Page:Principles of Political Economy Vol 2.djvu/391

Rh and the profit for that single year at 10,164l. 12s. 5d. For the manufacturing establishment I have no certified information later than that of Mr. Holyoake, who states the capital of the concern, in 1857, to be 5500l. But a letter in the Rochdale Observer of May 26, 1860, editorially announced as by a person of good information, says that the capital had at that time reached 50,000l.: and the same letter gives highly satisfactory statements respecting other similar associations; the Rossendale Industrial Company, capital 40,000l.; the Walsden Co-operative Company, capital 8000l.; the Bacup and Wardle Commercial Company, with a capital of 40,000l., "of which more than one-third is borrowed at 5 per cent, and this circumstance, during the last two years of unexampled commercial prosperity, has caused the rate of dividend to shareholders to rise to an almost fabulous height."

It is not necessary to enter into any details respecting the subsequent history of English Co-operation; the less so, as it is now one of the recognised elements in the progressive movement of the age, and, as such, has latterly been the subject of elaborate articles in most of our leading periodicals, one of the most recent and best of which was in the Edinburgh Review for October 1864: and the progress of Co-operation from month to mouth is regularly chronicled in the "Co-operator." I must not, however, omit to mention the last great step in advance in reference to the Co-operative Stores, the formation in the North of England (and another is in course of formation in London) of a Wholesale Society, to dispense with the services of the wholesale merchant as well as of the retail dealer, and extend to the Societies the advantage which each society gives to its own members, by an agency for co-operative purchases, of foreign as well as domestic commodities, direct from the producers.

It is hardly possible to take any but a hopeful view of the prospects of mankind, when, in two leading countries of the world, the obscure depths of society contain simple working men whose integrity, good sense, self-command, and honourable