 operation at no very great distance from Rochdale. It is 
 singular that it was not until twenty-six years after Mr. 
 Howarth had devised his plan (1844), that any one was aware 
 that it was in operation in 1827. Mr. William Nuttall, in 
 compiling a statistical table for the Reasoner in 1870, discovered 
 that an unknown society, at Meltham Mills, near Hudders- 
 field, had existed for forty-three years, having been commenced 
 in 1827, and had divided profits on purchases from the 
 beginning. But it found neither imitators nor propagandists 
 in England. 
 
 Mr. Alexander Campbell also claimed to have recommended 
 the same principle in an address which he drew up for the 
 Co-operative Bakers of Glasgow, in 1822 : that he fully 
 explained it to the co-operators of Cambuslang, who adopted 
 it in 1 831 ; and that a pamphlet was circulated at the time 
 containing what he said upon the subject. Mr. Campbeli 
 further declared that in 1840 he lectured several times in 
 Rochdale, and in 1843-4, when they were organising their 
 society of Equitable Pioneers, they consulted him, and he 
 advised them by letter to adopt the principle of dividing profits 
 on purchases, and, at the same time, assisted in forming the
 
 RE-CREATED CO-OPERATION 279 
 
 London Co-operative Society on the same principle. No one 
 has ever produced the pamphlet referred to, or any copy of the 
 rules of any Scotch society, containing the said plan, nor is 
 any mention of it in London extant. Yet it is not unlikely 
 that Mr. Campbell had the idea before the days of Mr. 
 Howarth. It is more likely that the idea of dividing profits 
 with the customer was separately originated. Few persons 
 preserve records of suggestions or rules which attracted small 
 attention in their day. All the Pioneers contemporary with 
 him believed the plan originated with Howarth. The records 
 of the patent offices of all countries show that important 
 inventions have been made again, by persons painfully startled 
 to find that the idea which had cost them years of their lives 
 to work out, had been perfected before they were born. 
 Coincidence of discovery in mechanics, in literature, and in 
 every department of human knowledge, is an axiom among 
 men of experience. From 1822 to 1844 stores limped along 
 and failed to attract growing custom, while dividends were 
 paid only on capital. 
 
 It was by taking the public into partnership that the new 
 Co-operation came to grow. 1 Few persons believed stores 
 could be re-established. Customers at the store were scarce 
 and uncertain, it was so small a sum that was likely to arise 
 to be given them, and for a long time it was so little that it 
 proved little attraction. The division of profits among 
 customers, though felt to be a promising step, not being 
 foreseen as a great fortune, was readily agreed to. No one 
 foresaw what a prodigious amount it would one day be. 
 Thirty vears later the profits of the Rochdale Store amounted 
 to ^50,668, and the profits of the Halifax Store reached 
 ^19,820, and those of Leeds ^34,510. Had these profits 
 existed in Mr. Howarth's time, and he had proposed to give 
 such amazing sums to mere customers, he would have been 
 deemed mad, and not half a dozen persons would have listened 
 to him outside Bedlam. When twenty members constituted 
 a society, and they made with difficulty ten shillings a year of 
 profit altogether, the proposal to divide it excited no suspicion. 
 
 1 The story told in " Self-Help, or History of the Equitable Pioneers of 
 Rochdale," by the present author, has been retold by translators in many 
 languages.
 
 280 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 A clear income of sixpence, as the result of twelve months' 
 active and daily attention to business, excited no jealousy. 
 But had ^50,000 been at the disposal of the committee, that 
 would have seemed a large fortune for twelve directors, and no 
 persuasive power on earth would have induced them to divide 
 that among the customers. It would have been said, " What 
 right has the customer to the gains of our trade ? What does 
 he do towards creating them ? He receives value for his 
 money. He gives no thought, he has no cares, he performs 
 no duties, he takes no trouble, he incurs no risks. If we lose 
 he pays no loss. Why should we enrich him by what we 
 win ?" Nobody then could have answered these questions. 
 But when the proposal came in the insidious form of dividing 
 scanty profits, with scarce customers, Mr. Howarth's scheme 
 was adopted, and Co-operation rose from the grave in which 
 short-sighted greed had buried it, and it began the mighty and 
 stalwart career with which we are now conversant. It really 
 seems as though the best steps we take never would be taken, 
 if we knew how wise and right they were. 
 
 The time came when substantial profits were made 
 actually paid over the counter, tangible in the pocket, and 
 certain of recurrence, with increase, at every subsequent 
 quarter-day. The fact was so unexpected that when it was 
 divulged it had all the freshness and suddenness of a revelation 
 to outsiders. The effect of this patient, unforeseen success was 
 diffused about we might say, in apostolical language u noised 
 abroad." There needed no advertisement to spread it. When 
 profits a new name among workpeople were found to be 
 really made, and known to be really paid to members quarter 
 by quarter, they were copiously heard of. The animated face 
 of the co-operator suggested that his projects were answering 
 with him. He appeared better fed, which was not likely to 
 escape notice among hungry weavers. He was better dressed 
 than formerly, which gave him distinction among his shabby 
 comrades in the mill. The wife no longer had "to sell her 
 petticoat," known to have been done in Rochdale, but had a 
 new gown, and she was not likely to be silent about that ; nor 
 was it likely to remain much in concealment. It became a 
 walking and graceful advertisement of Co-operation in every 
 part of the town. Her neighbours were not slow to notice
 
 RE-CREATED CO-OPERATION 281 
 
 the change in attire, and their very gossip became a sort of 
 
 propagandism ; and other husbands received hints they might 
 
 as well belong to the store. The children had cleaner faces, 
 
 and new pinafores or new jackets, and they propagated the source 
 
 of their new comforts in their little way, and other little 
 
 children communicated to their parents what they had seen. 
 
 Some old hen coops were furbished up and new pullets were 
 
 observed in them the cocks seemed to crow of Co-operation. 
 
 Here and there a pig, which was known to belong to a 
 
 co-operator, was seen to be fattening, and seemed to squeal in 
 
 favour of the store. After a while a pianoforte was reported 
 
 to have been heard in a co-operative cottage, on which it was 
 
 said the daughters played co-operative airs, the like of which 
 
 had never been heard in that quarter. There were wild 
 
 winds, but neither tall trees nor wild birds about Rochdale ; 
 
 but the weavers' songs were not unlike those of the dusky 
 
 gondoliers of the South, when emancipation first came to 
 
 them : 
 
 " We pray de Lord he gib us sign 
 Dat one day we be free ; 
 De north wind tell it to de pines, 
 De wild duck to de sea. 
 
 We tink it when the church bell rings, 
 
 We dream it in de dream ; 
 De rice -bird mean it when he sings, 
 
 De eagle when he screams." ' 
 
 The objects of Nature vary, but the poetry of freedom is 
 everywhere the -same. The store was talked about in the 
 mills. It was canvassed in the weaving shed. The farm 
 labourer heard of it in the fields. The coal miner carried the 
 news down the pit. The blacksmith circulated the news at 
 his forge. It was the gossip of the barber's chair the 
 courage of beards being unknown then. Chartists, 
 reluctant to entertain any question but the " Six Points," took 
 the store into consideration in their societies. In the news- 
 papers letters appeared on the new movement. Preachers 
 who found their pew rents increase were more reticent than in 
 former days about the sin of Co-operation. "Toad Lane" 
 (where the store stood) was the subject of conversation in the 
 public-house. It was discussed in the temperance coffee-shop. 
 
 1 Whittier.
 
 282 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 The carriers spread news of it in country places, and what was 
 a few years before a matter of derision, became the curious, 
 inquiring, and respectful talk of all those parts. The landlord 
 found his rent paid more regularly, and whispered the fact 
 about. The shopkeeper told his neighbour that customers 
 who had been in his debt for years had paid up their accounts. 
 Members for the Borough became aware that some in- 
 dependent voters were springing up in connection with the 
 store. Politicians began to think there was something in it. 
 Wandering lecturers visiting the town found a better quality 
 of auditors to address, and were invited to houses where tables 
 were better spread than formerly, and were taken to see the 
 store, as one of the new objects of interest in the town, with 
 its news-room, where more London papers could be seen than 
 in any coffee-house in London, and word was carried of what 
 was being done in Rochdale to other towns. News of it got 
 into periodicals in London. Professors and students of social 
 philosophy from abroad came to visit it, and sent news of it 
 home to their country. And thus it spread far and wide that 
 the shrewd men of Rochdale were doing a notable thing in the 
 way of Co-operation. It was all true, and honour will long be 
 accorded them. For it is they, in whatever rank, who act for 
 the right when others are still, who decide when others doubt, 
 who urge forward when others hang back, to whom the glory 
 of great change belongs. 
 
 Thus the Rochdale Co-operators found, like Heine, " that 
 his best friend was himself."
 
 Bill 
 Bill! 
 
 
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 frtr 
 
 S9IS BUS 
 
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 sen a; H^J- 
 
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 TIIK IlKICINAI. THAI) LANK STORE, ROCHDALE. 
 'I'lic Dollci- appear mi tin- Opening Day. 
 
 I 7 '../'
 
 CAREER OF THE PIONEER STORE 283 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CAREER OF THE PIONEER STORE 
 
 " But every humour hath its adjunct pleasure, 
 
 Wherein it finds a joy above the rest : 
 
 But these particulars are not my measure, 
 
 All these I better in one general best." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The first we hear of Rochdale in co-operative literature is 
 an announcement in the Co-operative Miscellany for July, 1830, 
 which "rejoices to hear that through the medium of the 
 Weekly Free Press a co-operative society has been formed in 
 this place, and is going on well. Three public meetings have 
 been held to discuss the principles. They have upwards of 
 sixty members, and are anxious to supply flannels to the 
 various co-operative societies. We understand the prices are 
 from 1 15s. a piece to ^5, and that J. Greenhough, Wardle- 
 worth Brow, will give every information, if applied to." 
 
 The Rochdale flannel weavers were always in trouble for want 
 of work. In June, 1830, they had a great meeting on Cronkey 
 Shaw Moor, which is overlooked by the house once owned by 
 Mr. Bright. At that time there were as many as 7,000 men out 
 of employ. There was an immense concourse of men, women, 
 and children on the moor, although a drizzling rain fell during 
 the speeches it always does rain in Rochdale when the flannel 
 weavers are out. One speaker, Mr. Hinds, declared "that 
 wages had been so frequently reduced in Rochdale that a 
 flannel weaver could not, by all his exertions and patience, 
 obtain more than from 4s. to 6s. per week." Mr. Renshaw 
 quoted the opinion of " Mr. Robert Owen at Lanark, a gentle- 
 man whose travels gave him ample scope for observation, who 
 had declared, at a recent public meeting in London, c that the
 
 284 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 inhabitants of St. Domingo, who were black slaves, seemed to 
 be in a condition greatly to be preferred to that of English 
 operatives.' " * Mr. Renshaw said that " when his hearers 
 went home they would find an empty pantry mocking their 
 hungry appetites, the house despoiled of its furniture, an 
 anxious wife with a highway paper, or a King's taxes paper, in 
 her hand, but no money to discharge such claim. God help 
 the poor man when misfortune overtook him ! The rich man 
 in his misfortune could obtain some comfort, but the poor 
 man had nothing to flee to. Cureless despondency was the 
 condition to which he was reduced." It was this year that 
 the first co-operative society was formed in Rochdale. The 
 meeting on Cronkey Shaw Moor was on behalf of the flannel 
 weavers who were then out on strike. The Rochdale men 
 were distinguished among unionists of that time for vigorous 
 behaviour. It appears that during the disturbances in Rochdale, 
 in the year 1831, the constables "villainous constables," as 
 the record I consult describes them robbed their box. 
 One would think there was not much in it. However, the 
 men succeeded in bringing the constables to justice, and in 
 convicting them of felony. 
 
 It would appear that Rochdale habitually moved by two- 
 pences. The United Trades Co-operative ^Journal of Manchester 
 recorded that, notwithstanding the length of time the flannel 
 weavers and spinners had been out, and the slender means of 
 support they had, they had contributed at twopence per man 
 the sum of ^30, as their first deposit to the Protection Fund, 
 and that one poor woman, a spinner, who could not raise the 
 twopence agreed upon at their meeting, was so determined not 
 to be behind others in her contributions to what she properly 
 denominated " their own fund," that she actually sold her 
 petticoat to pay her subscriptions. 
 
 At the Birmingham Congress of 1832 the Rochdale Society 
 sent a letter urging the utility of " discussing in Congress the 
 establishment of a Co-operative Woollen Manufactory; as the 
 Huddersfield cloth, Halifax and Bradford stuffs, Leicester and 
 Loughborough stockings, and Rochdale flannels required in 
 
 1 Mr. Owen did not distinguish between domestic slaves and field 
 slaves, and dwelt upon social comfort as though it had not occurred to 
 him that freedom was an element of progress.
 
 CAREER OF THE PIONEER STORE 285 
 
 several respects similar machinery and processes of manufacture 
 they thought that societies in these towns might unite together 
 and manufacture with advantages not obtainable by separate 
 establishments." At that early period there were co-operators 
 in Rochdale giving their minds to federative projects. Their 
 delegate was Mr. William Harrison, and their secretary, 
 Mr. T. Ladyman, 70, Cheetham Street, Rochdale. Their cre- 
 dentials stated that " the society was first formed in October, 
 1830, and bore the name of the Rochdale Friendly Society. 
 Its members were fifty-two, the amount of its funds was jio8. 
 It employed ten members and their families. It manufactured 
 flannel. It had a library containing thirty-two volumes. It 
 had no school, and never discussed the principles of Labour 
 Exchange, and had two other societies in the neighbourhood." 
 It was deemed a defect in sagacity not to have inquired into 
 the uses of Labour Exchanges as a means of co-operative profit 
 and propagandism. Rochdale from the beginning had a 
 creditable regard for books and education. It also appears 
 and it is of interest to note it now that " wholesale " 
 combination was an early Rochdale idea. 
 
 From 1830 to 1840 Rochdale went on doing something. 
 One thing recorded is that it converted the Rev. Joseph 
 Marriott to social views who wrote " Community : a Drama." 
 Another is that in 1838 a "Social Hall" was opened in York- 
 shire Street. These facts of Rochdale industrial operations, 
 prior to 1844, when the germ store began, show that this 
 co-operative idea " was in the air." It could hardly be said 
 to be anywhere else until it descended in Toad Lane, and that 
 is where it first touched the earth, took root, and grew. 
 
