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co-operation, and who prophesied its ultimate failure, there could be no doubt that the endeavour to provide the means of education and of intellectual culture formed a promising feature in the work that was then undertaken.

It has been claimed for the Rochdale pioneers that one of the chief reasons why they became the advanced guard of a great and astonishing progress was that they neither desired to pull down other classes nor to raise themselves out of their own class, but to raise themselves by elevating the class to which they belonged. "They were men of courage and men of business. Their aim and ambition was that the working classes should be well fed, well clad, well housed, well washed, well educated; in a word, that in the highest and best sense of the term, they should be respectable. If any taint of the socialistic and communistic theories in which the society originated still adhered to them it was rapidly removed by the practical realities with which they had to deal. The prodigious and rapid growth of the establishment at the head of which they were placed required considerable administrative ability, and it was forthcoming. To their honour it should be mentioned that, far from being actuated by any desire to monopolize the advantages they enjoyed, they were animated by a generous spirit of proselytism, which led them to put themselves to considerable trouble and expense in communicating to inquirers from all parts of the kingdom the results of their experience, and aiding them in the formation of new societies." The following extract from a paper they printed at an early period of their history in order to send to all those who applied to them for information with a view to the formation of new societies, illustrates the spirit of generosity and wisdom by which they were animated:-

"1. Procure the authority and protection of the law by enrolment.

2. Let integrity, intelligence, and ability be the indispensable qualifications in the choice of officers and managers, and not wealth or distinction.

3. Let each member have only one vote, and make no distinction as regards the amount of wealth any member may contribute.

4. Let majorities rule in all matters of government.

5. Look well after money matters. Punish fraud, when duly established, by the immediate expulsion of the defrauder.

6. Buy your goods as much as possible in the first markets; or if you have the produce of your industry to sell contrive, if possible, to sell it in the best.

7. Never depart from the principle of buying and selling for ready money.

8. Beware of long reckonings. Quarterly accounts are the best, and should be adopted when practicable.

9. For the sake of security always have the accounted value of the fixed stock' at least one-fourth less than its marketable value. 10. Let the members take care that the accounts are properly audited by men of their own choosing.

11. Let committees of management always have the authority of the members before taking any important or expensive step.

12. Do not court opposition or publicity, nor fear it when it comes.

13. Choose those only for your leaders whom you can trust, and then give them your confidence."

As a proof of the rapid success which attended the institution we may refer to the statistics compiled on the tables published in the almanacs of the Rochdale societies. The number of members in 1844 was 28, and the amount of the funds £28. In the following year there were 74 members, the funds had increased to £181; and out of £710 which represented the amount of business done there was £32 on the side of "profits.” In 1850 the members had increased to 600, the funds to £2299, the business to £13,179, the profits to £889. In 1855 there were 1400 members, £11,032 of funds; the business done was £44,902, and the profits £3106; and in 1860 there were 3450 members, £37,710 in funds, business to the amount of £152,083, and profits reaching £15,906.

After it had been carried on for seven years it was found that more money was offered for investment than could be profitably employed in the store. The directors, therefore, were

SUCCESS OF THE CO-OPERATIVE INSTITUTIONS.

forced to consider what was to be done with their surplus capital. They could not continue to pay five per cent on it, as they were obliged to do by their rules, when it was not yielding them anything like that amount. They must therefore either find profitable employment for it or refuse to receive it. They determined on adopting the former of these two alternatives, and as at the time great complaints were made of the quality of the flour that was sold in the shops, much of which was said to be adulterated, it was determined in 1850 to establish a new society, to be called the Rochdale Co-operative Corn-mill Society, for which a substantial mill was erected in Weir Street, Rochdale.

The spirit by which the first co-operators were animated is illustrated by the fact that they determined not to erect the building by contract, thus incurring an additional expense of about £1000, but they cheerfully paid this difference, in the assurance that every man who had laboured in the construction of their mill had received a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, and they added that they believed the money had been well spent, because the building was better and more substantial than it would have been if it had been erected by contract.

