Page 82 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Story of the C.W.S.
The " International " (International Working Men's Association),
important for a brief period on the Continent, made little headway
in England, where sociahst ideas did not begin to spread until
the eighties. The leading trade unions looked for complement to
co-operative production; the agricultural labourers' unions rushed
into co-operative storekeeping. Meanwhile, the co-operative
movement gathered round it not only some of the best working-class
advocates but also a band of distinguished adherents, from the
Marquis of Ripon and Earl Spencer (and the Prince of Wales was not
indifFerent) to familiar friends hke Neale and Hughes. More than one
pioneer has said of the seventies, " There were giants in those days."
Perhaps the stature was not actually greater, but the feeling about
the movement was keener. Nevertheless, this is not to imply that
co-operative history belongs wholly to the past. While to-day
co-operation suffers to some extent through being merely one of
other social movements, there are many signs of its special place and
purpose in democratic progress being recognised, and, consequently,
of a widening and deepening interest in its work.
Before concluding this short note upon an important period, it is
worth while noticing some other landmarks of the times during which
the C.W.S. grew and developed so greatly. Although the temperance
movement was instituted by an earlier generation, the Church of
England Temperance Society was founded in 1862, and the Good
Templars in 1868, while the changing habits of the people were to
some extent responsible for the Post Office Savings Bank, which
began in 1861. Moral progress was marked, again, by the abolition
of pubUc executions in 1868, and the dying out of political bribery
from the same year. The growing importance of the masses was
shown by the introduction by the ]\Iidland Railway of third class
on all trains in 1872, and the abolition of second class by the same
company in 1875. A well-known friend of co-operation in Leicester,
in the person of Mr. EUis, was then chairman of the Midland.
Advanced education, such as is now represented by the Workers'
Educational Association, began with the founding of the Working
Men's College by Maurice, the Christian Sociahst, in 1860. The
University Extension movement arose in 1867. Ruskin turned from
mountains and seas to social problems with Unto this Last in 1862,
and the " Guild of St. George " and Fors Clavigera began in 1871.
In 1874 John Richard Green pubhshed the famous Short History of
the English People. In 1875, the year in which Kingsley died, and
two years after most popular causes had lost a powerful friend in
54