 Like curious and valuable animals which have oft been 
 imported, but never bred from, like rare products of Nature 
 that have frequently been grown without their cultivation 
 becoming general Co-operation had long existed in various 
 forms ; it is only since 1844 that it has been cultivated. 
 Farmers grew wheat before the days of Major Hallett, and 
 practised thin sowing, and made selections of seed in a way. 
 But it was not until that observing agriculturist traced the 
 laws of growth, and demonstrated the principles of selection, 
 that "pedigree wheat" was possible, and the growing powers 
 of Great Britain were rendered capable of being tripled.
 
 286 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Similar has been the effect of the Pioneer discovery of 
 participation in trade and industry. 
 
 Of the " Famous Twenty-eight " old Pioneers, who founded 
 the store by their humble subscriptions of twopence a week, 
 James Smithies was its earliest secretary and counsellor. In 
 his later years he became one of the Town Councillors of the 
 borough the only one of the Twenty-eight who attained 
 municipal distinction. After a late committee meeting in 
 days of faltering fortunes at the store or the corn mill, he 
 would go out at midnight and call up any one known to have 
 money and sympathy for the cause. And when the disturbed 
 sympathiser was awake and put his head out of the window to 
 learn what was the matter, Smithies would call out, " I am 
 come for thy brass, lad. We mun have it." " All right ! " 
 would be the welcome answer. And in one case the bag was 
 fetched with nearly ^ioo in, and the owner offered to drop 
 it through the window. " No ; I'll call in the morning," 
 Smithies replied, with his cheery voice, and then would go 
 home contented that the evil day was averted. In the presence 
 of his vivacity no one could despond, confronted by his buoyant 
 humour no one could be angry. He laughed the store out of 
 despair into prosperity. William Howarth, the " sea lawyer " 
 of Co-operation, is no more. I spoke at the grave of William 
 Cooper, and wrote the inscription for his tomb : 
 
 8n iRrmorg of 
 WILLIAM COOPER 
 
 WHO DIED OCTOBER 3IST, 1868, AGED 46 YEARS. 
 ONE OF THE ORIGINAL "28" EQUITABLE PIONEERS, 
 
 he had a zeal equal to any, and exceeded all 
 
 in his ceaseless exertions, by pen and speech. 
 
 he had the greater and rarer merit of standing by principle 
 
 always, regardless alike of interests, of friendships, 
 
 or of himself. 
 
 Author of the 
 "History of the Rochdale Co-operative Corn Mill Society. " 
 
 The following page of facts tells the progress and triumph 
 of the Pioneers reduced to figures :
 
 CAREER OF THE PIONEER STORE 287 
 
 Table of the operations of the Society from its commence- 
 ment in 1844 to the end of 1876 : 
 
 Year. 
 
 Members. 
 
 Funds. 
 
 Business. 
 
 Profits. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1844 
 
 28 
 
 28 
 
 
 
 
 1 84S 
 
 74 
 
 181 
 
 710 
 
 22 
 
 1846 
 
 80 
 
 252 
 
 1,146 
 
 80 
 
 1847 
 
 no 
 
 286 
 
 1,924 
 
 72 
 
 1848 
 
 149 
 
 397 
 
 2,276 
 
 117 
 
 1849 
 
 390 
 
 1,193 
 
 6,6n 
 
 561 
 
 1850 
 
 600 
 
 2,289 
 
 13,179 
 
 880 
 
 1851 
 
 630 
 
 2,785 
 
 17,633 
 
 990 
 
 1852 
 
 680 
 
 3,471 
 
 16,352 
 
 1,206 
 
 1853 
 
 720 
 
 5,848 
 
 22,700 
 
 1,674 
 
 1854 
 
 900 
 
 7,172 
 
 33,364 
 
 1,763 
 
 1855 
 
 1,400 
 
 11,032 
 
 44,902 
 
 3,109 
 
 1856 
 
 1,600 
 
 12,920 
 
 63,197 
 
 3,921 
 
 1857 
 
 1,850 
 
 15,142 
 
 79,789 
 
 5,470 
 
 1858 
 
 i,95o 
 
 18,160 
 
 74,680 
 
 6,284 
 
 1859 
 
 2,703 
 
 27,060 
 
 104,012 
 
 10,739 
 
 i860 
 
 3,450 
 
 37,710 
 
 152,063 
 
 15,906 
 
 1861 
 
 3,9oo 
 
 42,925 
 
 176,206 
 
 18,020 
 
 1862 
 
 3,5oi 
 
 38,465 
 
 141,074 
 
 17,564 
 
 1863 
 
 4,013 
 
 49,361 
 
 158,632 
 
 19,671 
 
 1864 
 
 4,747 
 
 62,105 
 
 174,937 
 
 22,717 
 
 1865 
 
 5,326 
 
 78,778 
 
 196,234 
 
 25,156 
 
 1866 
 
 6,246 
 
 99,989 
 
 249,122 
 
 31,931 
 
 1867 
 
 6,823 
 
 128,43s 
 
 284,919 
 
 41,619 j 
 
 1868 
 
 6,73i 
 
 123,233 
 
 290,900 
 
 37,459 
 
 1869 
 
 5,809 
 
 93,423 
 
 236,438 
 
 28,542 
 
 1870 
 
 5,56o 
 
 80,291 
 
 223,021 
 
 25,209 
 
 1871 
 
 6,021 
 
 107,500 
 
 246,522 
 
 29,026 
 
 1872 
 
 6,444 
 
 132,912 
 
 267,577 
 
 33,640 
 
 1873 
 
 7,021 
 
 160,886 
 
 287,212 
 
 38,749 
 
 1874 
 
 7,639 
 
 192,814 
 
 298,888 
 
 40,679 
 
 1875 
 
 8,415 
 
 225,682 
 
 305,657 
 
 48,212 
 
 1876 
 
 8,892 
 
 254,000 
 
 305,190 
 
 50,668 
 
 These columns of figures are not dull, prosaic, merely 
 statistical, as figures usually are. Every figure glows with 
 a light unknown to chemists, and which has never illumined 
 any town until the Rochdale day. Our forefathers never saw 
 it. They looked with longing and wistful eyes over the dark 
 plains of industry, and no gleam of it appeared. The light 
 they looked for was not a pale, flickering, uncertain light, but 
 one self-created, self-fed, self-sustained, self-growing, and daily 
 growing, not a light of charity or paternal support, but an 
 inextinguishable, independent light. Every numeral in the 
 table glitters with this new light. Every column is a pillar
 
 288 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 of fire in the night of industry, guiding other wanderers 
 than Israelites out of the wilderness of helplessness from their 
 Egyptian bondage. 
 
 The Toad Lane Store has expanded into nineteen branches, 
 with nineteen news-rooms. Each branch is a far finer building 
 than the original store. The Toad Lane parent store has 
 long been represented by a great Central Store, a commanding 
 pile of buildings which it takes an hour to walk through, 
 situated on the finest site in the town, and overlooks alike 
 the Town Hall and Parish Church. The Central Stores con- 
 tain a vast library, which has a permanent librarian, Mr. 
 Barnish. The store spends hundreds of pounds in bringing 
 out a new catalogue as the increase of books needs it. 
 Telescopes, field-glasses, microscopes innumerable, exist for 
 the use of members. There are many large towns where 
 gentlemen have no such newsrooms, so many daily papers, 
 weekly papers, magazines, reviews, maps, and costly books 
 of reference, as the working class co-operators of Rochdale 
 possess. They sustain science classes. They own property 
 all over the borough. They have estates covered with streets 
 of houses built for co-operators. They have established a 
 large corn mill which was carried through dreary misad- 
 ventures by the energy and courage of Mr. Abram Greenwood 
 misadventures trying every degree of patience and every 
 form of industrial faith. They built a huge spinning mill, 
 and conducted it on profit-sharing principles three years, 
 until outside shareholders perverted it into a joint-stock 
 concern. None of the old pioneers looked back on the 
 Sodom of competition. Had they done so they would have 
 been like Lot's wife, saline on the pillar of history. They 
 set the great example of instituting and maintaining an 
 Educational Fund out of their profits. They sought to set up 
 co-operative workshops to employ their own members and 
 support them on land, of which they should be the owners, 
 and create a self-supporting community.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY AID 289 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY AID TO CO-OPERATION 
 
 "Law is but morality shaped by Act of Parliament." Mr. Bernal, 
 Chairman of Committees, House of Commons. 
 
 The device of Mr. Howarth had not carried Co-operation far, 
 had it not been for friendly lawyers and Parliament. The 
 legal impediments to industrial economy were serious in 1844. 
 Because "men cannot be made wise by Act of Parliament" 
 is no reason for not making Acts of Parliament wise. " Law 
 should be morality shaped by Act of Parliament." None, 
 however, knew better than Mr. Bernal, that if there was any 
 morality in a Bill at first it often got " shaped " out of it 
 before it became an Act. Nevertheless there is a great deal 
 of living morality in the world which would be very dead had 
 not law given it protection. A law once made is a chain or 
 a finger-post a barrier or a path. It stops the way or it 
 points the way. If an obstacle it stands like a rock. It comes 
 to be venerated as a pillar of the constitution. The indifferent 
 think it as well as it is the timid are discouraged by it the 
 busy are too occupied to give attention to it. At last, some 
 ardent, disinterested persons, denounced for their restlessness, 
 persuade Parliament to remove it, and the nation passes 
 forward. 1 
 
 The Legislature did open new roads of industrial advance- 
 ment. Working men can become sharers in the profits of a 
 commercial undertaking without incurring unlimited liability, 
 
 1 It was the Rev. William Nassau Molesworth, then incumbent of Spot- 
 land, Rochdale, who, discerning in the early efforts of the Pioneers, the 
 prospect of social improvement, first suggested to them the advantages 
 of obtaining the protection of the law for their members. 
 
 VOL. I. 20
 
 290 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 an advantage so great that the most sanguine despaired of 
 living to see its enactment. This act was mainly owing to 
 William Schofield, M.P. for Birmingham. 
 
 In a commercial country like England, one would naturally 
 expect that law would be in favour of trade ; yet so slow was 
 the recognition of industrial liberty that an Act was a long 
 time in force, which enabled a society to sell its products to its 
 own members, but not to others. Thus the Leeds Corn Mill, 
 as Mr. John Holmes related, naturally produced bran as well 
 as flour, could sell its flour to its members, and its bran also, if 
 its members wanted it. But the members, not being rabbits, 
 did not want the bran ; and at one time the Corn Mill Society 
 had as much as j6oo worth of bran accumulated in their store- 
 rooms which they were unable to sell to outside buyers. 
 Societies were prohibited holding more than one acre of land, 
 and that not as house or farm land, but only for transacting the 
 business of the society upon. The premises of the Equitable 
 Pioneers occupied land nearly to the extent allowed by the 
 Act. All thoughts of leasing or purchasing land whereon to 
 grow potatoes, corn, or farm produce were prevented by this 
 prohibitory clause. Co-operative farming was difficult. No 
 society could invest money except in savings banks or National 
 Debt funds. No rich society could help a poor society by 
 a loan. No member could save more than ^ioo. The Act 
 prohibited funds being used for educational purposes, and every 
 member was practically made responsible for all the debts 
 of the society enough to frighten any prudent man away. 
 Besides these impediments, there was no provision compelling 
 any member to give up such property, books, or records that 
 might have been entrusted to him by the society ; so that any 
 knave was endowed with the power, and secured in the means, 
 of breaking up the society when a fit of larceny seized him. 
 
 The Friendly Societies Act of 1846 contained what came 
 to be known as the "Frugal Investment Clause," as it per- 
 mitted the frugal investment of the savings of members for 
 better enabling them to purchase food, firing, clothes, or 
 materials of their trade or calling, or to provide for the educa- 
 tion of their children or kindred. In 1850, Mr. Slaney, M.P., 
 obtained a committee upon the savings and investments of the 
 middle and working classes. Important evidence was given by
 
 PARLIAMENTARY AID 291 
 
 various persons, including Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Hughes, Mr. 
 Bellenden Kerr, Mr. Ludlow, and Mr. Vansittart Neale. Mr. 
 Neale has stated that u Mr. Mill rendered a great and lasting 
 service to co-operative effort by the distinction drawn between 
 the conditions affecting all labour carried on by mankind from 
 the nature of the earth and of man, and the mode in which 
 human institutions may affect the distribution of the products 
 of this labour two matters commonly confused by political 
 economists, who treat the results of human selfishness, inten- 
 sified by competition, as if they were unalterable laws of the 
 universe." l 
 
 The Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1852 (15 and 
 16 Vict., c. 31), introduced by Mr. Slaney, in consequence 
 of the report of the Committee of 1850, authorised the forma- 
 tion of societies by the voluntary subscription of the members, 
 for attaining any purpose (permitted by the laws in force in 
 respect to Friendly Societies, or by that Act), " by carrying on 
 in common any labours, trades, or handicrafts, except the 
 working mines, minerals, or quarries, beyond the limits of the 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the busi- 
 ness of banking." It made all the provisions of the laws 
 relating to Friendly Societies apply to every society constituted 
 under it, except in so far as they were expressly varied by the 
 Act, or any rule expressly authorised or certified by an endorse- 
 ment on its rules, signed by the Registrar of Friendly Societies, 
 not to be applicable to it. In consequence, Industrial and 
 Provident Societies, while allowed to carry on trade as general 
 dealers, obtained all the advantages given to Friendly Societies, 
 in regard to the vesting of their funds, without conveyance, in 
 their trustees, protection against fraud by their officers ; whence 
 the Corn Mill Society of Rochdale dissolved itself in order to 
 be enrolled under the new Act, that it might recover debts due 
 to it. In 1855, the position of Industrial and Provident 
 Societies in this respect was slightly amended ; but, unfortu- 
 nately, in another respect it was altered for the worse by the 
 Frugal Investment Clause, under which Friendly Societies 
 were authorised, among other things, to provide for the 
 
 * Co-operative News.
 
