Page 78 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER VII. —
Forty Years Ago.

Characteristics of the Seventies—Fat Years and Lean—Economic Factors
Other Influences upon the Vigorous Co-operative Movements—Period
1860-80.
UPON our main Hne we have now reached the first of a number
of junctions. The few years 1870-74 saw the beginning of the
Newcastle Branch, the bank, the earUest productive works, and
the London Branch. In 1870 there existed in Manchester only
a provincial wholesale distributive society, founded and still
controlled mainly by Lancashire and Yorkshire men. By the end
of 1874 it had become a mercantile, banking, and manufacturing
federation working on a national scale. It is worth while halting at
this place to remind ourselves of the general social and economic
conditions of the period through which we are travelling.
Buckle attempted to displace " drum-and-trumpet " chronicles
which recorded events, but neglected to explain them. He pointed
to the effect upon nations of their material environment. Marx
went further by introducing a purely economic or materialistic
interpretation of history. Without adopting his idea of human
affairs being governed through economic forms by the carnal
man perpetually hungry, we may give first place in illustrating a
co-operative history to economic causes, especially since this is a
task which many writers and statisticians after Marx have made
easily possible.
It is estabhshed that trade alternates from good to bad every
few years. In 1857 there was bad trade, which changed rapidly
to prosperity in 1860. During the wave of good trade, 1858-62,
co-operative stores multiplied rapidly, the movement spreading both
within Lancashire and Yorkshire, and far and wide beyond. This
increase, in its turn, led to the estabhshment of the C.W.S. A check
came with the American Civil War. Although the declaration of the
blockade of the Southern ports had no immediate effect upon the price
of cotton, distress appeared by the end of 1861, and deepened to the
close of 1862. Dr. Watts' Facts of the Cotton Famine gave a total
of 458,441 persons in receipt of rehef in the December of that year.
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