The progress made by this second co-operative scheme was shown by the fact that in 1860 the funds amounted to £26,618, the business done to £133,125, and the profits to £10,164. The success of these two societies produced great confidence in the co-operative principle, and a general desire among the working-classes to invest their savings in them, which compelled the leaders of the co-operative movement to consider what farther employment could be found for the funds thus forced upon them. Accordingly, in the year 1854 a manufacturing society was formed on the same general principles as the store and cornmill society, which seemed likely to prove equally successful. At first they carried on their operations in rooms hired for the purpose, and on the 22nd of April, in the year 1859, they laid the first stone of a cotton factory of their own, which they completed without borrowing a penny, and with a large

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balance always in the bank. It was universally admitted to be one of the largest, bestconstructed, and best-fitted in the borough of Rochdale, a town which was by no means behind its neighbours in the size and excellence of its factories. This great work was scarcely finished when its owners found themselves in a position to commence another factory alongside of the first. These two establishments together cost nearly £100,000, besides the amount of capital required for their working. Before they were completed and filled with machinery the American civil war broke out and prevented the experiment of a co-operative manufactory from having the same fair trial that had been given to the other co-operative experiments, and which they had passed through so triumphantly. The cotton famine rendered the newly erected factories almost useless and entirely profitless. It compelled a great number of the shareholders to part with their shares to persons who were not so fully imbued as themselves with the original spirit of co-operation, and who purchased them simply as a speculation. One of the results of this change of proprietorship was, that a rule of the society which gave the operatives a share in the profits of the concern was abrogated, and was not afterwards restored.

But these works were far from absorbing the whole of the capital, which co-operation multiplied to an extent that seemed almost magical. In the year 1860, while the first factory was still incomplete, a co-operative sick and burial society, founded on thoroughly sound principles, and carrying on its operations upon the extended scale necessary to ensure the successful working of such institutions; a co-operative Turkish bath; and lastly, in the year 1861, a land and building society were established.

The capital of these various institutions in the year 1861 was thus estimated :-Co-operative store, £39,335; corn-mill, £29,962; manufacturing society, £71,695; land and building society, £1000; Turkish bath, £350; total, £142,342. Deducting loans from the store to other societies, £16,613, there was left a net capital of £125,729. This capital consisted of money or stock purchased by money,

and worth considerably more than its cost price.

In the year 1844 the whole co-operative capital was £28. In the year 1850, which was the date of the commencement of the corn-mill, it was £2299; in the year 1854, in which the manufacturing society was founded, it had increased to £11,144; and in the year 1861 it had risen to £125,729.

At the time when the American war commenced the example so successfully set in Rochdale had been followed in almost all the great manufacturing towns. They had provided the working-classes who inhabited them with a safe investment for their savings, from which they received five per cent regularly paid to them besides profits; they had also taught them habits of frugality, temperance, patience, sobriety, and self-reliance, and to this it was in no small degree due that when the cotton famine did come upon the workingclasses of the manufacturing districts it found them prepared to bear it with a firmness and resolution which extorted the admiration of the civilized world. During that famine the original society flourished in spite of the heavy drain caused by the withdrawal of their deposits by many of the members, who were compelled by want of work to fall back on these resources. They, of course, underwent some temporary inconvenience, and during these trying years there was a diminution in the amount of their business and their profits. But this was merely a temporary reverse, and as soon as the famine ceased, and indeed even before it had ceased, the societies resumed their onward course, doing more business, obtaining greater profits, and paying larger dividends than ever. During the severest distress, when there was a kind of run on them for money, there was never the slightest hesitation or delay in paying those who wished to withdraw their money in accordance with the rules of the societies. And this was the case, not in Rochdale only, but in almost every part of the manufacturing districts in which co-operative societies had been founded on the Rochdale model.

