At the Co-operative Congress held in Gloucester, 1879, a number of delegates went down to see the gaol. When they arrived before it, Mr. Abraham Greenwood, of Rochdale, exclaimed, "Take off your hats, lads! That's where Holyoake was imprisoned." They did so. That incident—when it was related to me—impressed me more than anything else connected with Co-operation. I did not suppose those tragical six months in that gaol were in the minds of co-operators, or that any one had respect for them.
The chapter, "Things which went as they Would," shows that serving co-operators had its inconveniences, but there were compensatory incidents which I recount with pleasure. One was their contribution to the Annuity of 1876, which Mr. Hughes himself commended to them at the London Congress. It was owing to Major Evans Bell and Mr. Walter Morrison that the project was successful.
The other occurred at the Doncaster Congress, 1903. In my absence a resolution had been passed thanking me for services I had rendered in Ten Letters in Defence of Co-operation. When I rose to make acknowledgment, all the large audience stood up. It was the first time I had ever been so received anywhere, showing that services which seemed un-noted at the time, lived in remembrance.
Here I may cite a letter from Wendell Phillips. Of the great American Abolitionists, Phillips, with his fine presence and intrepid eloquence, was regarded as the "noblest Roman of them all." Theodore Parker, he described to me as the Jupiter of the pulpit; and Russell Lowell has drawn Lloyd Garrison, in the famous verse—
"In a dark room, unfriended and unseen,
Toiled o'er his types, a poor unlearn'd young man.
The place was low, unfurnitured and mean,
But there the freedom of a race began."
I corresponded with them in their heroic days. It is one of the letters of Phillips to me I quote here:—
"Boston,