The History of the Rochdale Pioneers by George Jacob Holyoake

Author:George Jacob Holyoake [Holyoake, George Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Modern, 19th Century, Social History
ISBN: 9781315468839
Google: XVIPDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-13T16:18:25+00:00

Chapter XVI.

Querulous Outsiders.

IT is no mean part of the art of progress to know how to treat outsiders—that is supposing you have a good cause, clear principles, and earnest advocates. Therefore let us look with curiosity and intelligence on outsiders. If conversion is reasonably treated, they will be insiders one day. Here I deal with querulous outsiders—the discontented who are not ignorant—the critics who mean mischief, and know it. They swarmed about the Rochdale Society for years. Sometimes the shopkeeper is made an angry adversary by being needlessly alarmed. A co-operative speaker will say, "Look at the great profits made at the chief stores—£20,000, £30,000, or £40,000 a year. All this is rescued from the shopkeepers." Nothing of the kind. It is by buying wholesale by combination of capital; it is by purchasers buying largely at the stores by combination; it is by economy in distribution; it is by fewer shops, fewer servants, by avoiding advertisements and costly display, that the chief profits are made. The co-operator gains by avoiding the multiplied shops, the high rents, the heavy taxes, the useless servants, the cost of advertisements, glarish lights, and loss on unsold goods and bad debts. The co-operator grows rich by picking up what the shopkeeper drops, before he touches the tradesman's actual profits.

Co-operators are merely miners in the gold fields of commerce, who find what the shopkeeper has overlooked. Many a shopkeeper is made to grieve by the idea of the loss of profits he never had and never would have had, had co-operators never been born. The cooperator mainly gains by a superior mode of business and the natural economy of concert.

The Rochdale Co-operators publish an almanack which may be taken as their annual manifesto. It records their progress and current opinions. It is compiled by various hands, and now and then an article appears on the sheet which shows that the new writer is a recent convert who fails to comprehend the traditions of this great Society. In an almanack now and then there has been an attack on shopkeepers, which a sagacious co-operator avoids. For instance, in the year 1860 almanack there was a denial of the initiative principle which makes co-operation a wholesome power. Here is the questionable passage:—

"The present co-operative movement does not seek to level the various social inequalities which exists in society as regards wealth, excepting so far as enabling the labouring man to subscribe a portion of the capital necessary: first, for the purchase of articles of consumption from those, or as near to those as possible, who produce them, so as to appropriate to himself the profits which now flow into the pockets of the retail dealers; and next by enabling him also to assist in the contribution of such capital as is necessary for the carrying on of his own industrial occupation: by this means giving him a chance of participating in the profits of his own labour, and removing it farther out of the reach of men with

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