We have seen that in 1852 co-operative societies were enrolled under the Friendly

Societies Act, which prevented them from dealing with any persons except their own members. In that year they obtained an act entitled the "Industrial and Provident Societies Act," giving power to such societies to. carry on trade as general dealers, and to sell to non-members, but still maintaining certain disabilities, one of which prohibited them from occupying more than a single acre of land. In 1855 this act was amended by another, which, while it relieved them from some restrictions, still prevented their holding more than an acre of land. This was in force till 1862, when the prohibition as to land was removed; and it was not till after 1867, when the "Industrial and Provident Societies Act" was passed, chiefly to explain some of the clauses of the preceding act relating to the payment of income-tax by members, that remaining disabilities were removed, and the societies were placed on the same footing as individuals with regard to land, building, and mortgages, as well as to trade undertakings.

Of course several attempts were made to bring cargoes of cotton from the Southern ports by ships breaking the blockade, and some of them were successful; but the difficulty experienced and the expense incurred in such enterprises made them of little service, and of course so increased the price of the comparatively small quantity of cotton they brought, that it produced little or no effect on the market, and only slightly increased the supply. On the other hand, numbers of vessels were fitted out in European ports as blockade runners, and several were equipped in our

ship-yards for the purpose of breaking through the obstructions or evading the vigilance of the Federal war vessels, which prevented the ingress of goods, arms, and medicines to the South. Several of these succeeded, and the trade their owners were able to do, was so profitable that blockade-running became a kind of excitement among some of the merchant captains and adventurers, who shared

1 William Nassau Molesworth (History of England), to whom every student of the features of this phase of social progress should be indebted.

PRIVATEERING THE ALABAMA.

their risk. This it was next to impossible to prevent, for of course it was pretended that the voyage was to be to some foreign port or to the North; but worse than this system of private adventuring was the construction, by some of our large shipbuilders, of ships of war for the South, under the pretext that they were for foreign governments. This of course was in direct contravention of the proclamation of neutrality, and our government was bound to use every effort to prevent it. The Federals had already bitterly complained that we did not use ordinary vigilance, and that anything like a careful inquiry would prove that vessels to be armed for the Confederates, and almost undisguised as vessels of war were being built here under the shallowest pretences, of agents, who scarcely took the trouble to say more than that they were for a foreign order; while the contractors knew perfectly well for what service they were intended, and connived at, or even invented, means for concealing their destination.

Perhaps a more close investigation would have taken place but for the irritating demands made by the Federal minister. For instance, a strongly worded and angry remonstrance had represented that British subjects were being enlisted in the Southern ranks; and Earl Russell not unnaturally replied that it was not with the knowledge and was against the injunctions of the government, at the same time asking whether the Federal authorities had taken care to exclude sailors and other subjects of Great Britain from joining their forces.

All this was provoking, but such misunderstandings did not make it less the duty of our government to inquire keenly into the destination of every vessel above a certain tonnage and of a certain build-to say nothing of ships . obviously intended for hostile purposes, which were in course of construction in private dockyards. The privateers which went out of Charleston scoured the seas and did some damage to Federal ships here and there, and one of them, the Sumter, under the command of Captain Semmes, was destroyed by a Northern war steamer after a short career of devastation; but the really formidable vessels of

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this kind appeared afterwards, and were furnished by shipbuilders in England to the order of any person who could pay for them; for, as was afterwards argued, the United States government had not abolished privateering, and there was certainly no law to prevent our shipbuilders, any more than those of foreign nations, from taking orders for such vessels. One of these, which was built at Birkenhead professedly for the Italian government, and was named the Oreto, was suspected by the American minister to be intended for the Confederates; but though our government was apprised of her probable destination there was no law to detain her, and soon after she left our shores she became the Florida, Confederate ́ privateer. In three months she had destroyed thirteen and captured two vessels. Other privateers followed, and it was pretty well suspected that certain formidable rams and ironclad vessels of war which were being laid down were, in spite of prohibition and proclamations of neutrality, to be completed for the Southern States, on the probably safe speculation that they would be suffered to slip out of English jurisdiction with little inquiry and no demand for proofs of their real purpose.

