History of Cooperatives

A Nineteenth Century View

This is excerpt of an article which appeared in Scribner's Monthly Magazine, December 1876, written by Charles Barnard and describing his visit to Rochdale 32 years after its founding.

Dateline: Rochdale, England - December, 1844

Just south of the Yorkshire hills, there once stood an ancient parish church surrounded by a rural village perched on a hill and overlooking the pretty Roch and its charming dale. To-day, the once sweet and quiet country is marred by railway embankments, factories, rows of hideous brick tenements and unlovely chimneys, and dimmed with smoke. The pretty Roch has become an inky sink, the drain of the modern city that has swallowed the village. Hardly more than the name remains, so completely has the town spread over the Roch and its dale.

Rochdale is essentially a workingman's city. If there are rich people, they cannot be seen in the streets; neither is there a West End where they live apart from the world of men who work. The streets are narrow and winding, the houses low and small, and everywhere the place swarms with men, women, and children, weavers, spinners, and the like, a people familiar with toil, clad in the sad-hued garments befitting their smoky sky and grimy town. Dull perhaps, when compared with the French or Americans, but an earnest people, to whom the world seems a trifle hard; honest folk, studious of shillings and mindful of half-pence.

At the corner of Toad Lane & Land Mary's Gate

Toad Lane is one of the least of these small, ungracious streets. Low-browed brick houses and petty shops crowd close upon the steep and narrow road, and the visitor wonders what can have made the lane so famous. Halfway up the hill is a building of a different character, and in marked contrast with its neighbors, a handsome four-story stone structure, fronting on the Land and St Mary's Gate, a street that meets Toad Lane at right angles. In general aspect, it resembles the Leicester building (see illustration below) except that the clock is surmounted by a figure of a bee-hive cut in stone.

On the first floor are a number of fine stores. Above, the building seems like some public institution, library, or school-house. Over the store is a sign: "Rochdale Equitable Pioneers' Society, Limited." It is this that has made the reputation of Toad Lane.

Interest and Dividends

On the door-post of one of the stores is a large poster or placard reading "Interest and Dividends" in large type that can be seen half a block away. Such a poster on the Bowery or Greenwich street would demand the services of the police to regulate the crowd besieging the paying teller's door. The multitude, crowding in and out of the stores seem quite indifferent to the notice.

One door leads to a grocery store, the next to a drapery store, another door leads upstairs to the house-furnishing warerooms, the outfitting department, and the boot and shoe store. There is no display in the windows (after the cooperative manner). We may follow the multitude inside to watch the active trade. Plain, hard-working people, perhaps grimy from their toil, they press up to the counters, cash in hand, ready to buy.

The salesmen have evidently prepared for a good demand, and the staple goods, already put up in convenient packages, are piled in enormous heaps on the counters. They deal out the bundles with wonderful speed, take the money, make a note in the sales-book, tear off a voucher (or half leaf), and give it with change to the customer. Each one takes his or her goods, and moves away as quickly as possible to make room for others Near the door, in a tiny office, such as is sometimes used for the cashier in American stores, sits a young girl. Each one presents the flyleaf to her, and receives a tin or brass token representing the amount of the purchase.

The stores in the Pioneers building are precisely like the other cooperative stores we have seen (this is the author's 4th article of British cooperatives). There is the same huge stock crowded into every corner, the same neatness and order, the same active trade and ready cash and the same suggestive tin tokens. We may pass them by, enter a glass covered passage at the end of the building and find the broad stair way that leads to the offices on the third floor.

Home of the Equitable Pioneers

There are many people going and coming on the stairs, some with books in their hands. These are the Equitable Pioneers, part owners of the 266,000 shares, happy lifters of dividends and participants in that famous "two and a half percent for education." At the head of the stairs, the stream of people divides, part entering the first door leading to the society's reading room and library. Some are in search of dividends; some of books. On the walls are sundry notices and placards. Among these is the dividend poster; some "Rule to be observed" and a most original "Alminack." Herein is set forth the object of the society: "The social and intellectual improvement of its members," and immediately under this, it remarks in very large type, "Shares payable at once or in installments of three and threepence per quarter."

The Almanack also gives sundry facts about the Equitable and neighboring societies, mentions the day Copernicus was born, and Madame Tussaud died, and other historical data, curiously mingled with the days for stock-taking, quarterly meetings, the sale of papers, the last day for receiving contributions, the Queen's birthday, the opening of the Blue Pits Branch, and the phases of the moon. Then follows a list of the stores, newsrooms and reference libraries, and the announcement of science, art, and French classes. Another placard gives the meetings of the building committee that will put up a house for any member who can pay the reasonable charges.

This is certainly a peculiar institution. In the same breath it is declared that the capital is raised in one pound shares and that "all members, sons and daughters of members, who are wishful to improve their intellectual facilities should avail themselves of these classes."

A tour of the library

Leaving the counting room we may see how the two and a half percent is spent. Under the guidance of the society's librarian, we are shown a large and handsome reading room, well lighted and supplied with ample tables and comfortable chairs. The place is filled and quiet, orderly and apparently earnest set of readers, precisely such a company as one may see in any American free town-library. Adjoining the library are classrooms where physics, mathematics, drawing and other classes are taught. Above the library and occupying the entire upper floor of the building is the assembly room where the business reports are read, elections are carried on, and the general affairs of the society are managed.

"We've seen some pretty stormy meetings in this room," remarks our guide. "It's not all peace and harmony."

Dreams that end in interest and dividends

Undoubtedly, the growth of the cooperative movement has taken trade away from many wholesale and retail stores. In some places it has extinguished the local trade, and reduced the baker and butcher to bankruptcy. On the other hand, the business men of this country and Great Britain have found the cooperator a first class customer. He may have ruined some petty dealers in teas and sugars, but he has fed and clothed the poor man's children and put a lump of healthy leaven into the treasure of the world's trade. He may be a dreamer, but his dreams end in "interest and dividends." Return to GBFC Home Page