 292 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Education of their children, being struck out. 1 The Industrial 
 and Provident Societies Act limited itself to authorising the 
 application of profits to " the payment of a dividend on capital 
 not exceeding 5 per cent, per annum [an effective pre- 
 ventive of speculation in the shares of societies], the re- 
 payment of loans, the increase of the capital of the society, 
 division among the members or persons employed by them, 
 and such provident purposes as are authorised by the laws 
 relating to Friendly Societies." Thus, indirectly, the effect 
 was that of preventing Industrial and Provident Societies from 
 following the excellent example of Rochdale in regard to the 
 application of their profits, to establish news-rooms, libraries, 
 lectures, or other means of educating themselves. It was an 
 effect of which probably no one in Parliament thought ; for, 
 though the Industrial and Provident Societies Act was 
 amended by the 19 and 20 Vict., c. 40, no notice is taken 
 of this restriction. The Act of 1862 authorised the applica- 
 tion of profits for any purpose allowed by the Friendly Societies 
 Acts, or otherwise permitted by law. The formation of 
 Educational Funds thus became allowable. 2 
 
 Dr. John Watts stated at the Social Science Congress, 
 Manchester, 1866, that "in no case which has come under 
 his observation, except in the original one at Rochdale, was 
 there in the constitution of the society any educational pro- 
 vision, and personal inquiry had informed him that this is 
 because the Registrar refuses to allow it. The managers 
 of one of the Manchester stores had no less than four months' 
 correspondence on the subject, and the result of the refusal 
 was the necessity for a quarterly vote for the reading-room, 
 in order to avoid a quarterly quarrel, which, after all, is not 
 always averted." Rochdale entered their educational expenses 
 with the expenses of management, and an indispensable 
 and honest place they held there. There are hundreds of 
 
 1 Mr. Tidd Pratt had previously sanctioned rules of societies meditating 
 self-education ; as he had by a generous latitude of construction in some 
 earlier cases by which Rochdale had profited from the beginning. Roch- 
 dale had been an old offender against the law in prohibiting education. 
 
 2 For these statements I am indebted to Mr. Neale, whom the reader 
 will prefer to follow, Mr. Neale being professionally acquainted with 
 the law.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY AID 293 
 
 stores which have never taken advantage of the new law 
 to create an educational fund. And new stores are often 
 opened which have no such provision. These are known as 
 " Dark " stores. 
 
 " It must not be forgotten," Mr. Neale has remarked, " how 
 the law of England has affected the working classes, that the 
 privileges given them for the first time in 1862 were also 
 granted in the same year for the first time to the commercial 
 classes. A large part of the evidence before Mr. Slaney's 
 Committee is occupied by the question of the desirableness or 
 mischief of granting limited liability to partners in trade by 
 some method less costly than the one at that time in use by 
 an Act of Parliament, or a Charter from the Crown, which 
 was shown to have cost the Metropolitan Dwellings Associa- 
 tion over 1,000. By the Companies Act of 1862 this was 
 done in the interests of the trading classes, and in the same 
 year the working classes obtained the full measure of legal 
 rights then conferred upon their richer neighbours. 
 
 The Act of 1862, by permitting a member to own ^200 in 
 the society, doubled the available capital for the extension of 
 operations, and gave new life to societies which, like Halifax, 
 had lain like Rip Van Winkle twenty years without growth or 
 motion. This single improvement in the law awakened it, 
 put activity into it, and it became a great society.
 
 294 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CO-OPERATION IN STORMY DAYS 
 
 " To seek the noblest 'tis your only good, 
 Now you have seen it ; for that higher vision 
 Poisons all meaner choice for evermore." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 Political economists, who are all privately persuaded that 
 Nature would never have been able to carry on until now had 
 they not arisen to give it suggestions, were full of predictions 
 that Co-operation might keep up its health in time of average 
 prosperity, but in days of adversity it would take a low fever, 
 fall into bad ways, suffer from coldness in the extremities, have 
 pains in the " chest," and put the social " faculty " to their 
 wits' end to pull the creature through. Let the cotton famine 
 arrive, and fat Rochdale would become as lean as Lazarus. 
 
 In 1861, when the American slave war broke out, and the 
 South armed against the North with a view to establishing a 
 separate slave dominion, the dangerous days set in when cotton 
 would be scarce, mills would stop, wages cease, and eating 
 would be interrupted in hundreds of thousands of households. 
 Would white workmen, who were not quite sure they were 
 not slaves themselves, put up with privations year after year, 
 consume their hard-earned and long-treasured savings, all for 
 the sake of their long-heeled, woolly-headed, black-faced 
 brothers, who probably did not understand freedom would 
 not know what to do with it when it should come, and who 
 most likely cared nothing for it while the pumpkin was 
 plentiful, and the planter's whip fell on somebody else's back ? 
 Sentiments in favour of freedom might be pretty strong at home 
 where it concerned ourselves but it would be drawn very
 
 CO-OPERATION IN STORMY DAYS 295 
 
 fine and thin when it had to reach all the way from Rochdale 
 and Leeds to the cotton swamps of the Southern States. 
 The French and Italian workmen might in their chivalrous 
 way die for an idea, but John Bull might have small sympathy 
 for the remote " nigger," whose ebony caprices and apple- 
 squash ideas of liberty interfere with John's repast. If members 
 of Parliament, sure of good dinners and the bountiful resources 
 of territorial acres if noblemen who grew rich while they 
 slept if merchants and manufacturers, wealthy beyond the 
 dreams of avarice or limits of public safety could basely cry, 
 " Open the ports, and let the negro howl under the whip," 
 half-educated or wholly uneducated workmen could not be 
 expected to be discerning, or generously solicitous for the 
 welfare of distant Samboes. 
 
 So thought the mob of politicians of that day, for, as Samuel 
 Bailey says, "those are a mob who act like one," and neither 
 a good coat nor high station alters the mob quality. Character 
 goes by acts. Copperheads, clerical and political, infested 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire, retailing insidious proposals to 
 recognise the South. In these I do not include the honest 
 politicians who really believed that the separation of North and 
 South would increase the individuality of nations, and conduce 
 to general progress. I speak here only of the Copperhead 
 class. The Copperhead in America was a political creature 
 who talked union and helped separation ; and when their 
 agents came among the co-operators of the North of England, 
 talked freedom and argued for slavery, they disguised their 
 aim under specious forms of trade policy. Physiology and 
 Scripture were pointed against the Negro in lecture-room and 
 pulpit. Ultimately the Copperheads slunk away under a storm 
 of discerning scorn. Many a stout blast blew from Rochdale. 
 
 Statistics (an ugly, recondite, abstract, discomfiting word, 
 invented, one would think, to turn attention from the study of 
 facts) of business done by co-operators in cotton famine days 
 will be instructive. The King Street Industrial Society, 
 Oldham, is an example : 
 
 Year. 
 
 No. of Members. 
 
 Capital. 
 
 Business. 
 
 I86l ... 
 
 924 
 
 ...9,130 ... 
 
 47,675 
 
 1862 ... 
 
 824 
 
 ... 8,034 
 
 41,901 
 
 1863 ... 
 
 86l 
 
 ... 9,165 ... 
 
 36,366
 
 296 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 There are two societies in Oldham, one in King Street, 
 the other at Greenacre Hill. King Street was the larger 
 by about one-sixth. The two societies together had 3,299 
 members, who did business to the amount of ^87,766, and 
 made 7,636 of profit. So that, taken together or singly, 
 Co-operation carried a saucy head in the slave war storm. 
 
 Here are a few examples of what were the fortunes of stores 
 elsewhere : 
 
 Name of No. of Amount of Profits 
 
 Store. Members. Business. Realised. 
 
 Liverpool ... 3,154 44,355 3,201 
 
 Bury 1,412 47, 5o' 4,689 
 
 Bacup 2,296 53,663 6,618 
 
 The reader may be assured that no bare bones were found 
 in Mother Hubbard's co-operative cupboard in the cotton 
 famine days. There was no old lady in any competitive 
 district of the working people so bright and plump as she. 
 Bacup workers suffered more from the cotton scarcity than 
 Rochdale. Bacup had scarcely any other branch of trade than 
 cotton. Their store receipts went down nearly one half at 
 the time of the greatest scarcity. The Relief Committee 
 prohibited the recipients going to the store to buy goods with 
 the money given them. They might have bought at the 
 store to more advantage, but probably the Relief Committee 
 considered the shopkeepers more in need of support than the 
 storekeepers. The Liverpool store was little affected by the 
 cotton scarcity. Mr. William Cooper wrote me at the time 
 his estimate of store affairs, which I quote for his amusingly 
 contemptuous appraisement of Manchester. "Liverpool," he 
 said, "has had difficulties of its own making namely, by 
 giving credit to members but they have adopted the ready- 
 money system, which will check its sales for a time, but its 
 stability and growth will be all the more certain after. Some 
 of the stores have given to the relief funds. Mossley, Dukin- 
 field, Staleybridge, Ashton, Heywood, Middleton, Rawtenstall, 
 Hyde, have suffered badly, being almost entirely cotton manu- 
 facturing towns ; yet none of the stores have failed, so that, 
 taken altogether, the co-operative societies in Lancashire are as 
 numerous and as strong now as before the cotton panic set in. 
 Even Manchester, which is good for nothing now, except to sell 
 cotton, has created a Manchester and Salford Store, maintained
 
 CO-OPERATION IN STORMY DAYS 297 
 
 for five years an average of 1,200 members, and made for them 
 7,000 of profit." 
 
 The reader may be satisfied of the actual and inherent 
 vitality of Co-operation to withstand vicissitudes. Yorkshire 
 and Lancashire live on cotton. When the American slave- 
 holders' rebellion cut off the supply, of course a cotton famine 
 occurred, and people who regarded Co-operation as a Great 
 Eastern ship too unmanageable for industrial navigation 
 predicted that it would founder in the southern tempest. The 
 scarcity, instead, however, of destroying co-operative societies, 
 brought out in a conspicuous way the soundness of the com- 
 mercial and moral principles on which they are founded. Mr. 
 Milner Gibson's parliamentary returns at that time show that 
 co-operative societies had increased to 454, and that this 
 number was in full operation in England and Wales in the 
 third year of the scarcity. The amount of business done by 
 381 of these societies was upwards of 2,600,000. In Lanca- 
 shire there were 117 societies, in Yorkshire 96. The number 
 of members in 1863, in the 381 societies, was 108,000. The 
 total amount of the assets of these societies was 793,500, while 
 the liabilities were only 229,000. The profits made by the 
 381 societies (excluding 73 societies which made no returns) 
 were 213,600 ; and this in the third year of the great cotton 
 scarcity ! It may be, therefore, safely concluded that Co- 
 operation established for itself a place among the vital business 
 forces of the country. No one can foretell where the right 
 steps will lead. No moralist foresees the whole of that ethical 
 change which his maxims will generate. No railway inventor 
 ever had any idea of that omnipresent traffic which has grown 
 up. Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, when they first addressed 
 the people in favour of the repeal of the corn laws, scarcely 
 anticipated that one result would be that they should make the 
 English nation heavier. Every man that you meet in the 
 streets now is stouter, and weighs two stone more than he 
 would have done but for Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. 
 Calculating from our present population, it may be said that 
 these eminent corn-law repealers have increased the weight of 
 the British race by 400,000 tons. So that if our men were 
 precipitated unarmed against battalions of any other nation in 
 the field, they would have increased advantages in bearing them
 
 298 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 down by sheer weight. And the humble co-operative weavers 
 of Rochdale, by saving twopences when they had none to spare, 
 and holding together when others separated, until they had 
 made their store pay, set an example which created for the 
 working classes a new future.
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 299 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 
 
 "It is not co-operation where a few persons join for the purpose of 
 making a profit from cheap purchases, by which only a portion of them 
 benefit. Co-operation is where the whole of the produce is divided. 
 What is wanted is, that the whole of the working class should partake of 
 the profits of labour." John Stuart Mill (Speech at the Crown and 
 Anchor Tavern, London). 
 
 Excited Labour seems on fire and the Political Economist, 
 albeit a damp creature, seems powerless to extinguish it. 
 Doctrinal streams of "supply and demand" poured upon it, act 
 as petroleum upon flame. Organised capital grinds industry 
 as in the mill of the gods very small. No protests that 
 capital is his friend reassures the worker. Experience has 
 made him unbelieving. 
 
 Sitting at the windows of the Marina, St. Leonards, 
 watching the great ocean raging all alive with tumultuous and 
 ungovernable motion, surging and roaring, I have thought how 
 like it was to the industrial world. There is unfathomable 
 cruelty in murderous waves. Vessels, laden with anxious 
 emigrants, have been, by them, sucked down to death. As far 
 as the eye can stretch the raging ocean covers all space, 
 resembling some insane and boundless beast. Society heaves 
 with the unrest of pitiless competition more devastating than 
 that of the sea. Its remorseless billows wash away the fruits 
 of humble labour. There is no bay or cavern where property 
 lies but is guarded by capitalist or trader, whose knives gleam 
 if the indigent are seen to approach it. The co-operator is not 
 one of them. He can create wealth for himself, and foresees 
 that the rapacity and tumult of greed will be stilled, as the 
 principle of equity in industry comes to prevail.
 
 300 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Co-operation is a very different thing from Co-operation as 
 defined in dictionaries. When several men join in moving a 
 boulder, because one alone could not stir it, it is called Co- 
 operation. In this way, a bundle of sticks bound together 
 present a force of resistance which separately none could 
 pretend to, and in this sense the sticks are as much co-operators 
 as the men. But industrial Co-operation means not only a 
 union for increasing mechanical force, but for obtaining the 
 profit of the transaction, and having it equitably distributed 
 among those who do the work. It is not knowing this 
 difference which causes such confusing chatter in the highest 
 quarters in literature about " Co-operation being as old 
 as the world," and " which has been practised by every 
 people." 
 
 Gibbon Wakefield says: "Co-operation takes place when 
 several persons help each other in the same employment, as 
 when two greyhounds running together kill more hares than 
 four greyhounds running separately." * This is the nature 
 of the Co-operation chiefly known to political economists. 
 But industrial Co-operation unites not merely to kill the hares, 
 but to eat them. The greyhounds of Wakefield run down the 
 hares for their masters the new co-operative greyhounds run 
 down the hare for themselves. Industrial Co-operation is not 
 only union for creating, but for dividing profits among all who 
 have helped to make them. 
 
