STORY OF THE FORMATION.

THE MUTUAL IMPROVEMENT CLASS; THE GARRET IN SUGARSTREET; AMATEUR SHOPKEEPERS; THE FIRST BALANCE SHEET.

"Large streams from little fountains flow;

Tall oaks from little acorns grow."

T was in such circumstances and under such un

IT

favourable conditions as are portrayed in the introductory chapters that co-operation was first started in Leigh.

It is an old and true saying that "necessity is the mother of invention," and oftentimes when one is in the last extremity of despair a helping hand is held out, or a sudden inspiration points to a way out of the difficulty.

It will be readily admitted that so far as the workers in the silk trade were concerned, and they were the great bulk of the inhabitants in this district, at that time, they were indeed in the direst distress.

It has often been argued by the interested opponents of co-operation that the members are simply deluded by the dividend system, and that they could spend their money to better advantage with private trades

men.

It cannot be denied that the great mass of co-operators throughout the country consists of the better class working people; meaning by this, those who manage by their skill, industry and thrift to keep themselves above the level of what has been described as the "submerged tenth." The better class working people are therefore, in the main, the careful and thrifty; and the argument of the private tradesmen, as stated above, amounts to saying that these millions of thrifty and careful people, have not sufficient sense and judgment to decide for themselves where and when they get the best value for their money, and that they, the dis-interested private tradesmen, are the ones best able to advise them as to how they ought to spend their money.

There can be no question that the conditions under which these silk weavers lived were such as to make it absolutely necessary that they should weigh and measure with the utmost care the value they got for their hard-earned wages.

If co-operation had been built simply on what has been described as the fetich" and the delusion of the dividend system, without any real and substantial benefit being derived, it would very soon have been found out, and could not possibly have stood the test of over sixty years by the shrewd and practical men of the North of England, and have been embraced as it is to-day by nearly 2 millions of members and doing. a business of nearly 100 millions per annum.

The men who initiated the movement in Leigh were certainly not misguided dreamers, or likely to be easily 'deluded." They were a small body of intelligent working men, who had formed a kind of mutual improvement class, and had been meeting together for several years in a garret over a newspaper shop at the corner of Sugar-street and Newton-street, which was then