Page 115 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER XI.
The Attack on London.

The City and its Provinces—Store to Wholesale Society—The Metropolitan
and Home Counties Association—Another Central Agency—The C.W.S.
comes to London—Progress of the Branch—Years 1862-81.
GEORGE Jacob Holyoake, like Charles Dickens, was a writer
of provincial birth who knew his London better than most
Londoners, and Holyoake has described some hindrances to
co-operation in the metropoHs. In a factory town there may be little
to distract a man from the plodding work necessary to a successful
store, whereas a hundred and one diversions upon the surface of
life in London will combine to make co-operative trading seem a
very drab and pitiful back-street affair. Together with the size of
the capital, and the lack of common industrial interests among its
workers, this may explain London's long record of failures. A full
history of metropolitan co-operation would be extensive and
peculiar. From the days of Owen and the London Co-operative
Society of 1823, societies innumerable and of every possible variety
have sprung and withered on this stony ground. If the Oldham
co-operators of 1860 had any special contempt for a metropohtan
propagandist they would assail him with the jibe of " Why dussn't
tha taych thi own folk ? " Teachers and leaders there were in
London and to spare ; the trouble was to find the followers, especially
when it came to buying.
There is, however, another London than that of Fleet Street and
the Strand, the City and Westminster. Riding in or out of the capital
by any of the railways that run above street levels, you see these other
districts spreading far and wide, with packed multitudes of houses,
streets of shops, and even factory chimneys, Uke Manchesters or
Birminghams. These are the provinces of London. Economic walls
of rent and prices part them from City and West End and middle-
class subm-bs, or separateness comes with special industries. A
community of interests exists in many of these areas, distinct almost
as those of provincial centres. The very bigness of London ends at
83