 Politeness, as explained by that robust master of definition, 
 Dr. Johnson, consists in giving a preference to others rather 
 than to ourselves. In this sense Co-operation may be defined 
 as the politeness of industry, for it consists in giving the total 
 of its produce equitably to those who create it. 
 
 Co-operation was, in Mr. Owen's mind, a paternal arrange- 
 ment of industry, which could be made more profitable than 
 one in which the employer considered only himself. The 
 self-managing scheme, under which working people create 
 profits and retain them among themselves, Mr. Owen did not 
 propound. His idea was to organise the world Co-operation 
 attempts the more modest task of organising the provision 
 store and the workshop. 
 
 Von Sybel defines the Communists proper as " those who 
 
 1 E. G. Wakefield, note to Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations,'' 1840.
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 301 
 
 desired to transfer every kind of property to the State." J 
 This is Continental Socialism, not English Co-operation. M. 
 De Metz founded a criminal community. He was a man of 
 wealth. Had he been a poor man he had been regarded as 
 a hired agitator. He was as mad as any other social philan- 
 thropist, for he believed in the radical goodness of little 
 scoundrels, and that honesty could be cultivated as successfully 
 as fraud, and criminals colonised into an industrial self- 
 supporting community. 
 
 A writer who has a cultivated contempt for social innova- 
 tions, but not intentionally unfair, remarks : " We have had 
 republican societies like Plato's, Fourier's, and Babeuf's ; 
 hierarchical and aristocratic like St. Simon's ; theocratic like 
 the Essenes ; despotic like the Peruvians and Jesuits ; Polyga- 
 mists like the Mormons ; material like Mr. Owen's. Some 
 recommended celibacy as the Essenes some enforce it as the 
 Shakers, some, like the Owenites, relax the marriage tie ; 2 
 some, like the Harmonists, control it ; some, like the Moravians, 
 hold it indissoluble ; some would divide the wealth of the 
 society equally among all the members ; some, as Fourier, 
 unequally. But one great idea pervades them all com- 
 munity of property more or less complete, and unreserved 
 common labour, for the common good." 3 
 
 When the Irish Land Bill was before the House of 
 Commons, May 16, 1870, Mr. Gathorne Hardy said, "It 
 was not wise to endorse by the sanction of Parliament the 
 principle that the ownership of land was a better thing than 
 the occupation. He protested against the clause as socialistic 
 and communistic. (Hear, hear.) "4 When a politician does 
 not well know what to say against an adversary's measures, 
 he calls them " socialistic," a term which, to employ Mr. 
 Grant Duff's useful phrase, is a good " working bugbear." 
 In former days, when a clerical disputant met with an un- 
 manageable argument, he said it was " atheistic," and then 
 it was taken as answered. In these days the perplexed 
 politician, seeing no answer to a principle pressed upon him, 
 
 1 Von Sybel, " Hist. French Rev.," vol. i. bk. ii. p. 249. 
 
 2 This is untrue. Mr. Owen's disciples merely advocated equal facility 
 of divorce for poor as for rich. 
 
 3 " Mistaken Aim," pp. 192 and 193, W. K. Greg. 
 * Vide Parliamentary Report.
 
 302 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 says it is " communistic." He need give no reasons, the 
 "working bugbear" clears the field of adversaries. 
 
 One thing may be taken as true, that the English, whether 
 poor or rich, are not, as a body, thieves. Now and then you 
 find some in both classes who have a predatory talent, which 
 they do not hide in a napkin. Statesmen may sleep in peace. 
 The working men will never steal knowingly, either by 
 crowbar or ballot-box. Tories and Whigs have robbed them ; 
 and I think I have seen the Radical hand with marks about 
 it, as though it had been in the people's pocket doubtless 
 in some moment of patriotic aberration. Nevertheless, the 
 common sense of common men is against peculation. 
 
 The Co-operative Magazine of 1 826 declared happiness as 
 the grand pivot on which the co-operative system turned. 
 "Happiness" was explained as "content and uninjurious 
 enjoyment, that is, enjoyment, not injurious either to one's self 
 or to any other." This, as the Americans say, rather want 
 " grit." The mind slides over it. A later advocate of some 
 mark, Dr. King, of Brighton, defined Co-operation as " the 
 unknown object which the benevolent part of mankind have 
 always been in search of for the improvement of their fellow- 
 creatures." The object of a definition is to make the thing 
 in question known ; and we are not helped by being told it 
 is the " unknown." There is, however, something dimly 
 revealed in what he says of " society," which he derived from 
 the Greek word sanus^ sound or safe, and /ieo, to call together, 
 the meaning of which was declared to be to call together 
 for safety. 1 No doubt there is sense in this. Persons do 
 require to be called together for safety ; but what they are to 
 do when so called is not defined. 
 
 A writer in the Co-operative Miscellany of 1830, signing 
 himself " One of the People," saw his way to a clearer 
 specification of the " unknown " thing. He exclaims : " What 
 is Co-operation ? some may inquire." Certainly many did make 
 the inquiry. The answer he gives is this: "Co-operation in 
 its fullest sense is the opposite of Competition ; instead of 
 competing and striving with each other to procure the 
 necessaries of life, we make common cause, we unite with 
 each other, to procure the same benefits." This is rather 
 1 Co-operative Magazine, January, 1826, p. 7.
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 303 
 
 a travelling definition, it moves about a good deal and has no 
 fixed destination. It does not disclose how the " common 
 cause " is made. A definition has light in it as soon as it 
 discloses what a thing is not, and names its contrary. We 
 learn now that Co-operation is not competition ; but is the 
 " opposite." This writer gives an explanation of the method 
 of procedure namely, that a co-operative society devotes 
 the profits of the distributive stores to productive industry and 
 the self-employment of the members of the societies. After 
 a lapse of seventy years, the greater and more important part 
 of the plan the self-employment of members is but scantily 
 realised. The educated co-operator has always borne it in 
 mind, and it remains as a tradition of Co-operation that pro- 
 duction and self-employment go together. 
 
 Mr. Thompson, of Cork, the first systematic writer on 
 Industrial Communities, never defined their object otherwise 
 than to say that " workmen should simply alter the direction 
 of their labour. Instead of working for they know not whom, 
 they were to work for each other." Such a definition could 
 only be made intelligible by details, and these Mr. Thompson 
 gave with much elaboration. As a student under Bentham, 
 Mr. Thompson was sure to mean something definite, but the 
 conditions under which men shall " work for each other," 
 the essential feature of Co-operation, he never otherwise 
 brought within the compass of a definition. But community 
 and Co-operation are distinct things. 
 
 Practically, the principle of Co-operation grew out of joint- 
 stock shopkeeping. A few persons with means supplied capital 
 for the business, with the understanding that after interest 
 was paid on their capital, the profits should be devoted to the 
 establishment of a community. 
 
 The next conception of it was that of prescribing that each 
 purchaser shauld be a member of the store, and should 
 subscribe a portion of the capital the profits, after paying 
 interest, were to be kept by the shareholders. At this point 
 Co-operation stopped eighteen years. Nobody was known to 
 have any conception how it could be improved. If every- 
 body was a shareholder, and the shareholders had all the profits, 
 nobody could have more than all, and nobody was left out 
 of the division. There was no enthusiasm under this manage-
 
 30 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 ment, and yet there was no apparent fault. In some cases 
 there was great success. Shareholders had 10 and 15 per cent, 
 for their money, which, to a member who could invest jioo, 
 was a sensible profit to him. Nevertheless custom fell off, 
 interest in the stores abated, and many were given up. If any 
 solitary cogitator proposed to divide the profits on purchases, 
 it was said, " What is the good of that ? If there are profits 
 made, they appear in the interest. You cannot increase them 
 by varying the mode of paying them." Yet all the while this 
 was the very thing that could be done. There lay concealed 
 and unseen the principle of dividing profits on purchases which 
 altered the whole future of Co-operation. We have traced the 
 idea of it to Glasgow in 1822, to Meltham Mills in 1827, 1 
 to Rochdale in 1844, whence it has spread over the earth. 
 One thing would strike most persons, that giving a profit 
 to customers would increase them. No doubt others saw 
 that under the interest on capital plan, that while the share- 
 holders who could subscribe ^100 might get ^15, the poorer 
 member who could only put in 1 obtained only 3s., yet the 
 large shareholder who receives the ^15 may not have been 
 a purchaser at all, while the poor member, if he had a family, 
 probably contributed ^50 of capital to the business, if his 
 purchases amounted to 1 per week, and the 2s. in the 
 which on the average can be returned to purchasers now 
 would give him ^5 a year, besides his 5 per cent, interest on 
 his capital. Thus it could be shown that the customer con- 
 tributed more to the profits of the store than the capitalist. 
 The purchaser, therefore, was taken into the partnership. 
 Thus the mere form of distributing profits actually increased 
 them. The interest of the purchaser revived : he became 
 a propagandist. He brought in his neighbour. Business grew, 
 profits augmented, and new vitality was infused into Co-opera- 
 tion. The vague principle that the producer of profit should 
 have the profit, took a defined form, and he got it and the 
 purchaser was henceforth included in the participation of 
 store gains. 
 
 1 Mr. Walter Sanderson, of Galashiels, informs me (1876) that the 
 principle was introduced into that town about the same time (1827) by 
 Mr. William Sanderson (founder of the Building Society there) without 
 any connection with Rochdale. Came it from Cambuslang ? Mr. Walter 
 Sanderson gives no details, but he is a responsible correspondent, and his 
 word may be taken as to the fact.
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 305 
 
 Definitions grow as the horizon of experience expands. 
 They are not inventions, but descriptions of the state of a 
 question. No man sees everything at once. Had Christ 
 foreseen the melancholy controversies over what he meant, 
 which have since saddened the world, he would have written 
 a book himself, and never have trusted the conditions of 
 salvation to the incapable constructions and vague memories 
 of illiterate followers. Foreseeing definitions, guiding Co- 
 operation at successive points, would have been a great 
 advantage, but it had to wait for them. 
 
 When it became clear that the purchaser must be taken 
 into partnership as well as the capitalist, it did not occur to 
 any one that Co-operation was not complete so long as the 
 servants of the store were left out. If profits were to be 
 shared by all who contributed to produce them, the servants 
 of the store have their claim. 
 
 The conception of the co-operative principle in 1844 had 
 assumed the following form : Co-operation is a scheme of 
 shopkeeping for the working people, where no credit is given 
 or received, where pure articles of just measure are sold at 
 market prices, and the profits accumulated for the purchasers 
 to create like advantage in the workshop. 
 
 It was not until twenty-four years later, namely, in 1868, 
 that Rochdale attempted to extend the principle of Co-operation 
 to manufactures. Their method of doing this was to divide 
 profits with the workers. Those who had discovered that 
 the interest of the purchaser was worth buying, were ready 
 to admit that the interest of the workman was also worth 
 buying. Clerks, managers, workmen, whoever in any capacity, 
 high or low, were engaged in promoting the profits, were to 
 be counted in the distribution. Twelve years more elapsed 
 before any current definition of Co-operation contained the 
 following addition : The main principle of Co-operation is 
 that in all new enterprises, whether of trades or manufacture, 
 the profits shall be distributed in equitable proportions araon^ 
 all engaged in creating it. 1 
 
 At the Social Science Congress held in Edinburgh in 1867, 
 I asked Professor Fawcett to take occasion in one of the Sections 
 to define Co-operation as he conceived it, that we might be 
 1 " Logic of Co-operation," lecture by the writer. 
 
 VOL. I. 21
 
 3 o6 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 able to quote his authority in our societies. He did so in 
 words which included labour as well as capital, in the division 
 of profits. 
 
 The most comprehensive statement of Co-operation is that 
 given by a master of definitions, and placed at the head of this 
 chapter. It occurred in the first public speech Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill was known to have made. A great Co-operative 
 Tea Party, of members of co-operative societies in London, 
 was held in the Old Crown and Anchor Hall, Strand, then 
 known as the Whittington Club. Being acquainted with 
 Mr. Mill, I solicited him to define the nature of Co-operation 
 as he conceived it, for our guidance, and he did. " It is not 
 Co-operation," he said, "where a few persons join for the 
 purpose of making a profit by which only a portion of them 
 benefit. Co-operation is where the whole of the produce 
 is divided. What is wanted is that the whole working 
 class should partake of the profits of labour." 
 
 Years elapsed before any official definition was attempted 
 of Co-operation. The Co-operative Congress at Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne (1873) agreed upon a floating definition of a co- 
 operative society, stating that "any society should be regarded 
 as co-operative which divided profits with labour, or trade, 
 or both." Prior to this, I had taken some trouble to show 
 that if the purchaser from a manufacturing society was to be 
 placed on the same footing as the purchaser from a store, 
 a similar extension of business and profits would be likely 
 to arise in the workshop which had accrued at the store ; and 
 the cost of advertising and travellers and commissions would 
 be greatly reduced. This led to a more comprehensive 
 definition of the scope of co-operative principle which was 
 thus expressed. 
 
 Co-operation is an industrial scheme for delivering the 
 public from the conspiracy of capitalists, traders or manu- 
 facturers, who would make the labourer work for the least 
 and the consumer pay the utmost, for whatever he needs of 
 money, machines, or merchandise. Co-operation effects this 
 deliverance by taking the workman and the customer into 
 partnership in every form of business it devises. 1 
 
 1 "Logic of Co-operation." Confusion arises from capital being treated 
 as a recipient of profit. There never will be clearness of view in Co-
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 307 
 
 All co-operators who have, as the Italians say, " eyes that 
 can see a buffalo in the snow," will see the policy of counting 
 the customer and the worker as an ally. Until this is done, 
 Productive Co-operation will " wriggle " in the markets of 
 competition, as Denner says in " Felix Holt," " like a worm 
 that tries to walk on its tail." Co-operation consists 
 
 1. Concert regulated by honesty, with a view to profit by 
 economy. 
 
 2. Equitable distribution of profits among all concerned in 
 creating them, whether by purchases, service in distribution, 
 or by labour, or custom in manufactures. 
 
 Dr. Elder, in his work entitled " Topics of the Day," says : 
 " The term Co-operation is restricted to organised combina- 
 tions designed to relieve them of intermediates in productive 
 industry. Co-operation is partnership in profits equitably dis- 
 tributed in proportion to the severalties of capital, 1 labour skill, 
 and management." 
 
