Page 35 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER III. —
Steps Toward Federation.

Ideas of Union—Lowbands Fami at Jumbo— ^Christmas Day under a Man-
chester Railway Arch—Legal Difficulties and the Men Who Met Them
Year 1800.
" "VT'OUR castles are in the air ?" wrote Thoreau. " That is
JL where they should be. . . . Now put the foundations
under them." By 1860 a national co-operative wholesale society,
in this whimsical reckoning, was quite ready for basing on earth.
In 1851 a writer in the Operative had looked forward to co-operative
stores in London, Manchester, Rochdale, Bury, Oldham, Crewe,
Swindon, and other places, " agreeing to take their goods from one
store," and saw no reason why these stores through united action
should not " deal direct with China." In 1858 the cloud-capped
towers appeared over the very ground of the mundane structure.
In the autumn of that year, Mr. R. Applegarth, the well-known
veteran trade unionist, " walked from Sheffield to Manchester to
seek work," and was provided by a shopmate with " a banquet of
bread and cheese and beer." " It was at a Httle pubUc-house, and
I have kept run of the locaHty, because ... I have seen the
splendid buildings of the C.W.S. erected on the place where that
public-house stood." Three visitors turned up from the Rochdale
Pioneers' Society, and their conversation deeply impressed the
footsore and weary searcher for employment. "Amongst the things
which I best remember were the words of one of the old men, who
Aye, but we ought to have a big shop in Manchester and buy
said,
'
everything that co-operative societies want. We could buy on a
larger scale and on better terms, and distribute the goods right and
"
left as societies were formed.'
When the Co-operator appeared, in 1860, the working-class
imagination was a httle dazzled by the prospect of starting joint-
stock companies under the hmited liability laws. Nevertheless,
in the fifth number of the Co-operator, Mr. Henry Pitman, the
devoted editor, put the subject of a wholesale agency very directly
17