The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-06-04 00:00:00

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SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1887.

COMMERCE AND CO-OPERATION.

THE improvement in British commerce
manifested at the close of 1886, and the
indications of its continuity, justified and
encouraged those who confidently expected
a resival of activity in trade during the
current year. They are disappointed. We
have reached June, and when we look back
upon what has been done in counting horse
and mart since 1887 set in, we find neither
lcap nor bound in any one branch of com-
mercial progress. The books of the business
transactions of the four first months of the
year have been balanced and audited, and
we find that we can claim nothing more
than a 'slow expansion for the volume of
British trade. If the optimist expectations
of the sanguine have not been realised,
there is, however, good ground for satisfac-
tion that we have made perceptible move-
ment ahead: Besides importing an increase
of foreign articles of food and drink, pro-
cured presumably at less cost than we our-
selves could produce their substitutes—.a
state of things which suggests to the philo-
sophic mind the necessity for national ex-
amination and enquiry—and we have largely
!laded to our importation of raw material
for feeding our British manufactures. This,
taken in connection with improving totals
in the bulk of traffic carried by the railway
companies, shows that we are still moving
in the right direction; and if political tur
moils can be kept under on the Continent
there is no reason to fear that the revival of
trade —gradual as it is will be retarded.
So much for actualities. The relative
question of co-operation has been pro-
minently before the public this week. At
the Carisle Congress, Mr. G. J. Holyoake—
an old hand .at the discussion of all things
pertaining to co-operatiou, he having for 50
years past been its advocate and exponent—
gave, by way of inaugural address, a very
interesting and pardonably enthusiastic
review of the rise, progress, and present
position of the co-operative movement; and
Sir Wilfrid Lawson and others, more or less
practical, have contributed since their shares
to the elucidation of the problems involved.
Mr. Holyoake 'surveyed the half century
past, and drew two pictures, one of the
workman of to-day----a man with a voice and
with a power, prosperous and well-regarded,
an important factor in the community; the
other of the poor, despised, neglected, ignor-
ant, insignificant toiler of fifty years ago,
when
.the Corn Laws ground him down, and
food was almost too dear for him to
obtain, when his wife and children were
half-starved and huddled in unsani'ary
hovels. All this Mr. Holyoake had seen and
remembered; he and others had worked for
the newer and better state of things which
to-day obtains. But he is inclined, as a co-
operative enthusiast, zo give all the credit of
this desirable transformation to the meve-
ment of which he is chief champion. In a
some he is right. Working men and women
have co-operated, and the State has helped
them sometimes, and sometimes forced them,
when they were unwilling, to co-operate in
many things which have been productive of
incalculable good. The fifty yea: sof the
Victorian reign have metan-iorphisd the
downtrodden clay labourer, with to thought
beyond the day's requirements, no bright
hope ahcad, into what he is to-day—intelli-
gent, well-clad, comfortably lion ed, happy
if he will. Education and improved tone in
public morality, the march of political free-
dom, alai all the mighty machinery of re-
form of that higher and better sod which
knows no bond of party, have brought about
this change, for which good men and women
have been thinking anCl• working all the
while. Co-operation is one of the agencies
which have worked for the general good,
and the strides of the movement, when and
where it has 133ete wisely and well managed,
have certainly been most gigantic and such
as to excuse the eulogies and misleading
enthusiasm of those who have been identi-
fied with it. • It has not always been a suc-
cess, it has not ever been productive of un-
mixed hood, but on the whole the effect of
eo-opsration upon the community has proved
most beneficial. Where bad management
prevai el evil has been temporarily
wr„ught, but demand and the competition
of supply have choked out the weak and
-wasteful in the end, and so the survival of
the fittest has adjusted matters. In many
ef the northern towns and elsewhere the co-
op:rative movement got good hold in its
early days, and went on sound and just prin-
ciples, w hieli have ever since been ably ap-
plied, and prosperity has been the result,
Labour has been united in a common aim,
aI!(1 every 'ilea sof increasing he produc-
tive powers of lsbour has been itti;ie‘i to the
end of securing the profit to l.the producer.
After the labourer has lived well on the
ga.ns of his toil, the surplus profits have
been invested in increasing the value of
manufacturing plant and property, and the
labourer has become a capitalist, and takes
his stand also in the Ns orld's market as a
sel,ing.manufacturer, and that with success.
The co-operative sy stem whieli has enabled
this to be broitglit about is highly commend-
Kele in that it has called forth the energies
and industi y of the woilinian to their fullest
ea tent, given him the stimulus of selfish-
is .S to spar him on to exertion, to school
bin io ihriiit to make bini retain to attain