CO-OPERATIVE MIRACLES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10021, 18 April 1910, Page 4

CO-OPERATIVE MIRACLES.

The literature of British co-oper-ative trading concern's contain some almost staggering statistics relating to the mammoth businesses that nave been buiit up. It is difficult to.belive that the movement was startled less than half a century ago by a few working men at Rochdale, who are described as setting out with "tuje.ice and an ideal." In the forty-six years that have elapsed co-operative societies in Britain have handled the sum of £1,840,000,000, which represents the volume of trade for that period. The tiny capital together by the men of Rochdale was quickly eaten up by their purchases of odds and ends of merchandise, and nothing more could be done until they had sold their cheeses in penny | portions, and had doled out their | few hundredweights of coal. But from the humble beginning at Koch- ' dale the co-operative trading movement spread throughout the Kingdom, until (from the latest ascertained figures), the co-operators now number 250,000 persons. The profit on the 43 years of trading is estimated by a writer in "The World's Work" at £175,000,000, and on the last year's operations at £11,000,000. j These remarkable organisations have long since refused to be content to handle goods procured ' from mer- ' chants, or, indeed, those obtained I direct from the Home manufacturers themselves. Some of ( ,them have founded their own manufactories, and what cannot be procured at Home is imported direct from, the overseas. The co-operators are the largest flouroiillers in Great Britain. The. Manchester Co-operative Wholesale Society manufactures such goods as flour, butter, biscuits, sweets, preserves/pickles, cocoa, .chocolate, tobacco, soap, candles, glycerine, starch, boots and shoes,: saddlery, woollens, clothing, millinery, hosiery, furniture, brushes, hardware, mats, etc., etc. It is a banker on a large scale; it is a printer and a bookbinder; it is a' bacon-curer in a huge way; it grows its own tea; it owns several steamers; it has nine depots abroad, and it employs more than 18,000 people. These facts relate to only one conern. There are others, notably those in Glasgow and in Ireland, doing business on an equally large scale. Another tremendously powerful series of concerns is of comparatively recent date. This is the\English Agricultural Co-operative movement, launched nine years ago, ano now controlling" no fewer than 331 separate and distinct [societies and undertakings. It embraces chiefly small co-operative societies of farmers, and covers a bewildering variety of activities, all yieldng modest, yet steady and reliable, profits. It was a miracle, indeed, that the handful of Rochdale men launched with the aid of their "tuppence and an ideal"; but it was the high ideal, rather than the humble tuppence, that lighted the fires of co-operation andproduced such marvellous trading results.