cess of this cooperative cotton manufactory induced a desire to extend the undertaking. As no mill of adequate size could be rented, it was resolved to build one. I can most fitly describe this remarkable undertaking by quoting a portion of a letter with which I have been favoured from the manager, Mr. Wm. Cooper:

66

"The Rochdale Cooperative Manufacturing Society has now a capital "of 55,000l.

46

Its new mill, which, with "the machinery and capital required to "work it, will take 44,000l., will "begin to work almost immediately. The society decided at the last monthly meeting to lay the foundation this "autumn of another mill. The mill con"tains 260 looms, 16 pairs of mules or "10,000 spindles, 46 throstles or 11,000 "spindles, and carding, &c. in proportion, "and will employ about 280 workpeople. "The society has ceased to take more "members six months ago, on the ground "that money came in faster than the so

ciety could profitably work it. All this "has been effected by the unaided efforts "of the labouring classes, and they never "perhaps achieved a nobler or more hope"ful work. Numerous other co-operative "societies exist in different parts of the "country, and it has been calculated that "these societies now possess an aggregate "capital of 963,000l."

It will be seen from the facts adduced that a desire to obtain unadulterated food first prompted these co-operative efforts, and that they were in no way connected with those social and political opinions which are attributed to communism. These societies have entirely freed themselves from the pernicious economical fallacies which were formerly propounded by the apostles of co-operation. Thus, both at Leeds and Rochdale, competition is fully recognised, and, far from there being any community of property, the co-operative manufactory at Rochdale is based upon the principle that the efficient workman not only receives higher wages, but also in a paper read by Mr. John Holmes, of Leeds, at the meeting of the Social Science Association, at Birmingham.

obtains a larger share in the ultimate division of profits. The remarkable results above stated will naturally prompt us to seek the causes which have tended to produce them. In the first place it will be observed, that no credit whatever is given; even if a workman has 501. invested, he must pay ready money for the smallest article. The commercial prosperity of these societies, as well as the welfare of the workmen, are thus alike promoted. The facility of getting into debt is the great bane of the working classes. Not only is improvidence thus encouraged, but the workman is bound to deal with those tradesmen to whom he is indebted; who too often avail themselves of this opportunity to extort a large price for adulterated articles. These co-operative societies also render unnecessary unnecessary a large portion of the present expense of distribution. Such a quantity of flour, for example, as is produced at the two mills at Leeds and Rochdale, would ordinarily be distributed through the agency of a vast number of small shops; whereas, in their case, the whole cost of distribution is covered by a commission of 1s. 9d. on each bag of flour. These are, no doubt, most important agents of prosperity, but I believe the chief cause of the success which has attended these co-operative efforts yet remains to be noticed.

An identity of interests between employer and employed, is a doctrine which many delight to repeat: let us inquire to what extent this identity of interest really exists.

The produce of labour is divided into two shares. One share forms the profits of the capitalist; the other the labourer obtains, and it is termed his wages. It is therefore quite manifest that each party is directly interested in securing as large a share as possible. The more the labourer receives, so much the less must there be left for the employer; and therefore, with our present social relations, the employer and employed have not identical interests, but are more accurately in the position of buyer and seller. Does not a railway contractor

take the same care to obtain labour on the best possible terms, as he does to buy materials at the cheapest rate? Does any large employer feel that his labourers will spontaneously put forth the full energy of their labours? Labourers have to be watched, and kept to their work, much in the same way as the unwilling schoolboy is coerced to his task; and do not employers of labour, from one end of the country to the other, complain that their labourers are more careless of their masters' interests than they were formerly-that they begin to show a more haughty independence, and that they now pass from one employer to another for the slightest advantage? The Trades Unions, which have increased so significantly within the last few years, are regarded by the labourers as combinations to defend their rights in opposition to the capitalists; and, far from the employers and employed being bound with the sympathy of mutual interest, every thoughtful mind must be impressed with the opposition growing up between these classes, which is every day more and more felt. It is evidenced by a widespread dissatisfaction, which occasionally gathers sufficient strength to convulse society with a strike. Many dislike to acknowledge these indications of an opposition between employer and employed, and wish to revive between master and servant those feelings of affectionate dependence which existed in days of yore. But you cannot have

