Page 259 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

—
By the Graveside.

scattered mills and townships that reach far in the direction of Bury
and Manchester. Upon the highest level of this pleasant ground,
not far from the grave of William Cooper and beside that of Samuel
Bamford, stands a monument of grey granite, erected to its twenty-
one years' chairman bj^ the federation he served so well. Together
with other mscriptions it bears these words, taken from his Rochdale
Congress address of 1892:
The three great forces for the improvement of mankind are reh'gion,
temperance, and co-operation; and as a commercial force, supported and
sustained by the other two, co-operation is the grandest, the noblest, and the
most likely to be successful in the redemption of the industrial classes.
The small, plain, two-storied house where the chairman of a
business of ten millions yearly lived until his death, still stands as
number 15, John Street, Rochdale; and the Milton Congregational
Church—to and from which trains and cabs would rarely fail to
carry the superintendent of its Sunday School, however distant the
co-operative meeting that claimed its president—is near at hand.
Upon its walls there is no tablet such as elsewhere reminds one of
some brilliant artist or thinker, and yet whoever walks past the
cottage, being acquainted with the man and his work, must feel a
sobering sense of what makes for the strength, if not the glory, of a
nation. A little more self-regard, a httle less pride in and care for
the workmg classes, and Mitchell probably would have gone to
reinforce the middle class; for a natural selection of this kind is
always operating, to mtensify the poverty of those who remain
behind. But he gave himself to his fellows, and died a poor man.
His " estate " was sworn at £350 ; the sole legatee being a neighbour,
Mr. Thomas Butterworth, who, with Mrs. Butterworth, had attended
to his house and comfort ; but it happened that the beneficiary also
died within a day or two of JVIitchell's loss, and through an agree-
ment with the heirs, Mitchell's books and papers, his silver trowels,
keys, and mallets, came back to the institution for which he
chiefly worked.

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