 There is an evolution in definitions, as in other things, 
 which it is useful to trace. There is need of this, for 
 principles like 
 
 ''Truth can never be confirmed enough, 
 Though doubts did ever sleep." 
 
 The main idea that should never be absent from the mind 
 of a co-operator is that equity pays, and that the purchaser at 
 the store and the worker in the workshop, mill, or field, or 
 mine, or on the sea, should have a beneficial interest in what 
 he is doing. A principle is a sign by which a movement is 
 known, is a rule of action, and a pledge of policy to be 
 pursued. To be a man of principle is to be known as a 
 person having definite ideas, who sees his way and has chosen 
 it, while others are confused he is clear. While others go 
 round about he goes straight on. When others are in doubt 
 he knows exactly what to do. But the majority are not of 
 this quality. They see a principle for a short time and then 
 lose sight of it. Some one may point out that the new paths 
 lead to a place the very opposite of that they proposed to 
 
 operation until capital is counted as a trade charge and when paid, done 
 with. Labour by brain or hand is the sole claimant of profits. 
 
 1 Dr. Elder follows the old idea of including " capital " in the "several- 
 ties " entitled to profit. Capital is entitled to payment but not profit.
 
 3 o8 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 reach. Having no clear discernment of the nature of principle, 
 the unreflecting think one object as good as another, or better, 
 if they see immediate advantage in it. 
 
 Co-partnery is not Co-operation. A co-partnery proceeds 
 by hiring money and labour and excluding the labourer from 
 participating in the profit made. English Co-operation never 
 accepted even Louis Blanc's maxim of giving to each accord- 
 ing to his wants, and of exacting from each according to 
 his capacity. This points to the reorganisation of society. 
 English Co-operation gives nothing to a man because he wants 
 it, but because he earns it. 
 
 Where the interest of the purchaser is not recognised in the 
 store where the claim of the workman is not recognised in 
 the production there is no Co-operation ; and the assumption 
 of the name is misleading. Distributive Co-operation which 
 takes in the purchaser, and leaves out the servants of the store, 
 is partial Co-operation. Productive Co-operation, which does 
 not recognise the directors, managers, and workmen, is incom- 
 plete Co-operation. 
 
 When capital divides profits with shareholders only and as 
 such, that is joint-stockism. It does not care for workers, 
 except to use them nor appeal to their sympathies, nor enlist 
 their zeal, or character, or skill, or good will. And to do 
 the joint-stock system justice it does not ask for them. It 
 bargains for what it can get. It trusts to compelling as much 
 service as answers its purpose. Even if by arrangement all the 
 workmen are shareholders in a joint-stock company, this does 
 not alter the principle. As workmen, because of their work, 
 they get nothing. They are still, as workmen, mere instru- 
 ments of capital. As shareholders they are more likely to pro- 
 mote the welfare of their company than otherwise ; but they 
 do it as a matter of business rather than as a matter of 
 principle. Joint-stock employers often do have regard for 
 their men, and do more in many cases for their men than 
 their men would have the sense to do for themselves. But 
 all this comes in the form of a gift as a charity not as a 
 right of labour. 
 
 If workmen had capital and held shares in enterprises in 
 which they were engaged in labour, they would be merely a 
 capitalist class, studying how to to get the most by the employ-
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 309 
 
 ment of others, how early to desert work themselves, and 
 subsist upon the earnings of those to whom labour was still 
 an obligation. What Co-operation proposes is that workmen 
 should combine to manufacture and arrange to distribute profits 
 among themselves, and among all of their own order whom 
 they employ. By establishing the right of labour, as labour, 
 to be counted as capital, by dividing profits on labour, they 
 would give it dignity ; they would appeal to the skill, good- 
 will, to the utmost capacity and honest pride of a workman, 
 and have a real claim upon him in these respects. 
 
 It is quite conceivable that many working men will yet, for 
 a long time to come, prefer the present independent relation 
 of master and servant. Many a man who has the fire of the 
 savage in him, and whom civilisation has not taught how much 
 more happiness can be commanded by considering the welfare 
 of others than by considering only himself, prefers working on 
 war terms, unfettered by any obligation. He has no sympathy 
 to give, and he does not care that none is offered him. He 
 would not reciprocate it if it were. He dislikes being bound, 
 even by interest. Any binding is objectionable to him. 
 Hate, malevolence, spite, and conspiracy are not evils to him. 
 He rather likes them. His mode of action may bring evils and 
 privation upon others ; but he is not tender on these points ; 
 and if he be a man of ability in his trade he can get through 
 life pretty well while health lasts, and enjoy insolent days. 
 
 The imputations heaped upon capital arise from workmen 
 always seeing its claws when it has uncontrolled mastery. No 
 animal known to Dr. Darwin has so curvilinear a back or 
 nails so long and sharp as the capitalist cat. As the master of 
 industry unless in generous hands capital bites very sharp. 
 As the servant of industry it is the friend of the workman. 
 Nobody decries capital in itself, except men with oil in their 
 brains, which causes all their ideas to slip about, and never 
 rest upon any fact. Capital is an assistant creator. It is 
 selfish when it takes all the profits of the joint enterprise of 
 money and labour. It is capable of buying up land and 
 abruptly turning people off it it is capable of buying up 
 markets and making the people pay what it pleases ; it is 
 capable of shutting the doors of labour until men are starved 
 into working on its own terms. Capital is like fire, or steam,
 
 3 io HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 or electricity, a good friend but a bad master. Capital as a 
 servant is a helpmate and co-operator. To limit his master- 
 ship he must be subjected to definite interest. This was the 
 earliest device of co-operators, but its light has grown dim 
 in many minds, and in many undertakings has never shone 
 at all. 
 
 In Distributive Co-operation the interest of capital is counted 
 as a trade charge to be paid before profits are counted ; and 
 in Productive Co-operation the same rule should be followed. 
 
 In England we do not apply the term co-operative to busi- 
 ness in reference to the source of profit, but to the distribution 
 of the profit. In a store, profit is not divided upon the amount 
 of capital invested, but upon the amount of purchases by 
 members. The purchasers are in the place of workers they 
 cause the profits and get them, while capital, a neutral agent, 
 is paid a fixed interest and no more. 
 
 On the other hand, Productive Co-operation is an association 
 of workers who unite to obtain profit by their labour, and who 
 divide profit upon labour, just as in a store they are divided 
 upon purchases. Mr. Roswell Wisher, of Montreal, presents 
 the advantage of the principle of dividing profits upon labour 
 in a clear form. It is this : The workmen should subscribe 
 their own capital, or hire it at the rate at which it can be had 
 in the money market, according to the risk of the business in 
 which it is to be embarked : then assign to managers, foremen, 
 and workmen the salaries they can command. Out of the 
 gross earnings, wages, the hire of labour ; the hire of capital ; 
 all materials, wear and tear, and expenses of all kinds are 
 defrayed. The surplus is profit, and that profit is divided 
 upon the labour according to its value. Thus, if the profits 
 were 5 per cent., and the chief director has ^ioa week, and 
 a skilful workman ^2, the director would take ^50 of the 
 profit, and the workmen ^5. The capital, whether owned by 
 the workmen or others, would have received its agreed payment, 
 and would have no claim upon the profits of labour. 
 
 The ceaseless conflicts between capital and labour arise from 
 capital not being content with the payment of its hire. When 
 it has received interest according to its risk, and according to 
 agreement, there should be an end of its claims. Labour then 
 would regard capital as an agent which it must pay ; but when
 
 NATURE OF CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE 311 
 
 it has earned the wages of capital and paid them, labour ought 
 to be done with capital. Capital can do nothing, can earn 
 nothing, of itself; but employed by labour, the brains, and 
 industry of workmen can make it productive. Capital has no 
 brains, and makes no exertions. When capital has its interest 
 its claims end. It is capital taking the profits earned by labour 
 that produces conflict. In Co-operation labour does not con- 
 sider profit made until capital is requited for its aid. 
 
 A distinguished French co-operative writer, M. Rclus, 
 says, "Give the capitalist only one-third of the surplus profits, 
 and the worker two-thirds." Mr. Hill replies, " In countries 
 like India, wherein capital is comparatively scarce, it can and 
 will command high terms in any agreement it may make with 
 labour ; whilst in North America, where labour is scarce, labour 
 can and will command comparatively high terms in its agree- 
 ment with capital. It would seem a monstrous violation of 
 abstract principle that, whilst in order to earn fifty guineas 
 a low-class agricultural labourer must work hard for two 
 whole years, Jenny Lind should obtain such a sum for singing 
 one single song ! But so it is ; and why but that mere 
 labourers are plentiful, whilst of Jenny Linds there is but one." J 
 A Jenny Lind rate of interest must be given for it if it can- 
 not be had without, but having got that it should not come up 
 a second or third time for more. 
 
 Capitalists hired labour, paid its market price, and took all 
 profits. Co-operative labour proposes to hire capital, pay it its 
 market price, and itself take all profit. It is more reasonable 
 and better for society and progress that men should own capital 
 than that capital should own men. 
 
 1 Co-operator, September, 1S65.
 
 3 I2 
 
 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 DISTRIBUTION. THE CO-OPERATIVE STORE 
 
 " Co-operation is the true goal of our industrial progress, the appointed 
 means of rescuing the Labouring Class from dependence, dissipation, 
 prodigality, and need, and establishing it on a basis of forecast, calculation, 
 sobriety, and thrift, conducive at once to its material comfort, its intellec- 
 tual culture, and moral elevation." Horace Greeley, Founder of the 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 Shops in most countries are confined to the sale of one, or a very 
 few articles. Among artificers in metals work-rooms are called 
 "workshops." In towns where articles, and provisions in por- 
 table quantities, are sold, they are called simply "shops." Where 
 great varieties of goods are collected together for sale it is called 
 a "Store." This American name was very early applied 
 to co-operative shops, where articles of many kinds, groceries, 
 garments, feet-gear, and goods of household use, were stored for 
 sale. This is called Distributive Co-operation. The manu- 
 facture of articles for sale is called Productive Co-operation. 
 
 The earliest, humblest, and quaintest store founded in 
 England, so far as my researches have gone, is that set up by 
 the sagacious Bishop Barrington, one of George the Third's 
 Bishops, who held the see of Durham at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century. At first sight it is not a recommendation to 
 posterity to have been one of the Georgian Bishops. What 
 did Walter Savage Landor say of the Georges ? * 
 
 1 Thackeray had devoted four lectures to the four Georges when Landor 
 put their history into six lines and sent them to Mr. H. J Slack, who was 
 then editor of the Atlas newspaper, in which they first appeared : 
 
 " George the First was always reckoned 
 Vile viler George the Second, 
 And what mortal ever heard 
 Any good of George the Third ? 
 And when from earth the Fourth descended, 
 God be praised the Georges ended.''
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 313 
 
 However, Bishop Barrington was a great favourite in Durham, 
 and had fine qualities and gracious ways. When my inquiry 
 for co-operative facts appeared in the New York Tribune, a 
 correspondent, at the foot of the Alleghanies, sent me pages of 
 an old magazine, which he had carried from England long 
 years ago, with his household goods, containing, in large type, 
 an " account of a village shop at Mongewell, in the county of 
 Oxford, communicated by the Bishop of Durham." This 
 humble provision store, with its scanty stock, its tottering 
 pauper storekeeper, with his shilling a week salary, is a picture 
 of the humblest beginning any great movement ever had. No 
 doubt the Bishop was a good secular preacher. He certainly 
 was a man of business, and showed perfect knowledge of the 
 working of a store, and would make no bad manager of one in 
 these days. He describes the condition of poor people in those 
 times : their ignorance, their helplessness, their humility of 
 expectation, and the economical and moral advantages of a 
 co-operative store, as completely and briefly as they ever were 
 described. I enrich these pages with the Bishop's words : 
 
 " In the year 1794, a village shop was opened at Mongewell, 
 in Oxfordshire, for the benefit of the poor of that and three 
 small adjoining parishes. A quantity of such articles of con- 
 sumption as they use was procured from the wholesale dealers 
 as bacon, cheese, candles, soap, and salt, to be sold at prime 
 cost, and for ready money. The bacon and cheese, being 
 purchased in Gloucestershire, had the charge of carriage. This 
 plan was adopted under the apparent inconvenience of not 
 having a more proper person to sell the several commodities, 
 than an infirm old man, unable to read or write. He received 
 the articles that were wanted for the week ; and it has appeared 
 by his receipts at the close of it, that he has been correct. 
 Since the commencement to the present time, there has been 
 no reason to regret his want of scholarship : a proof how very 
 easy it must be to procure, in every village, a person equal to 
 the task. As he has parish pay, and his house-rent is discharged, 
 he is perfectly contented with his salary of one shilling per week, 
 having also the common benefit of the shop. 
 
 "As the prices of the shop articles have varied much during 
 the past year (1796), it will be easy to judge of the advantage 
 by taking them at the average, and the account will be more
 
 3H 
 
 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 simple. The price of the sale has been in the proportion stated, 
 against the prices of the shops in the neighbourhood. 
 
 " The rate of bacon purchased, has been eightpence halfpenny 
 per pound ; the carriage rather more than a farthing. It was 
 sold for ninepence farthing ; the advantage to the poor was 
 twopence three-farthings per pound. Cheese cost fourpence 
 three-farthings ; carriage more than a farthing ; sold for six- 
 pence : advantage to the poor, one penny per pound. Soap, 
 candles, and salt, sold at prime cost : the advantage on these 
 articles to the poor was one pound eleven shillings. 
 
 " There is a loss on the soap from cutting and keeping : to 
 prevent which it is laid in by small quantities. Buying the 
 salt by the bushel, almost covers the loss sustained from selling 
 it by the pound. 
 
 "The quantity of bacon sold during the year was one 
 hundred and sixty-eight score. Cheese twenty-eight hun- 
 dred weight. 
 
 Account of payments in 1796. 
 Candles, soap, and salt 
 
 Bacon 
 Cheese 
 Carriage 
 Salary 
 
 3 I l 
 
 6 
 
 120 
 
 
 
 62 9 
 
 5 
 
 7 " 
 
 3 
 
 2 12 
 
 
 
 223 14 2 
 
 " The receipts corresponded, except by fifteen shillings : 
 which arose from the poor of Mongewell having been allowed 
 their soap and candles a penny per pound under prime cost. 
 The saving to the poor was 
 
 On bacon 
 On cheese 
 On candles, &c. 
 