an effect when its cause is irrecoverably gone. This feeling of attachment had its source in the protection from danger which the labourer needed, and which his master extended towards him. But all this is changed; the relations of employers and employed are now purely commercial; and, if an attachment exists between them, it must be based upon some identity of pecuniary interests. At the present time, the labourer has seldom any motive to put forth his best exertions; if he is paid by fixed wages, he has no interest but to do as little work for his wages as possible. In some employments piece-work can

be introduced, but even in this case it is the labourer's interest to concern himself simply with the quantity, and not with the quality of the work done. But in co-operation, the profits are shared amongst the labourers; each labourer therefore is directly interested, not only himself to work with full energy, but to see that every other labourer does the same. An efficient inspection is thus spontaneously created without any expense, and there grows up a certain esprit de corps which never exists amongst mere hired labourers. The mental powers of the workman are called forth to assist him as far as possible in his work, whereas it would be difficult to over-estimate the pecuniary loss which is connected with that mental apathy and inactivity which now SO peculiarly distinguishes many of our labourers. In fact, as it has been well said, co-operation secures the highest and most skilled efforts of the workmen ; and this is sufficient to explain the signal success which has attended these co-operative efforts, whenever the labourers have selected proper managers from amongst their own body, and placed the requisite confidence in them. So powerfully efficient is this principle of cooperation, that it has succeeded even under the most unfavourable circumstances. In France, many of these cooperative societies were started with borrowed capital, which the Provisional Government of 1848 was willing to lend. The career of these societies was cut short by dynastic changes; but the few years of their existence sufficed to pay off all the capital that was borrowed, and leave them a large accumulative fund of their own.

I do not wish in the slightest degree to conceal the difficulties and dangers against which these societies must contend. It is commonly assumed that joint-stock undertakings can never successfully compete in trade against the individual capitalist, because a manager paid by a fixed salary will not put forth the same active energy as the individual owner of a business. Co-operative societies, of course, rest under this disad

distress, when trade is dull, and employ

ment scarce.

The practical success of co-operation has been already sufficiently proved to warrant the establishment in every town and village of shops or stores similar to those at Leeds and Rochdale. A cooperative manufactory should be more cautiously undertaken. Permanent success in this case has not been as yet completely proved, and the capital which must be risked is very large. But a co-operative shop or store has been developed from the smallest beginnings. The Pioneers at Rochdale started with a capital of only 281. The working classes are very generally impressed with the belief that they are somewhat imposed upon; that they pay high prices for bread and grocery; and often do not get a good or pure article for their money. They have the remedy in their own hands. Why don't they withdraw their deposits from the savings'-banks, and form a joint fund to establish a

flour-mill, a bakery, or a grocery-shop? The workmen of Leeds and Rochdale did this, and they have obtained as their reward unadulterated articles, and a profit of more than twenty per cent. upon their capital. Why should the working classes be encouraged to place their earnings in the savings'-banks, where the interest is so remarkably small?

A few words contained in the letter from which I have already quoted, will most appropriately conclude these remarks-"Co-operation aims at giving to "the workers the fruits of their industry. "It is a kind of self-assistance, and yet "has no hostile feeling against capital."

NOTE.

After this paper was in the press I received a letter from Mr. Samuel Ashworth, one of the managers of the Pioneers' Society, which informs me that the two engines of 120-horse power in the Co-operative Manufactory at Rochdale were set to work on the 11th of August.

CHAPTER III.

HOW THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE WAS ABSENT, AND IN HIS ABSENCE IT WAS

BELEAGUERED.

