Page 23 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER II.
The New Pioneers.

Old Existing Societies—Rochdale—The Christian Socialists—The First Central
Agency—The Midland Coiinties Wholesale Society—Period 1830-60.
BETWEEN the last of the Owenite Congresses in 1833 and the
begmning made by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, here and
there in the country co-operative societies continued. At Sheerness,
around Huddersfield, m Teesdale and elsewhere a dozen links with
co-operative antiquity are still to be found. The Lockhurst Lane
Society, near Coventry, and the Meltham Mills and Ripponden
Societies, in Yorkshire, are typical examples. The Ripponden
"
Society goes back officially to 1832, but is said to have " got agait
some years before it was registered. An old member of the society,
vigorous at eighty-four (in 1912), tells that two employers in those
days ruled the whole valley, and the co-operators dare proceed
only by stealth. A vicar's wife, who Hked a parishioner's bread,
asked where the flour was bought, and the housewife with difficulty
avoided confessing that it was obtained through the secret store at
2s. 8d. a dozen, instead of from the employer's son's shop at 4s. 6d.
When this shopkeeper left the district " the co-op. then durst go a
little bit further." The Ripponden Store was Owenite, in that the
profits v/ere meant to accumulate and form a capital for manu-
facturing, but it stayed safely, if ingloriously, on the hither side of
this pitfaU, and the fund was divided between the founders. At
Meltham Mills, which goes back to 1827, the Rochdale Pioneers were
anticipated, so far as the method of dividing profits is concerned.
Dividend on purchases was paid from the start, but a member was
obhged to hold £6 in shares and pay £1 down. Ripponden, Lock-
hurst Lane, Stockport Great Moor, and others of these old societies
positively Umited their membership until they adopted the Rochdale
plan ; and Meltham Mills, probably without raising formal barriers,
showed nothing of the missionary spirit. Isolation and abundant
caution saved these societies from the fate of the first national
movement, but it left them powerless to create any such wave
of enthusiasm as that which spread out newly from Rochdale.
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