It will be seen, of course, that the distinction between a privateer which might be supplied by a British firm of shipbuilders, and an acknowledged vessel of war which might not, was disappearing, and at last a case occurred which almost obliterated that distinction entirely, and made it necessary to enter into prolonged and difficult arbitrations as an alternative to actual hostilities.

In the latter part of 1862 a vessel was being completed in one of the dockyards of the Mersey, and there could be no doubt that it was intended for the Confederate service. The builders were the Messrs. Laird, a firm, the former head of which, represented Birkenhead in the House of Commons, and was urgent to induce the government to recognize the Southern States of America as an independent nationality. There was little if any attempt at concealment. The progress of the vessel, which was known by the somewhat mysterious name of the "290," was duly recorded

in newspaper paragraphs, and nobody hesi- | frequently burned. For nearly two years this tated to speak of her as a Confederate cruiser.

There was perhaps no actual technical evidence, no absolute proof of it, and when Mr. Adams, the United States minister, called the attention of our government to the fact that this ship was obviously intended for the Confederate government, Earl Russell asked for proofs. Evidence was forwarded which was sufficient in the opinion of Mr. Adams to warrant the detention of the vessel, and it was accompanied by the opinion of Sir Robert Collier, an English lawyer of such eminence that his decision would have been regarded as having great weight in any court of national or international law. He declared that the vessel should be detained by the collector of customs at Liverpool, and said that it appeared difficult to make out a stronger case of infringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which, if not enforced on this occasion, would be little better than a dead letter. Earl Russell, however, still waited to ask the opinion of the law officers of the crown. The queen's advocate was unwell and more delay ensued, the end of which was that the vessel "290" had shipped off to sea before that opinion was obtained. Earl Russell long afterwards acknowledged that he ought to have been satisfied with the opinion of Sir Robert Collier, and there can be no doubt that our neutrality was nearly as much in question by the building of this vessel as it would have been by the construction of avowed ships of war for the Confederate service. Mr. Forster afterwards said she was built by British shipbuilders, and manned by a British crew. She drew prizes to destruction under a British flag, and was paid for by money borrowed from British capitalists. At all events she went on her destructive career. She went from Liverpool to Terceira, hoisted the Confederate flag, received on board Captain Semmes, the former commander of the Sumter, as her commander, and had her name changed to the Alabama. It was declared that this heavily armed privateer used the British flag to decoy unfortunate merchantmen of the Northern States to approach her, then ran up the Confederate colours and captured the prize, which was

went on, for the Alabama did not mean fighting and kept well away from the Federal ships of war. The system of Confederate privateering, aided by this last formidable example of British shipbuilding, went far to detain the American mercantile marine in its own ports, and to put an end for a time to American commerce. At length the Federal war steamer Kearsarge caught sight of her and started in pursuit. The Alabama went into Cherbourg harbour, whence she had to come out to fight her antagonist, which was waiting with steam up and guns ready. The two ships were not very unequal in size and armaments, and a naval duel ensued which lasted about an hour, with the result that the Alubama went down, her last gun being fired almost as its mouth touched the water's edge, and that the captain and those of the crew who survived then jumped overboard and were rescued by the crew of an English yacht in conjunction with the men of the Kearsarge.

The circumstances attending the building of the Alabama, while they seemed to give impunity to English firms to construct other privateers for the Confederates, were too flagrant an evasion of the laws of neutrality to be repeated. At the same time Earl Russell could not quite make up his mind to prompt and decided action. In fact the law was not altogether certain, and a more determined statesman would have acted without reference to the niceties of possible legal decisions, and would have had the law altered as soon as possible. Lord Palmerston probably would have done so, but Lord Palmerston, like most of his colleagues, probably had a notion that the South would soon achieve independence; and the tone which had been assumed by the Federal government in their despatches had, to use a common figure of speech, "put his back up." He had even declared in the House of Commons that it was not for this country to make any change in her laws for the convenience or at the requisition of another state. Rather a strange declaration from the minister who had actually been defeated over the "Conspiracy to Murder Bill," which he had once been ready to adopt at the instigation, if not

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