 34 16 8 
 
 11 *3 4 
 
 III o 
 
 48 1 o 
 
 " Hence it appears that the addition to the prime cost of 
 bacon and cheese, is equal to the loss on the hocks and the
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 315 
 
 cutting. Every other part of the flitch being sold at the same 
 price. 
 
 "Since the commencement of the present year (1797) rice 
 and coarse sugar have been introduced into the Mongewell 
 shop, with much benefit ; particularly the former (rice). 
 
 " From the above statement it is seen that, taking all the 
 articles together sold at the Mongewell shop, there was a 
 saving to the poor of 21 per cent, in the supply of several of 
 the most important articles of life. Many, in every parish, 
 would lend their assistance to carry this plan into execution, if 
 it were known that the rates would be lowered at the same 
 time that the poor were benefited. 
 
 " From the adoption of this plan, the poor will have good 
 weight, and articles of the best quality ; which, without im- 
 puting dishonesty to the country shopkeeper, will not always 
 be the case at a common shop. Where there is no power of 
 rejection, it is not probable that much regard would be paid to 
 these considerations by the seller. 
 
 "The comforts of the poor may thus be promoted, by 
 bringing within their reach the articles of life which they 
 chiefly want, of the best quality, and at the cheapest rate. 
 Their morals will also be improved by the removal of an in- 
 ducement to frequent the alehouse. The parish rates will be 
 lessened, even if the articles were sold without profit ; for the 
 labourer will be enabled to purchase clothing for his family 
 without other assistance. 
 
 " Another benefit of this measure is the preventing the poor 
 running in debt. The credit given to them adds much to the 
 sufferings they undergo from their situation. As the poor find 
 that they can procure necessaries for their families by credit, 
 they feel less scrupulous in spending part of their weekly wages 
 at the alehouse. Hence the earnings of the following week 
 are diminished, by having mis-spent their time as well as their 
 money. There are but few parishes which do not confirm the 
 truth of these observations ; and which have not been called 
 upon to redeem such goods of the poor, as the shopkeeper had 
 at length seized, to cover himself from loss, and when he had 
 no hopes of security from their labour." 
 
 It is impossible not to feel respect for the poor " infirm old " 
 storekeeper although " he could neither read nor write," his
 
 316 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 " receipts were always correct," and if he wanted "scholarship" 
 he did not want honesty. The reader will agree this is a very 
 minute and remarkable account of the Village Shop. The 
 grocers of the diocese must have been as angry at the promoters 
 of the innovatory store as they have been since. There has 
 been no Co-operative Bishop who has had more discernment 
 of the subject, has taken such trouble to establish a store, or 
 given so useful an account of it, as the Bishop of Durham. 
 
 The co-operative store which Mr. Owen established at New 
 Lanark was very rudimentary, precisely such as we have in 
 London under the name of Civil Service Stores. Knowing 
 that the workpeople as is the case everywhere with the poor 
 had to pay really high prices for very inferior articles, and could 
 never depend upon their purity or just measure, he fitted up a 
 store at New Lanark with the best provisions that could be 
 obtained and sold them to his workpeople at cost price, with 
 only such a slight addition as to pay the expenses of collecting 
 and serving the goods. Some households (managers probably) 
 with large families are said to have saved as much as ten 
 shillings a week through buying at Mr. Owen's store. After 
 a time he added to the cost and distributing price a sum for 
 educational purposes, and thus he laid the foundation of that 
 wise plan for applying a portion of profit to the education of 
 the members and their families. Mr. Owen afterwards appro- 
 priated a portion of his manufacturing profits to the improve- 
 ment of the dwellings of the workpeople, and the instruction 
 of their families. On one occasion, when his partners came 
 down from London to inspect his proceedings, they found so 
 many things to approve and so much profit made, they 
 presented him with a piece of plate. Mr. Owen had incurred 
 an expenditure of ^5,000 for new schools. They had no 
 belief that intelligence would pay. Mr. Owen was entirely of 
 the opposite conviction, and though he did not make his work- 
 people sharers in the profits of the factory, in the form of paying 
 them dividends, he made them participators in the profits by 
 the ample provision he made for their education, their profit, 
 their pleasure, and their health. 
 
 " Before completing this history I visited New Lanark, to 
 look upon the mills erected on the falls of the Clyde by Sir 
 Richard Arkwriirht and David Dale, now more than one
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 317 
 
 hundred years ago, and made famous by Robert Owen. 
 Though I had often heard him speak of what he had done there, 
 and had examined several accounts given by his son, the 
 Honourable Robert Dale Owen, I never conceived the high 
 esteem for him which I felt when I saw with my own eyes 
 what he had accomplished. I thought the schoolrooms, of 
 which so much was said, were some unused rooms in the mill 
 and were entered by a hole in the wall being, as I knew, 
 commodious, but, as I supposed, mean and tame and cheap in 
 construction. Whereas I found the schoolhouse a separate 
 structure, built of stone, vast and stately with handsome 
 portico supported by four stone pillars. There are three 
 schoolrooms on the ground floor, which will each hold 600 
 or 700 people. Above are two lecture halls, lofty and well 
 lighted ; one would hold 800 ; another, with a gallery all 
 round it, would hold 2,000 people. The reading-desk (and 
 the stairs to it) from which Mr. Owen first announced his 
 celebrated scheme for the reconstruction of the world ; the 
 handsome triangular lights, still bright, which used to hang 
 from the ceiling, and the quaint apparatus for the magic 
 lantern, are there still ; and in another building, built by him 
 for a dancing-room for the young people, are stored numerous 
 blackboards, on which are painted musical scales and countless 
 objects in various departments of nature. There are also very 
 many canvas diagrams, some of immense dimensions, which 
 are well and brightly painted, as was Mr. Owen's wont, by 
 the best artists he could procure. They must have cost him 
 a considerable sum of money. Time, neglect, and * decay's 
 effacing fingers' have rendered them but a wreck of what they 
 were, but they are still perfect enough to show the state in 
 which Object Teaching was when it was first invented. Mr. 
 Owen knew Fellenberg and Froebel, and carried out their 
 ideas with the opulent ardour with which he conceived them 
 years before they found opportunity of carrying them out 
 themselves. My purpose in mentioning these things is that 
 the South Kensington or other Museum may hear of them. 
 Most of the diagrams are capable of being restored, and are 
 numerous enough to make an exhibition in themselves, and 
 would be of great interest to the new generation of teachers 
 in any town in which they could be seen. The Messrs.
 
 318 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 Walkers, who now own the mills, and who have preserved 
 this famous collection of school furniture, may be willing 
 to transfer them to some public museum. It is now 
 (1878) nearly sixty years since they were first used, and their 
 existence has long been unknown to teachers. Dr. Lyon 
 Playfair is in America, or I would ask him to interest himself 
 about them. Probably Professor Hodgson, of Edinburgh 
 University, would he being near them, and being one who 
 cares for the traditions of education. It matters little in 
 what museum the relics in question may be placed, provided 
 they are preserved from loss." 1 
 
 On kicking away the layers of mortar which had fallen 
 from the ceiling of the great lecture hall, to make sure that 
 the floor was safe to tread upon, I found underneath diagrams 
 which had been walked over until they were in tatters. It 
 was thus I was led to inquire whether any others existed. 
 Mr. Bright had just then asked whether the ruins of the mills 
 of Manchester would one day mark the extinction of com- 
 merce, as the ruins of Tantallon Castle marked the extinction 
 of the feudal system. I thought as I walked through the 
 deserted lecture hall of New Lanark, that I was treading 
 amid the ruins of education. 
 
 So late as 1863 a store existed in London exactly in the 
 condition to which they had degenerated when their social 
 purpose had ceased, conducted merely as a joint-stock shop. 
 At that time Mr. Ebenezer Edger joined with me in en- 
 deavouring to organise a union of the scattered Co-operative 
 Societies of the Metropolis. Our circular was sent to one 
 whose address was 30, Ion Square, Hackney Road, N. Mr. 
 Chas. Clarke, the Manager, sent the following reply : " Our 
 association cannot be classed exactly amongst Co-operative 
 Stores, so we have no interest to publish our affairs, as we 
 won't have anybody in with us. As for Directors we are very 
 particular. I am sole Manager of all, and intend to keep so. 
 Any who join us can make a small fortune, but must obey my 
 instructions, but we are independent of any who wish to join, 
 we keep in working order with our present number." 
 
 Mr. Clarke did not favour us with the method whereby 
 
 1 Letter to the Times, by G. J. Holyoake, November 13, 1877, inserted 
 under the head of " Educational Archaeology."
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 319 
 
 " each member joining his store could make a small fortune." 
 Had he made it known and it proved satisfactory, so valuable 
 a manager would never have been left to waste his abilities in 
 Ion Square. 
 
 Dr. Angus Smith has stated that London has in it nineteen 
 climates. Every town has several different climates and 
 several entirely different classes of people quite distinct races, 
 if regard be had to their minds and ways of living. No one 
 supposed that the men of Rochdale would carry Co-operation 
 forward as they did. The men of Liverpool knew more about 
 it. The men of Birmingham had more of its inspiration and 
 traditions, and more advocates and leaders of Co-operation in it 
 than any other town. Manchester had more experience of it. 
 Leeds had more energy among its men. Sheffield had more 
 spirit and individual determination. Scotland had seen its founda- 
 tions laid in their midst, and two communities had been started 
 among them. Yet Rochdale, from whom no one expected 
 anything, eventually did everything. In England there is 
 more business enterprise than in Germany, yet Schulze-Delitsch 
 has overrun the land with Credit Banks for lending money to 
 persons who would put it into trade or commerce, while in 
 this country it has never entered into the heart of any human 
 being, unless it be Dr. Hardwicke, to imagine that any person 
 might profit in like manner. 1 
 
 The difference between German and English Co-operation 
 is this : the German co-operator sets up Credit Banks, the 
 English co-operator sets up Stores. The Germans lend money, 
 the Englishman makes it. The way in which it was done 
 was explained by Dr. Watts. " A well-conducted co-opera- 
 tive store can offer a workman ~]\ per cent, rise on his wages, 
 and that without a strike or struggle. I had before me in 
 March of 1861 returns from sixty-five co-operative stores, and 
 I found their average dividends showed a profit of 7^ per cent., 
 which is one shilling and sixpence in the pound. My own 
 pass-book shows that I paid on November 3rd (i860) _i to 
 become a member. I have paid nothing since, and I am now 
 (1872) credited with ^3 16s. 6d., nearly 300 per cent, on my 
 capital in a single year. Of course that arises from my 
 
 1 Since then Mr. Henry W. Wolff has introduced the system into this 
 country and published an important book on " Credit Bank*."
 
 320 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 purchases having been large in proportion to my invest- 
 ment." x 
 
 Dr. Watts pointed out how singular a thing it is that " the 
 poorest people have the most servants. The poor man has to 
 pay the importer, the wholesale dealer, the retail dealer, and 
 often the huckster. These are all his servants ; they all do 
 work for him and they have to be paid ; so the very poorest 
 man who wants to become richer has only to drop his servants." 
 
 A modern co-operative store generally obtains success by 
 five things : 
 
 i. Intelligent discontent at being compelled to buy bad 
 articles at a high price. 
 
 2. By opening a small, low-rented clean shop, and selling 
 good goods at honest measure and at average prices. 
 
 3. By increasing the cheapness of goods bought by concert 
 of custom. The more money can be taken into the market, 
 the further it goes in purchasing ; the large custom diminishes 
 the cost of management. 
 
 4. By buying from the Wholesale Society, stock can be 
 obtained from the best markets at the lowest rates and of good 
 quality. It is by continuity of quality that the prosperity of a 
 store is established. 
 
 5. By capitalising the first profits carried to the credit of 
 the members until they amount to ^5. By this means 
 the first hundred members supply a capital of ^500. 
 
 Leicester, which King Lear founded before his daughters 
 were disagreeable, and which had a Mint in the year 978, 
 did not at first supply its store with sufficient capital, the 
 members subscribing but 1 or 2 each. The result was 
 that the store was pale in the face through financial inanition. 
 If the society had a physician it would have been ordered an 
 appropriate increase of financial diet immediately. Pale-faced 
 stores are starved stores ; and when young have rickets. 
 
 The store must be fed with capital, the weekly official paper 
 of the movement must be fed with subscribers, the heads or 
 the members must be filled with ideas. If a store have not 
 sufficient capital for its business it has the ghostly look of 
 a disembodied thing. Wise members take in the Journal 
 which represents the cause of the stores and the workshop. 
 1 Lecture, Mechanics' Institution, Manchester, November, 1861.
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 321 
 
 In commencing a store, the first thing to do is for two or 
 three persons to call a meeting of those likely to join. In 
 this world two or three persons always do everything. Cer- 
 tainly, a few persons are at the bottom of every improvement, 
 initiating it and urging it on. Capital for the store is usually 
 provided by each person putting down his or her name for as 
 much as each may be able towards payment of five shares of 
 one pound each. If the store is to be a small one, a hundred 
 members subscribing a one or two-pound share each will 
 enable a beginning to be made. It is safest for the members to 
 subscribe their own capital. Interest has to be paid upon 
 borrowed money often before any profits are made. Sometimes 
 the lenders become alarmed, and call their loans in suddenly, 
 which commonly breaks up the store, or directors have to 
 become guarantees for its payment, and then the control of the 
 store necessarily falls into their hands. By commencing upon 
 the system of the intending co-operators subscribing their 
 own capital, a larger number of members are obtained, and all 
 have personal interest in the store, and give it their custom. 
 
 A secretary should be appointed, and a treasurer ; and two 
 or three nimble-footed, good-tempered, willing fellows named as 
 collectors, who shall go round to the members, and bring into 
 the treasury their subscriptions. Some place should be chosen 
 where members can pay them. Some will have the right 
 feeling, good sense, and punctuality to go, or send, and pay 
 their money unasked. But these are always few. Many will 
 think they do quite enough to subscribe, without being at 
 trouble to do it. Considering, as Dr. Isaac Watts says, that 
 " the mind is the standard of the man," it is astonishing how 
 few people " know their own minds," and how many have to 
 be fined to bring it to their recollection that they have "minds." 
 Numbers of well-meaning working men can only pay at a 
 certain time in each week, and if the collector does not catch 
 them then, they cannot pay that week at all, for their money 
 is gone. The collectors of store funds require to be men of 
 practical sense, capable of infinite trouble and patience. Un- 
 grudging praise is due to whoever undertakes this work. 
 They are the real founders of the store. 
 
