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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 81

[introduction]

Like all popular movements, co-operation had to make headway against numerous social and political difficulties, and much hard work had to be done to clear the way.

In a little work written by Messrs. A. D. Acland and Benjamin Jones on "Working Men Co-operators," we read that:—"In the very years in which the small Rochdale society was beginning, working people were making themselves heard and felt in the State, and legislation was making their lives more free and their power for self-help greater. In 1844 was passed one of the most important factory Acts, to be followed in 1847 by the famous 'Ten Hours Act' "(the Act towards which John Bright and the manufacturers displayed so much hostility as to delay its passage through the House of Commons for ten years). "In 1846 the development of amalgamated trades societies was made possible, and legal protection was given to great friendly societies. In the same year the Corn Laws were repealed. It was at the time of the great revolutionary epoch of 1848-9 that co-operation began to march with giant strides. With shortened hours of labour, with cheap food, with encouragement to cooperate for self-help without the old fears of fraud and failure, there was something to work for."

The Provident Societies Act was amended from time to time so as to give greater trading facilities to co-operative societies registered under it, and the passing of the Public Libraries Act, and repeal of the duty upon newspapers in 1850 to 1855, enormously increased the opportunities for educational and social propaganda work, of which ample advantage was taken. The notable success achieved by the Rochdale Pioneers was extensively published amongst the wage-earning classes, and the principles which led to such page 31 strikingly beneficent results were so simple and easily comprehended that societies commenced to be formed in various districts on what came to be known as "the Rochdale plan." So accurately was this system worked out by the plain, sensible men who conducted the experiment that the more completely it was copied by the societies which followed the more successful they became, and that remains true right down to the present time, not only in Great Britain, but on the Continent of Europe.

A highly important lesson taught by the pioneers was, not only that it was possible to make a great co-operative success out of a small beginning, but that a small beginning was a valuable contribution to co-operative success. In the evolution of things it was the birth of a "new social order" that was taking place—a new movement requiring "new men, men with new hearts and feelings," with new ideas and new social aims, and a new and special training in a new school of experiences, which had to progress from simple and easily-understood and easily-dealt-with conditions, automatically developing new tendencies and possibilities, and the workers in it developing the increased aptitudes and attributes necessary to guide it towards higher and wider issues. Until the general public are thoroughly educated in co-operative principles and methods, a society commencing on a large scale is certain to include a quantity of uncongenial and disconcerting elements which have to be assimilated or eliminated before success can be achieved. The smaller beginnings bring the more congenial elements together to start with, and make progress by gathering in more and more of a similar character as time goes on.

But although the initial conditions out of which powerful co-operative societies have grown were simple enough in the sense of being free from complexities puzzling to the understanding, success in most instances was only achieved by the exercise of much patient self-denial, frequently extending over many years of plodding, discouraging hard work. But not greater than, nor probably so great as, the cares and page 32 anxieties and many self-denials endured by the creators of private fortunes, whose risks in working up and conducting businesses under competitive conditions ought to be much greater than those attending the development and management of the business of a co-operative society, with its assured and organised trade. Co-operative societies have outlived crises in their history under which private enterprise must have collapsed, and if the rank and file of wage-earners properly understood this, and the enormous power which rests in their hands unused, they would estimate the value of their leaders less by the vehemence with which some of them apply epithets, of the "fat-man" order, to the owners of private wealth, and more by a display of honest energy to organise their fellow-workers into co-operative societies by means of which they could win for themselves the wealth which now flows into private hands. In order to make this clear and convincing, it will be necessary to give a few instances of how great and wealthy co-operative societies have developed from extremely insignificant beginnings, by adopting, and faithfully adhering to, the simple and easily-understood system discovered by the Rochdale Pioneers, and to prove how open it is for any association of persons of ordinary intelligence and ability to follow the example—perseverance and determination to succeed, and an honest, unselfish leadership, being the qualities most required. The so-called "fat man" is here because necessary to the period of social evolution to which he belongs, and it would be very absurd to think that he was to work "for the fun of the thing," and not for all that he might be able to make out