FEDERATED CO-OPERATION IN THE NORTH.
ON Whitsun Eve, in a new-built warehouse, seven stories high, in Balloon Street, Manchester, there were gathered together, first at dinner, and then at a brief meeting, with speeches limited to fifteen minutes each, the representatives of a federation such as the world has assuredly never yet seen. Some 80,000 men, chiefly of Lancashire and Yorkshire, but in company with others from Cheshire and Derbyshire, from Leicester and Durham, from Cumberland and South Wales, united in over 200 societies, were there through their delegates and officers, 400 or so in number,—keen, shrewd men, represented by the keenest and shrewdest among them ; members all, beyond a handful of guests, of the working and smaller middle-class of our country. And the writer of these lines can truly say that beyond all question, so many thoughtful, intelligent countenances it was never his lot to behold assembled together,— very few, indeed, possessing the beauty of outward form, some, indeed, conspicuous through its absence, but most, perhaps, offering that individuality of outline which makes a face a character, and many that subtle play of lines, the true painter's delight, which are the very handwriting of thought and feeling upon the outer man. Indeed, the sight recalled to him by contrast with singular vividness a gathering, unique also of its kind, which he had once beheld in Manchester itself,—in the year 1811, if he remembers right,—a Conference on the Corn Laws of ministers of all denominations, called together by the Anti-Corn-Law League, and which, on the contrary, has fixed indelibly in his mind the remembrance of the stupidestlooking set of men he ever saw together in one place.
But in what quality were these 400 men gathered together? Well,—in what many persons would consider a very low, sordid quality ; as a partnership of tea-dealers, grocers, tallowchandlers, provision-merchants, but of which each member is no mere individual human unit, but a collective one ; a cooperative store of co-operative stores, whose capital is contributed by co-operative societies only, and by each in proportion to the number of its members ; with none but co-operative societies for customers, amongst whom the profit,—which it is not the object of the federation to make a high one,—is distributed in proportion to their dealings. In the course of five years of existence, the "North of England Co-Operative Wholesale Society " has reached a business of now half a million a year ; has bdilt for itself, on its own land, at a cost of £9,000, the warehouse in which the gathering took place,—massy, substantial, airy, and well lighted, though without pretensions to artistic beauty ; has tyro branches in Ireland ; and does all this,—hear, 0 ye Chancellors of the
Exchequer, past, present, and future!—at a cost, including interest of capital, of 1i per cent.
Now, the main facts above stated indicate a most important economic truth,—the incompetency of the class hitherto engaged in distribution to fulfil its own function, at all events in this country. Where are the 200 and odd individual grocers, tallow-chandlers, buttermen who have established their own wholesale buying society and warehouse ? Who expects them to do so ? Who does not know that if they attempted such a thing they could never hold together three yearn, let alone five, even though puffed to the skies by the press ? And who does not feel that if they did so their monopoly would be little likely to be one for the benefit of the public ? that it would offer no guarantee to the consumer against adulteration, against any species of fraud and falsehood on the part of the distributor ? Yet through the simple might of a fittin' organization of effort, directed by men who have entered upon the work as upon a duty,—who live, and more than one of whom has died, or is dying, for it,-80,000 men have done that which the 200 have failed to do ; and every extension of their business is a benefit not only to the 80,000 and their families, but to every one who deals with them. Human fellowship, rightly practised, has proved stronger than individual self-interest. The consuming masses, hitherto preyed upon by a swarm of distributors, most of them superfluous or dishonest, have learnt, in at least a few departments of trade, whilst securing themselves against adulteration, false weights, and false measures, how to reduce distribution to its minimum. Perhaps, indeed, in a pecuniary sense, they have gone too far already on this tack, in many cases creating much ill-feeling, and almost palliating dishonesty, by paring down to the quick all salaries. They have yet to learn that every form of labour should have its full price.
