RESULTS OF THE CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEM AT HOME.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4286, 26 September 1882, Page 2

RESULTS OF THE CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEM AT HOME.

A Parliamentary return has been issued, we learn from a London piper,, showing the financial position of the co-operative societies in the United Kingdom for the year 1880. This return embraces all societies registered under the " Industrial and Provident Societies Act," and conduced upon what is generally known as the " Rochdale plan." The same process is going on with stores as with private shops; the large stores are eating up the small ones, and establishing branches in their places. For every hundred stores which hare ceased to exist during the past ten years, there hare sprung., up fire hundred branches of other stores. This tendency grows, for it is found more economical to hare [ thirty or fifty branches, which some stores I hare, thaD a tenth part of that number of separate stores, with their large buildings, 1 stocks, serrants, &c. These stores have their own large corn mills, wholesale purchasing societies and manufacturing societies,*producing what the stores sell. The figures show that, while in 1861 there were 150 English societies,'returning 48,184 members, and a capital of £333,280, doing an annual trade of £1,512,117; in 1870 there were 749 societies, with 249,112 members, a capital of £2,231,389, doing an annual business of £8,202,466, and realising a net profit of £555,435. Thus it is seen that the members and sates had increased fivefold in ten years, and the capital .nearly doubled. From 1870 to 1880 the societies increased to 953, the members to 526,686, and their share and deposit to £6,931,340. Thus the members /more than doubled, and the capital became threefold in these-ten years; bat the sales and profit eren grew more rapidly, for in 1880 the sales reached rather over £20,009,003 and the profit is estimated at £1,800,000, in addition, to interest on capital. During the four bad years, 1876-9, their position almost remained stationary. In Scotland they have attained great dimensions considering the population. So rapidly does the capital grow of both-the Scotch and English societies, that they are obliged to return it tomembers (who thus seek shares in manu* factoring and railway companies) to invest it in building societies and else* where. Their friends and supporters hare great hopes from these societies, mjl believe they will be the means of enabling the working classes ultimately to become owners of the manufactories in which they are employed.