 At first, wholesale dealers were shy of co-operators, and 
 would not sell to them, and the societies bought at a dis- 
 
 vol. 1. 22
 
 322 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 advantage in consequence. Before long friendly dealers 
 arose, who treated them on fair terms. Mr. Woodin, of 
 London, Mr. J. McKenzie, of Glasgow, tea merchants, 
 Messrs. Constable and Henderson, of London, wholesale 
 sugar dealers, Messrs. Ward & Co., of Leeds, provision 
 merchants, were examples of tradesmen of the kind described. 
 A wholesale agency now exists in Manchester, which keeps 
 buyers who understand what to buy and where to buy it. 
 This Wholesale Society l enables a young society to offer at 
 once to its customers goods of quality, so that the poorest 
 residents of Shored itch or Bethnal Green could buy food as 
 pure and rich as though they were purchasers at Fortnum and 
 Mason's in Piccadilly in fact, obtain West End provisions at 
 East End prices. Dishonesty among co-operators is very 
 rare, and it is sufficiently provided against by guarantees. 
 When servants are appointed, they should never be distrusted 
 on rumour, or conjecture, or hearsay, or suspicion. Nothing 
 but the clearly ascertained fact of wrong-doing should be acted 
 upon as against them. If every society took as much trouble 
 to find out whether it has good servants as it does to find out 
 whether it has bad ones, many societies would flourish that 
 now fail. As Mr. J. S. Mill said to the London co-operators, 
 whom he addressed at the Whittington Club, " Next to the 
 misfortune to a society of having bad servants, is to have good 
 servants and not to know it." Talleyrand used to say to his 
 agents, " Beware of zeal," which leads men into indiscretions. 
 But if earnestness without zeal can be got, success is certain. 
 A true co-operator has three qualities good sense, good 
 temper, and good will. Most people have one or the other 
 quality, but a true co-operator has all three : "good sense," to 
 dispose him to make the most of his means ; " good temper," 
 to enable him to associate with others; "good will," to incline 
 him to serve others, and be at trouble to serve them, and to go 
 on serving them, whether they are grateful or not in return, 
 caring only to know that he does good, and finding it a 
 sufficient reward to see that others are benefited through his 
 unsolicited, unthanked, unrequited exertions. Sooner or later 
 generally later they will be appreciated. 
 
 1 There is a branch of the Wholesale at 99, Leman Street, London ; and 
 one in Newcastle-on-Tyne.
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 323 
 
 In a properly-constituted store, the funds are disposed of 
 quarterly or half-yearly in six ways. (1) Expenses of manage- 
 ment; (2) interest due on loans; (3) 10 per cent, of the 
 value of the fixed stock, set apart to cover wear and tear ; l 
 (4) dividends on subscribed capital of the members ; (5) 
 l\ per cent, of the remaining profit to be applied to 
 educational purposes ; (6) the residue, and that only, is then 
 divided among all the persons employed and members of 
 the store in proportion to the amount of their wages and of 
 their purchases, varying from is. 6d. to 2s. 6d. in the pound. 
 
 Co-operators have known how to keep accounts. Dr. Watts, 
 being the manager of an insurance society which guarantees 
 the integrity of persons in responsible situations, bears this 
 testimony : " I have had to do with a considerable number 
 of them professionally, having had to guarantee the honesty of 
 the managers, which has enabled me, when I see any fault in 
 the accounts, to insist upon it being rectified ; and I can say 
 that the balance-sheets of co-operative societies, as a rule, 
 would be a credit to any public accountant. There is no 
 single thing hidden ; you may trace the whole of the society's 
 operations through the figures of the quarterly report." 
 Co-operators also manage their affairs very peacefully, for 
 though I, the writer, have been appointed arbitrator to many 
 societies, I have never been called upon to adjudicate upon any 
 difference, save twice in thirty years. Other arbitrators have 
 also reason to complain of want of business. 
 
 It is not pretended that Co-operation is a special solvent 
 of scoundrelism, only that it diminishes the temptations to it. 
 The dealer, the order-getter, and travelling agent of commercial 
 firms are often the corruptors of store-keepers and store- 
 managers. Some few years ago a manufacturer of a class of 
 articles in general demand in stores, endeavoured to do business 
 with them. Being a man of honesty himself, his agents made 
 no offer of commission or any gift to store-keepers, and he 
 soon found that he could not do business with them worthy 
 
 1 Mr. Willis Knowles, an experienced co-operator, says that the store 
 at Hyde finds it most profitable to extinguish the fixed stock charge as 
 early as possible making the fund set aside for depreciations large for 
 this purpose ; for whatever value is put upon unredeemed and fixed stock 
 has to receive interest which is equivalent to a rent charge. This being 
 cleared off allows a larger dividend to be paid to members.
 
 3 2 4 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 of his attention. He succeeded for a time, but ere long orders 
 fell off, or complaints were made without reason. It was 
 within my knowledge that the goods offered in this case were 
 really pure. The manufacturer, for there were not many 
 competitors in his business, knew that orders were given by 
 the stores to the firms that could not supply goods equal to his 
 in quality and cheapness. At the same time I knew of cases 
 in another part of the country where Co-operation was better 
 understood which was creditable to store-keepers. There was 
 a dealer in London known to me who would corrupt any one 
 he could for trade, and who did not care who knew it. His 
 doctrine was the common one that if he did not do it some 
 rival would an argument by which any knave might justify 
 himself in pocket-picking. This villainous logician was a man 
 of respectability, punctual in the payment of pew rents. He 
 showed me a letter he had had from Jay Giggles, a well-known 
 store-keeper in the North. Any one would think the name 
 fictitious who did not know what extraordinary names co- 
 operators have. 1 Giggles had given an order to the house in 
 question, and for reasons of his own, sent afterwards this 
 note : 
 
 "Sir, Perhaps it is right to inform you that I do not ask, 
 nor expect, nor take any gift from your traveller, to whom I 
 have given orders ; I therefore expect to have good goods sent 
 me. I may not find it out very soon if they are not what I 
 am promised by your traveller, but I shall before long make 
 the discovery, or somebody will for me, and then you will 
 have no more orders. I do not pretend to be such a very 
 virtuous person ; but my directors give me a good salary that 
 I may not be tempted to seek gifts. I am therefore bound to 
 do the best I can for them. If I do not, I shall be found out, 
 and I shall lose my place. 
 
 "Jay Giggles." 2 
 
 1 Robert Owen's first employer at Stamford was named McGuffog. 
 A manufacturer with whom he had early relations, was a Mr. Oldknow. 
 
 9 The man's name was Giggles. His mother being an admirer of the 
 Rev. Mr. Jay, of Bath, whom she had heard in her time, would have her 
 son named Jay rather an absurd union. Any one who passes to-day near 
 the Hyde Park entrance in Brompton Road may read in large letters over 
 the door, the name Tagus Shout. Never was there before such a wide- 
 mouthed name for a moneychanger. Co-operators are not alone singular 
 in their names. There was until lately a firm of auctioneers in Kensing- 
 ton trading under the name of Giddy and Giddy.
 
 DISTRIBUTIONCO-OPERATIVE STORE 325 
 
 "Ah," said the dealer in his prompt and unabashed way, 
 turning to his traveller, who was just up in town, " Here's a 
 a letter from J. G. Jay may have the Giggles, but there 
 is no giggling about Jay." 
 
 The local habits of purchasers make a considerable difference 
 in the cost of managing a store. In some towns purchasers 
 will walk great distances to buy at a store. In another place 
 members will expect four ounces of salt butter to be sent 
 them. In many towns customers will wait in numbers to be 
 served in the order of their arrival. In other towns customers 
 want to be served at once, and will go into any shop rather 
 than wait long at the counter of the store. In these cases, the 
 directors are compelled to provide more counter-men than are 
 really needed, in order that customers may be quickly served. 
 The impetuosity, or impatience, of members puts a large store 
 to expense or loss, it may be of several hundred pounds, which 
 another society in the next town saves. No grocers could 
 be persuaded that the day would come when co-operative 
 societies would raise their prices and increase their profits. 
 Yet this continually occurs ; grocers' profit, and the outside 
 public are taxed by co-operative stores. The public, however, 
 can protect themselves by joining the stores. As soon as the 
 dividends on purchases at a store rise higher than the average 
 ordinarily attained, it generally means that higher charges for 
 goods are made by the directors of the store than is charged 
 by shopkeepers in the neighbourhood. As soon as the astute 
 shopkeeper becomes aware of this, he is enabled to raise his 
 prices in proportion. All this is clear gain to him, and he 
 owes this gain to the store. 
 
 Any person engaged in promoting stores may obtain inform- 
 ation and various publications upon the subject by writing to 
 the General Secretary, Co-operative Union, Long Millgate, 
 Manchester. Among them is one by Mr. Walter Morrison, 
 entitled " Village Co-operative Stores," which contains exactly 
 those practical and familiar suggestions which everybody who 
 belongs to a co-operative store, or desires to promote the estab- 
 lishment of one, would like to have at hand to consult. 
 Besides, Mr. Morrison gives a much- wanted and practical list 
 of the " Description of the Goods," their weight, price, and 
 quantity which a store should begin with ; nor does he omit
 
 326 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 those higher considerations which make Co-operation worth 
 caring for and worth promoting. 
 
 One of the best accounts, next to that of the Bishop of 
 Durham, of the formation and career of a country store was 
 given some time ago by Lord Ducie in the Times. It is a 
 complete story of a store, and would make a perfect co-operative 
 tract. This store was commenced on Lord Ducie's property 
 at Tortworth, Gloucestershire, in March, 1867. It was con- 
 ducted on the " Northern " store plan. The villagers were all 
 in debt to the shops, from which the stores soon freed them. 
 Lord Ducie says, " The moral action of the store thus becomes 
 of great value, encouraging a virtue which precept alone has 
 long failed to promote. The shareholders at the end of the 
 first year were as follows : Labourers, 25 ; carpenters and 
 masons, 1 1 ; tradesmen, 9 ; farmers, 6 ; gardeners, 6 ; clergy, 
 gentlemen, and domestic servants, and various occupations, 16. 
 Large purchases have been made by non-shareholders, receiving 
 only half profits. The sales were : For the first quarter, 
 320; second, 349; third, 468; fourth, 511. The 
 dividends to shareholders have been, on purchases : For the 
 first quarter, 3s. 4d. ; second, 2s. 9d. ; third, 3s. 2d. ; fourth, 
 3s. 6d. For various reasons, the dividends will not in future 
 range higher than 3s. in the pound. The accounts at the end 
 of the year of three labourers who joined at the commencement 
 were : 
 
 
 
 Dividend on 
 
 
 Paid-up Capital. 
 
 Money Expended, 
 
 A 
 
 ... lOO 
 
 5 7 
 
 B 
 
 I 14 IO 
 
 2 10 
 
 C ... 
 
 19 3 
 
 3 17 
 
 Those men earn 12s. each per week ; the difference in the 
 amount of their dividends arises from the different amounts 
 expended by each. A, for instance, has a large family, some 
 of whom add to the family income ; his purchases have been 
 large, and the result is a dividend which much more than pays 
 the rent of his house and garden. These men have also 
 received 5 per cent, upon their paid-up capital. The first year 
 of the store ended, the committee ventured upon a drapery 
 branch, having expended ^230 in stocking it. They have 
 determined to pay their salesmen i\ per cent, upon sales in
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 327 
 
 lieu of a fixed salary, and have secured the whole of their time. 
 They have also decided to pay committeemen 6d. each for 
 every attendance, a humble extravagance which will contrast 
 favourably with the practice of more ambitious institutions." 
 
 Of the success of these societies a thousand anecdotes might 
 be related. In these pages the reader will meet with many. 
 One is told by Mr. Alderman Livesey, of Rochdale : " A 
 poor labouring man, owing about ^15 to his grocer for pro- 
 visions, resolved to join a co-operative society. He called upon 
 the grocer and announced his intention to leave the shop. 
 The grocer was of course indignant. The debtor, however, 
 remarked that he was quite prepared to pay his debt by such 
 weekly or monthly instalments as the judge of the county 
 court might direct, and he was willing to do it without the 
 expense and trouble of a legal process. Ultimately the grocer 
 consented to this arrangement. The man kept his promise, 
 the grocer was in due course paid off; profits accumulated in 
 the co-operative society, and he is now the owner of the 
 house he lives in, and is also the owner of another property 
 which he values very highly a county vote." 
 
 The rule of the co-operators to give no credit and take none, 
 saves them the expense of book-keeping, and enables many 
 poor men to escape the slavery of debt themselves. The 
 credit system existed in the Halifax Society until May, 1861, 
 to the extent of two-thirds of the amount of paid-up capital by 
 each member ; the confusion, trouble, waste of time, vexation, 
 and moral harm was great. When some Lord Chancellor does 
 what Lord Westbury attempted, abolishes small credits alto- 
 gether among the people, the poor will become grateful enough 
 and rich enough to put up a statue to his memory in every 
 town. 
 
 The normal condition of a workman who is not a co-operator, 
 is to be in debt. Whatever his wages are, he has a book at 
 the grocer's, and he is a fortnight behind the world. If any 
 one benevolently cleared him of debt and gave him a week's 
 money to pay his way with, he would never rest till he was in 
 debt again. The power of saving is an act of intelligence, and 
 Co-operation has imparted it. By its aid 10,000 families in 
 some great towns have acquired this profitable habit. Even if 
 members dealing at a store really paid more for an article than
 
 328 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 at a grocer's, that surplus cost, as well as the entire profit 
 made, are paid back to them. It is merely a sort of indirect 
 method for increasing their savings, which otherwise they 
 would not make. 
 
