CO-OPERATION AS WE KNOW IT.
When or where Co-operation, in the sense in which the word is used to-day, first came into being there is no means of knowing. Mr Maxwell, in his “History of Co-operation in Scotland,” tells the story of the old society originated by the weavers of Fenwick one hundred and fifty years ago, before Robert Owen was born; but, although this is the oldest Co-operative society of which any record remains, it by no means follows that others did not exist even earlier. Indeed, Mr Maxwell himself mentions that traditions of other old societies exist in various parts of the country. Of these, no records remain. It is only ten years since there vanished from the ken of the people of Govan a society which kept proudly painted over its door a record of the fact that it was established in 1777—eight years later than Fenwick. There still exists in Glasgow a society which dates back to the first year of the nineteenth century, and the Lennoxtown Society celebrated its centenary seven years ago. All over Scotland there exist societies which are nearing a century of life, and Mr Maxwell has rescued from oblivion the names, and sometimes part of the records, of others which long ago disappeared.
In their practice these old-time societies differed in material points from the practice which takes its name from the Lancashire weaving town where it originated—Rochdale—but the spirit which inspired those pioneers and the broad principles of self-help in Co-operation under which they worked, are the spirit and principles of the Co-operators of to-day. They were, in fact, the spirit and principles which combine to make progress possible, and in the absence of which come stagnation and decay.