But the interest of the gathering on Whitsun Eve lay in this, that it was no mere glorification of past success,— no "rest-and-be-thankful" wayside halt. Speaker after speaker,—and none more earnestly than the Chairman of the meeting and President of the society, Mr. Abraham Greenwood (a man whose face calls for the hand of a Rembrandt to fix it on canvas),—urged on their hearers that the occasion of their meeting must be deemed a beginning, and not an end ; that the possession on their own land of their own warehouse, with its steam-engine, hoist, and all other useful appliances, must be only the starting-point for new efforts ; that, as their present achievement had been deemed impossible to realize fifteen years ago, so must many things be achieved which seem impossible now. It is indeed very true that for some time co-operation in the North seems to have been settling, as it were, on its lees. It has been literally too successful, attracting to itself at the present clay, through the mere love of gain, men who know nothing of its struggles, and understand nothing of its principles, and who are apt to push out of the way for a time the veterans of the cause, until some great emergency arises which recalls them necessarily to the front. In the smaller villages indeed it is said that,—especially in the present depreciated condition of mill property,—the Co-Operative Store, with its £5 per cent. on capital, is literally the only safe investment, and its difficulty is rather how not to take capital than how to get it. The practice is extending of refusing or paying off all nonconsuming shareholders. Other bodies go further still, and actually return capital in large masses to their shareholders. The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers offer the most prominent instance of this strange practice. They have lately returned beyond all question. some £20,000 of capital ; whilst it is contended that in one shape or other their repayments of capital have amounted to between £60,000 and £70,000. Thus, through a judicious organization of their consumption, the working-classes of our manufacturing counties find themselves literally in the position of commanding more capital than they know what to do with,—surely one of the most curious facts in economic history, though paralleled by the experience of the German Associated Credit Banks. Another odd feature in these transactions is the quasi-constitutional sanctity which the figure of £5 per cent. interest on share capital seems to have assumed in the eyes of our working folk. If capital, as such, does not make £5 per cent. in the market, there is surely no reason why it should be allowed that rate, and before returning share capital out-and-out, the simplest thing would have seemed to be to offer a lower rate of interest, for it. Yet, for some inscrutable reason, the "Pioneers" rejected a proposal to lower the rate of interest on their share capital, whilst adopting that of returning the capital itself.
Co-operation has evidently not yet mastered the principles of banking. Meanwhile, the avowal of incompetency implied in such proceedings goes to the heart of the old leaders of Co-Operation amongst the working-class, and hence their anxiousness to spur on their associates to fresh exertions. And though the audience on Whitsun Eve was, it may be said, one beyond the reach of enthusiasm, there is little doubt that in many a mind seeds will have been sown which will bear fruit in ways at present unexpected. New views will have opened before men, picked men from out of some of our best counties, of the possibilities of self-help through fellow-work, of the essential mutuality between the two. They know what they have done ; when they once clearly see what they have to do, there is no fear of their not doing it. If there was one thing more remarkable in the gathering than the general thoughtfulness of countenance in those present, it was the quiet dignity and selfpossession in all. A platform and a salmon or two might be reserved for the guests, including the Conservative M.P. for Manchester, and a worthy local alderman, full of child-like faith in " the recognized principles of political economy " (which are they ?), but the meeting was as of equals with equals. Mr. Hugh Birley, as much as every speaker who followed him, knew perfectly well that he could not teach these men their business, and they knew as well that they had not to learn it from him or from any other of the (presumed) ornamental human appendages for the nonce of the platform.
One point, it may be observed, is now greatly engaging the minds of co-operators in the North,—nothing less than the land laws. Not that at present they have any anxiety of mind about primogeniture or entails ; but they are everywhere wanting to buy land for their places of business,—sometimes for a farm,—oftener still to build cottages as an employment for their surplus capital, and they find themselves hampered at every turn with difficulties arising out of the chaotic state of the law, and saddled with expenses which appear to them out of all proportion to any scale of cost to which they have been hitherto accustomed in their transactions. At a forthcoming " Co-Operative Congress," convoked in London for the 31st May and following days, it is probable that this subject is one of those which are likely to be most keenly discussed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire delegates, together with certain anomalies which appear to be of growing frequency in the registration of Industrial and Provident Societies. It would be curious if the first determined systematic effort to reduce our law of real property to precision and simplicity should come from the working-men in the North, associated together as traders.
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