 Cobbett used to advise a young man before he married, to 
 observe how his intended wife employed herself in her own 
 family, and unless she was thrifty and a good hand at household 
 duties not to have her. Had Cobbett lived to these days he 
 would have advised young men to give the preference to a girl 
 who belonged to a co-operative store. A young woman who 
 has learned never to go into debt, but to buy with money in 
 hand and save some of the profit at the store, is literally worth 
 her weight in gold. Many a gentleman would save ^500 or 
 1,000 a year had he married a co-operative girl. In many 
 parts of the country now, no sensible young woman will marry 
 a man who does not belong to a store. 1 
 
 At the Leicester Congress, 1877, 20,000 copies of a clever 
 Httle statement were circulated, which will suffice to explain to 
 the most cursory reader what advantages a good co-operative 
 store may confer upon a town. 
 
 " 1. It makes it possible for working men to obtain pure 
 food at fair market prices ! 
 
 " 2. It teaches the advantage of cash payments over credit ! 
 
 " 3* It gi ves men a knowledge of business they could not 
 otherwise obtain ! 
 
 " 4. It enables them to carry on a trade of one hundred and 
 sixty thousand a year ! 
 
 "5. It makes them joint proprietors of freehold property 
 worth upwards of twenty thousand pounds ! 
 
 " 6. It secures them an annual net profit of sixteen thousand 
 pounds ! 
 
 "7. It raises many a man's wages two or three shillings per 
 week without a strike ! 
 
 " 8. It alleviates more distress than any other social 
 organisation ! " 2 
 
 During the year 1875-6 the Leicester Society divided 
 
 1 See " History of Halifax Society." 
 
 1 The parliamentary return of co-operative societies (1877) obtained by 
 Mr. Cowen, M.P., shows that there were upwards of 12,000 societies then.
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 329 
 
 amongst its members, as dividend, upwards of ^23,000, in 
 addition to several thousands added to the members' share 
 capital. 
 
 " Practical " people deride sentiment, but they would not be 
 able to make a penny were it not for "sentimental" people, 
 who have in perilous days bleached with their bones the 
 highway on which the " practical " man walks in selfish safety. 
 People would not save money, much as they need it, did not 
 " sentimental " people make it convenient and pleasant for 
 them. 
 
 Some societies are obliged to pass resolutions compelling 
 members to withdraw ^10,000 or ^20,000 of surplus capital 
 accumulating. It was the original intention of the founders of 
 early stores to start manufactories which might yield them 
 higher dividends than the store paid. In some towns of 
 enterprise this has been done, and building societies, boot and 
 shoe works, spinning mills, cloth factories, have been under- 
 taken. Stores have been discontinued, or remained stationary 
 because the members had no faculty for employing their 
 savings. Some societies have failed, not because they were 
 poor, but because they were too rich, and working men, whose 
 despairing complaint was that they had no capital, have lived 
 to be possessors of more capital than they knew what to do 
 with, and have been compelled to draw it out of the society 
 because they had no capacity for employing it productively. 
 Men who at one time thought it a sin to pay interest for 
 money have lived to regret that they can find no means of 
 obtaining interest for theirs. Many men who complain of 
 capitalists taking interest become the sharpest dividend hunters 
 anywhere to be found, and think of nothing else, and sacri- 
 fice education and reasonable enjoyment to the silliness of 
 needless accumulation. 
 
 Thieves did not understand their opportunity when stores 
 began. For many years gold might have been captured in 
 quantities at many co-operative stores. Between the time 
 of its accumulation and its being lodged in the bank, quantities 
 might have been stolen with impunity. I have seen a thousand 
 sovereigns lying in a bucket, under a cashier's table which a 
 clever thief might have carried away. But sharper manage- 
 ment, the purchase of good safes, the rapid transit of the cash
 
 330 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 to the bank, have taken away these chances. At one store, 
 the cashier used to carry a few hundred pounds to the cottage 
 of the treasurer at night when he thought of it ; and the 
 treasurer, the next day if he did not forget it would take it 
 to the bank. But the fact that the law had begun to prosecute 
 peculators intimidated the thieves, and the general honesty of 
 co-operators afforded security where carelessness prevailed. I 
 remember a secretary of the Oddfellows who was brought 
 before the magistrates in Manchester for stealing 4,600 
 from the funds, and he was dismissed, as the law then per- 
 mitted members of a Provident Society to rob it. Very few 
 robberies of co-operative societies have taken place since the 
 law afforded them protection. In 1875 the Hyde Society was 
 robbed of 1,100. In London, the secretary of a Co-operative 
 Printing Society made away with 2,000, and the magistrates 
 dismissed the charge, for no reason that we could discover, 
 unless he thought co-operators ought to be robbed as a 
 warning to them not to interfere with the business of shop- 
 keepers. But, as a general rule, it is not safe now to rob 
 co-operators, and it commonly proves a very unpleasant thing 
 for any charged with such offence. J. C. Farn, who recorded 
 very valuable experience he had both in the illegal and legal 
 period of Co-operation, gave instances. " I have been instru- 
 mental in placing persons in co-operative stores, and they have 
 in bygone days plundered almost with impunity. The 
 following cases which I have reported for newspapers will show 
 the state of the law as it was and is. The deciding magistrates 
 were Mr. Trafford at Salford, and Mr. Walker at Manchester : 
 Applicant : We want a summons. Mr. Trafford : What for ? 
 To compel the trustees of a co-operative society to divide 
 the money they have among the shareholders. Mr. Trafford : 
 Was the society enrolled ? No. Did you take security from 
 those who held the property on the basis of an individual 
 transaction ? No. I can't help you, and I would not if I 
 could. You first form an illegal society, you bungle in the 
 management, and then you want me to help you out of the 
 mess ; and, as though this was not enough, you let the Statute 
 of Limitations cover everything. No summons can be 
 granted.' The second case was as follows : This man, your 
 worship, is charged with embezzling the funds of a co-operative
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 331 
 
 society. Mr. Walker : Is it enrolled ? Yes. Where is a 
 copy of the enrolment ? Here. Very well. Who is here 
 authorised by the society to prosecute ? I am, your honour, 
 said a person in court. Go on. He did go on, and the man 
 was committed. So much for co-operative law in 1853 and 
 1863." 
 
 Stores are in some cases dreary places, and there is often 
 more pleasure in looking into a well-arranged shop window 
 than into a store-window. The taste and ingenuity with 
 which shop-windows are set out certainly give life and interest 
 to the streets. The streets of some cities, which are now 
 brilliant with every art, product, and industry, would look 
 like a prolonged poorhouse, if they were filled with Civil 
 Service and ordinary co-operative stores. The act of 
 purchasing is in itself a pleasure. The dainty association 
 under which a beautiful thing is first seen adds to the delight 
 of possessing it, and the delight is worth paying for. So long 
 as taste and art are unextinguished, the higher class of shop- 
 keeping will endure. The lower class of shops, of cleanliness, 
 simplicity, and articles of honest make, have always been 
 frequented with pleasure and always will. The purchaser of 
 prepared food feels under a personal obligation to the vendor 
 who sells him what is savoury and cleanly made, and what he 
 can eat without misgiving. Mere vulgar shopkeeping, which 
 ministers only to coarseness and cheapness, which lowers the 
 taste of every purchaser, or prevents him acquiring any, and 
 furnishes a means of selling articles which ought never to be 
 made, is but a demoralising business. Such shops were well 
 superseded by real co-operative stores. Co-operative stores 
 improve taste so far as honesty and quality go, but its humble 
 members cannot be all expected to have simple and true taste, 
 which might exist among the poor in degree as well as 
 among the rich. It is seen in the jewels of an Italian peasant, 
 in the dress of a French girl, and in the homes and handi- 
 crafts of working people of many nations. Lectures upon 
 the art of choosing products, why they should be selected 
 in preference to others, in what state consumed, or worn, 
 will no doubt be one day fully associated with co-operative 
 stores. 
 
 The Corn Society's New Mill, Weir Street, Rochdale,
 
 332 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 according to the engraving which represents it, which I 
 published at the Fleet Street House, twenty or more years ago 
 is the most melancholy mill that ever made a dividend. Dark, 
 thick, murky clouds surround it, and the sky-line is as grim as 
 the ridges of a coffin. The white glass of the plain front meets 
 the eye like the ghost of a disembodied mill. A dreary 
 waggon, carrying bags of corn, guided by drivers that look like 
 mutes, is making its way through a cold Siberian defile. The 
 builder might have made it pleasant to the eye, with as little 
 expense as he made it ugly. But in those days nobody thought 
 of comeliness, seemliness, or pleasantness in structures, in 
 which men would work all their lives. The really pleasant 
 part about the corn mill was in the minds of the gallant co- 
 operators who set it going, and kept it going. But grimness 
 is gradually changing for the better. Some of the Oldham 
 mills put up under co-operative inspiration are places of some 
 taste, and in some cases of architectural beauty, with towers 
 making a cheerful sky-line without, and spacious windows 
 making the workrooms lightsome within. The old bare- 
 bones view of economy is dying out. It has come to be 
 perceived that it is ugliness which is dear, and beauty which 
 is cheap. 
 
 A few years ago there appeared in Reynolds' Newspaper a 
 series of letters signed " Unitas," advising the formation of a 
 "National Industrial Provident Society," of which, when the 
 prospectuses appeared, William Watkins was named as the 
 secretary. The object appeared to be to establish co-operative 
 stores, to retain the profits due to the members, and convert 
 them into paid-up premiums in self-devised insurance societies, 
 guaranteeing endowments, superannuation allowances, and 
 other benefits. The plan was ingenious and attractive, and no 
 doubt might be worked as a new feature of co-operation, which 
 would spread the system in many quarters. The idea of 
 persons being able to provide payments in sickness, or loss of 
 employment ; and, if the fund to their credit was not exhausted 
 in this way, to secure a sum at death, or a fixed income at a 
 certain age, by simply buying their provisions at a certain store, 
 is both feasible and alluring. This scheme made great 
 progress in Wales. I felt bound to oppose it, but with con- 
 siderable regret. Its frustration was ascribed to me, and I was
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 333 
 
 threatened with an action for libel on the part of the proprietor 
 of the paper in which the scheme originated. The plan 
 required to be conducted by persons of known character and 
 substance of the nature of security, and business capacity. If 
 it succeeded to any extent, the profits of the members would 
 be in possession of a comparatively unknown committee of 
 men living in the metropolis. In their hands also would be 
 vested the property of all these stores. The provisioning of 
 these stores from a central agency would be entirely under 
 their control, and the rates of charges, the quality of provisions 
 and the funds would be practically unchecked by the subscribers. 
 At the same time there is no doubt that in the hands of known, 
 responsible, and able men of commercial resource and business 
 organisation, a comprehensive scheme of this kind of Co- 
 operative Insurance would have great popularity, great success, 
 and do a great amount of good, and make Co-operation a 
 matter of household interest in a way not yet thought of by 
 the great body of co-operators. 
 
 Since Co-operation means that everybody concerned has an 
 interest in doing what he ought to do, the directors of the 
 store, the secretary, the manager of it, all persons engaged in 
 serving it, should have an interest in performing their duties, 
 as well as they were able. It is not good for business when no 
 one has a permanent motive for service and civility. If few 
 persons come to a counter, the better it is for the shopman, 
 who has no interest in them. He will repel or neglect all he 
 can. A shopman having an intelligent interest in the 
 purchasers, and friendly to them, makes custom at the store a 
 personal pleasure as well as profit. For all to be respectful 
 and pleasant to each other is no mean part of the art of 
 association which co-operators have to cultivate. Personal 
 courtesy, which is never neglectful, never inconsiderate, diffuses 
 more pleasure through the life of a town than the splendour of 
 wealth, or the glory of pageants. They are seen but for an 
 hour, while the civilities and kindnesses of daily intercourse 
 fill up the larger life, and convert its monotony into 
 gladness. 
 
 The earlier stores were a sort of Board School of co-operators. 
 Co-operative education began there ; and as the majority of all 
 co-operators were themselves or their families in daily inter-
 
 334 HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 course with the store, that was the place where useful informa- 
 tion was diffused, and the greatest number of good impressions 
 given. That is where co-operative literature can be sold, 
 where news of all that concerns members can be posted up, 
 that is where the stranger looks in to see what is going on. 
 Everything should be clean there, and the brass work bright, 
 and every article that can be shown, without deterioration, dis- 
 played with taste. The pleasure of seeing and selecting is half 
 the pleasure of buying. Knowledge of the nature and 
 varieties of pure provisions, taste in colours, patterns and 
 texture of garments is a part of education in man or woman, 
 and shows the quality of their individual character. Wise 
 shopmen, therefore, who understand what business service 
 means, and who have interest in its success, are as important 
 agents in their places as directors or managers. Servers should 
 be carefully chosen, treated well, and have a clear interest in 
 the success and popularity of the store. It is in their power to 
 make the store repellent or popular. Those who hesitate to 
 give them good wages and a dividend upon them, the same as 
 that accruing to purchasers, do not understand what may be 
 got out of good servants. Those who render service in Co- 
 operation have influence. The server is in a position of equality. 
 I purposely write Server instead of Servant, because servant is 
 understood to imply meniality ; while a server is one who 
 obliges. 
 
 Societies do not always consider sufficiently the qualities of 
 those whom they appoint directors. They often elect those who 
 talk well instead of those who think well. Sometimes a person 
 coarse-minded, harsh and abrupt, unceremonious in dealing 
 with officers of the store under him, will harden them into 
 indifference to the welfare of the store, and be unpleasant to 
 purchasers. A member of fluency and ambition will be very 
 flattering in quarterly meetings, and win repute for most 
 agreeable qualities until he gets an appointment, who has 
 himself no sense of personal courtesy, and will be very offensive 
 to others over whom he has power. Courtesy, where a man 
 has his own way, and to all who can help him to it, may co- 
 exist in the same person who is at the same time insolent to 
 any who have independence of spirit, and who may withstand 
 him. There never was a tyrant deservedly execrated by a
 
 DISTRIBUTION. CO-OPERATIVE STORE 335 
 
 nation who had not a crowd of followers ready to testify to 
 his humanity and amiability. Tennyson in his drama, warns 
 Harold how he should comport himself towards the Duke of 
 Normandy, in whose power he is, and who is only gracious to 
 those who lend themselves to his ends. 
 
 " Obey him, speak him fair, 
 For he is only debonair to those 
 That follow where he leads, but stark as death 
 To those that cross him." l 
 
 x " Harold," by Alfred Tennyson. 
 
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