ON some errand of public duty or private business, Mr. Rowland soon had to leave home for the distant city. There he was to stay some days, which might be more numerous than he knew yet: and, as he much disliked to be long absent from the parish, or indeed to leave home at all for a single night, so as to lodge with strangers-thus might be explained the cloud of gravity that sat upon his serious forehead, while he parted from his household at the front No. 12.-VOL. IL

door; mounting the new but docile horse, hight "Rutherford," to ride to the coach-town, only six miles off. No horse could more steadily have taken the road, than Rutherford, or more becomingly have sustained the dignified proportions of that figure after which Andrew looked, with a well-satisfied interest, from the open gate. The object of his complacency was borne away into a winter fog, that blended horse and master, dilating them grandly, like the chief of Centaurs; while at a sober trot it reached the brow of the frosty road; then gently vanished downwards, as over a depth of antique Fate. Still, for minutes onward, did the sound come regular and far from the iron-like

G G

ground, through the keen, echoing air. Then the silence fell vast, like an augury of old.

Winter it was, without a doubt. The days were at the shortest; and the intense icy cold possessed the earth, binding the very sky, as it were in tyranny, from letting down any help to the strife. So vivid was the sense of life below, for all that, as to send up exhilaration through the gloom itself; at the very sight of those sharp hacks and cracks in the earth's old shape again, showing her merely wounded as before, with hard wrinkled ribs laid bare, fleshless arms and bony fingers, eyes all puckered and stony, veins empty and brittle as glass, fetters of steel and outspread covers of sealed iron-all to be changed immediately into fresh novelties, and some time or other be restored to the familiar state. Already, in fact, where the wet marsh had been a useless place in the hollow below the hill, icy enchantment had come upon it; making it worth the boy's pains to visit, if lesson-time had but allowed, in days so brief. Only the lessons with his father, indeed, had hindered the triumph it would have been for Hugh to be the first improver on that enchantment, as a conjuror of polished slides and gliding tracks, pushing alone into the centre of those rushy islands, and those sedgy quagmires, where the water-lily had been inaccessible before, where the water-hen had defied approach to her young, and where the flocks of white-maws had laid their precious eggs in vain. Nearer to Kirkhill, than to Etherwood and the parish-school, how just were Hugh's claims to the first pleasures of that place; and how easily could he have forestalled the vulgar but busy schoolchildren in possession of it, had it not been for that ever-growing Latin, those too-swiftly rising Romans of Cornelius Nepos, which had detained him, a solitary pupil, under his father's concentrated eye! Even now when, in the troubled joy he felt in the removal of that eye for a space, strange hopes were whispered to him from behind-yet what possibilities of terror gazed from

before! For had not his father ere he finally departed, reined in the horse Rutherford a moment at the gate, and called him to the horse's side, stooping down to remind him of the pages that were to be revised by himself, for fuller mastery; also of the rules from Ruddiman's Rudiments, that were to be committed to memory for complete use; in order that the regretted absence might not be altogether a loss? Then, as to the ice, Hugh knew, at any rate, how in the mean time its best charm had been already taken away. Etherwood school was not so busy or so bound to its set hours, but that children on the way to and from it had loitered long enough to find the secret of so tempting a slidingground; and they had snatched its delight in their play-time, till the bloom of the spot was soiled by many a smear or flaw. Yet, though the spot had been thus invaded before him, and he had lost the joy of first possession, there still remained for Hugh a private relish to be hastily gratified, now that his father was absent, in the safe hours of parish school - time, when he could have the ground to himself.

The first day of his release from his father's vigilance the boy found in his anticipated pleasure, by himself, in the icy hollow the new zest, not of watchfulness only, but of self-restraint as well. An influence hung over him, from the recent glimpse of a bliss unthought-of before, in the recent gracious approval of his teacher. The closer touch of paternal kindness, for a moment like that he had felt in childhood, warmly wrought about his heart, and moved him to study Cornelius Nepos unseen; nay, even, for the future's sake, to prepare the Rules of Ruddiman, though free from superintending vigilance. Moreover, Andrew had to walk the same day to the town, where the horse would have been left; and to come riding back at night. In this circumstance there was a check for Hugh till that day at least was over. For, had it not been heard of that coaches were missed, and that travellers