The example of the Rochdale Pioneers has exercised a powerful influence on working-men throughout the northern counties of England. There is scarcely a town or village but has a co-operative institution of one kind or another. These societies have promoted habits of saving, of thrift, and of temperance. They have given the people an interest in money matters, and enabled them to lay out their earnings to the best advantage. They have also given the working people some knowledge of business; for the whole of their concerns are managed by committees selected at the general meetings of the members.
One of the most flourishing co-operative societies is that established at Over Darwen. The society has erected a row of handsome buildings in the centre of the town. The shops for the sale of provisions, groceries, clothing, and other necessaries, occupy the lower story. Over the shops are the library, reading rooms, and class rooms, which are open to the members and their families. The third story consists of a large public hall, which is used for lectures, concerts, and dances. There are six branches of the society established in different parts of the town. A large amount of business is done, and the profits are very considerable. These are divided amongst the members, in proportion to the purchases made by them. The profits are for the most part re-invested in joint-stock paper-mills, cotton-mills, and collieries, in the neighbourhood of Darwen. One of the most praiseworthy features of the society is the provision made for the free education of the members and their families. Two and a half per cent. of the profits are appropriated for the purpose. While inspecting the institution a few months ago, we were informed that the Science classes were so efficiently conducted, that one of the pupils had just obtained a Government Scholarship of fifty pounds a year, for three years, including free instruction at the School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London, with a free use of the laboratories during that period. There are also two other co-operative institutions in the same place; and we were informed that the working people of Darwen are, for the most part, hard-working, sober, and thrifty.
The example has also spread into Scotland and the south of England. At Northampton, a co-operative society exists for the purpose of buying and selling leather, and also for the manufacture of boots and shoes. At Padiham and other places in Lancashire, co-operative cotton-mills have been established. The Manchester and Salford Equitable Co-operative Society "combine the securities and facilities of a bank with the profits of a trade." But the business by which they mostly thrive, is by the purchase and sale of food, provisions, groceries, draperies, and other articles, with the exception of intoxicating liquors.
The sole secret of their success consists in "ready money." They give no credit. Everything is done for cash; the profit of the trade being divided amongst the members. Every business man knows that cash payment is the soundest method of conducting business. The Rochdale Pioneers having discovered the secret, have spread it amongst their class. In their "advice to members of this and other societies," they say: "Look well after money matters. Buy your goods as much as possible in the first markets; or if you have the produce of your industry to sell, contrive, if possible, to sell it in the last. Never depart from the principle of buying and selling for ready money. Beware of long reckonings." In short, the co-operative societies became tradesmen on a large scale; and, besides the pureness of the food sold, their profit consisted in the discount for cash payments, which was divided amongst the members.
Land and Building Societies constitute another form of co-operation. These are chiefly supported by the minor middle-class men, but also to a considerable extent by the skilled and thrifty working-class men. By their means portions of land are bought, and dwelling-houses are built. By means of a building society, a person who desires to possess a house enters the society as a member, and instead of paying his rent to the landlord, pays his subscriptions and interest to a committee of his friends; and in course of time, when his subscriptions are paid up, the house is purchased, and conveyed to him by the society. The building-society is thus a savings bank, where money accumulates for a certain purpose. But even those who do not purchase a house, receive a dividend and bonus on their shares, which sometimes amounts to a considerable sum.
The accumulation of property has the effect which it always has upon thrifty men; it makes them steady, sober, and diligent. It weans them from revolutionary notions, and makes them conservative. When workmen, by their industry and frugality, have secured their own independence, they will cease to regard the sight of others' well-being as a wrong inflicted on themselves; and it will no longer be possible to make political capital out of their imaginary woes.
It has been said that Freehold Land Societies, which were established for political objects, had the effect of weaning men from political reform. They were first started in Birmingham, for the purpose of enabling men to buy land, and divide it into forty-shilling freeholds, so that the owners might become electors and vote against the corn-laws. The corn-laws have been done away with; but the holders of freehold land still exist, though many of them have ceased to be politicians. "Mr. Arthur Ryland informs me," said Mr. Holyoake, in a recent paper on Building Societies, "that in Birmingham, numbers of persons under the influence of these societies have forsaken patriotism for profits. And I know both co-operators and Chartists who were loud-mouthed for social and political reform, who now care no more for it than a Whig government; and decline to attend a public meeting on a fine night, while they would crawl like the serpent in Eden, through a gutter in a storm, after a good security. They have tasted land, and the gravel has got into their souls."
"Yet to many others," he adds, "these societies have taught a healthy frugality they never else would have known; and enabled many an industrious son to take to his home his poor old father—who expected and dreaded to die in the workhouse—and set him down to smoke his pipe in the sunshine in the garden, of which the land and the house belonged to his child."[1]
[Footnote 1: Paper read at York Meeting of the National Society for
Promoting Social Science, 26th Sept. 1864.]
The Leeds Permanent Building Society, which has furnished healthy tenements for about two hundred families, sets forth the following recommendations of the influence which it has exercised amongst the working classes of that town: "It is truly cheering to hear the members themselves, at occasional meetings tell how, from small savings hitherto deemed too little for active application, they began to invest in the society: then to build or buy; then to advance in life, and come to competence, from extending their savings in this manner…. The provident habits and knowledge thus induced are most beneficial to the members. And the result is, that the careless become thoughtful, and, on saving, become orderly, respectable, propertied, and in every way better citizens, neighbours, and more worthy and comfortable. The employment of money in this useful direction encourages trade, advances prices and wages, comforts the working classes, and at the same time provides the means of home enjoyments, without which such advances would be comparatively useless, and certainly uncertain."[1]