The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers.
Nearly all the world now knows the story of the twelve poor weavers of Rochdale, England, who twenty-four years ago met together to consult how they might better their wretched condition. Their wages were low, provisions were extravagantly high, and adulterated besides. One man thought that voting was what they needed to right them,—another, that strikes would do it; and still other theories were propounded, when one immortal genius of common sense suggested that they should not strive for what might be out of their reach, but simply try to make a better use of what they had. They decided to pay each twenty pence a week into a common stock, until they got enough to buy a few necessary groceries at wholesale. It took them nearly a year, and then they elected one of their number as clerk, and opened the first co-operative store. Their stock in trade consisted only of about seventy-five dollars' worth of flour, sugar, and butter. Their plan was, First, to sell to each other and to outsiders at the usual retail prices, but to give a good article. Second, to sell only for cash down. Third, to make a quarterly dividend of the clear profits to the subscribing members, or stockholders of the association, the share of profit being determined in each case by the amount the stockholder or his family purchased at the co-operative store. Thus, whatever a man's household consumed, whether much or little, he got back the third that would otherwise have gone to enrich some cheating grocer. Co-operative stores and societies of all kinds have been started in many parts of Europe, and are springing up in this country also in every direction; but this one of the "Rochdale Equitable Pioneers," as they called themselves, still stands at the head of the movement, and is the most signal instance of its success. Its stockholders now number six or seven thousand, its capital is over a million of dollars, and the yearly profits of its business between three and four hundred thousand; it has clothing, dry goods, and shoe stores, as well as groceries and butcher-shops; it
