The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-05-03
Cooperation a11d the High Cost of L;v;ag

children poppy juice to luli the tots while they worked
 Such conditions as these-the fruit of private greed-it was that led to the attempted emancipation of the workers by means of cooperative trading. Rob- ert Owen. Cobbett and Thomas Hughes the author of Tom Brown at Oxford were prominent in the movement, but the shores of commerce were strewn with the wreckage of cooperative societies that had failed when, in April 1S44, 2s working men, weavers all, who called themselves the Rochdale Equitable Pio- neers, and had a combined capital of just $40, set up a small cooperative shop in the obscure Lancashire town where they lived, and from which their epoch-making enterprise took it's name.
 Today these men whose tiny initial cap ital was painfully collected by subscrip- tions of four cents, have their monument in the Wholesale Cooperative Society of Great Britain, assuredly one of the in- oustrial triumphs of the age, and in which the cooperative movement the world over sees it's apotheosis. This CO., lossals organization. which gives employ ment under conditions which are de- scribed as ideal" to over p, 600 persons, has palatial headquarters in both Lon- don and Manchester, the city of it's birth. as well as over 60 factories and other centers of production.
 It registers sales of over S150,0 GOO yearly and supplies with it's products over 126O retail cooperative societies repre- senting a membership of 2.272, ,4s6 persons. The ships it owns ply on many waters, 1t runs flour mills, woolen mills, to- bacco works, weaving sheds, soap works, flannel mills, print works, biscuit works, boot factories and fruit farms, and it's total of sales since It's creation. represent the huge total of e46S, ,556, 784.
 Small wonder that the pioneers of Roch- dale are all but deified in the ima gination of the disciples of co-operation-the state within state, 1t has been called There seems. by the bye, to have been no master mind among them, though the nainss of Abraham Greenwood. Will Ham Cooper and Charles Howarth. their constitution maker, stand out as among those who later helped to bring the Whole sale Cooperative society irto being. Tn the store which they cpencd to supply tnemseives with provisions they at first nao only four products to sell-flour, but ter, sugar and oatmeal. By 1857, how ever they nad membership of 1850. a capital of f15.000 and annual sales to the amount of fso,0oo Their society became model to the working msn in the north and center of England. and also in Scot. iand
 Then came the fourd'ns Of the Whole sale Cooperative society, which is today the giant of the cooperative world. It was a necsessary Step. The cooperative societies found themselves boycotted by wholesale merchants on every side. short weighted upon every possible occasion, aud served with inferior goods to those ordereo and paid for in nine cases out of 10. It was evident that they must be- come their own producers and to that end preliminary gathering of co-operators was held in August. 1880. at farm six miles from Rochdale which bore the name afterward Given to Barnums fa- nous elephant-Jumb6 A second meeting was held in 2fanchester on Christmas day of the same year in building form ed of railway arch which now has be- come historic. but 1t vas not until four years later. or on March 14. that the Wholesale co-oporot@yo society opened lts