History of the Rochdale Cooperative
The Rochdale cooperative is probably the most well-known of all the
early cooperatives. While it was not the first
cooperative business, it was the first to be successful over a long
period of time. The Rochdale cooperative also became well-known
for their operating principles (the Rochdale principles) for
cooperative business. The establishment of the Rochdale cooperative
is basically a case study in how one group of workers organized
themselves in response to the changing economic times of the
Industrial Revolution. The details also form
an interesting story in and of themselves.
Background
In the early 1840s, Rochdale,
England was a small town of about 25,000
people. For years its economy had been dominated by the textile
industry (with coal mining and farming as the next most common
industries), and Rochdale was famous for its flannels. But as the
Industrial Revolution progressed and textile production became
mechanized, workers struggled to maintain the standard of living that
they had known in the past. Many weavers lived in poverty; ``from all
around came reports of weavers clothed in rags, who had sold all their
furniture, who worked 16 hours a day yet lived on a diet of oatmeal,
potatoes, onion porridge and treacle'' [1]. No
minimum wage existed and salaries were commonly below the equivalent
of 10 pence per week in modern terms [2]. Moreover,
pollution had increased and public sanitation system was both poor in
quality and quantity. In fact, in 1848 the mean life expectancy in
Rochdale was only 21 years, six years less than the English national
average [3]. Women in surrounding areas were
reported ``to give birth standing up, their arms round two
other women, because they had no change of bedclothing; the very
people who had spent their lives weaving clothes and blankets for the
world had come down to this, rags on their backs and no blankets on
their beds'' [4].
With this as background, it is not hard to understand why workers were
looking for a way to better to survive amid such severe living
conditions. Since weavers were skilled tradesmen, they came from a
long tradition of self-educated people and had been imbued with a deep
sense of social equality and independence. As mentioned previously,
several courses of action were possible including political action
(e.g., lobbying Parliament for fairer labor laws), moral action (e.g.,
appealing to religion or temperance societies for moral discipline),
and economic action (e.g., organizing labor unions and strikes).
However, past efforts in each of these directions had not achieved
lasting change and, in fact, would not do so for decades. Hence people were
looking for new ideas that could help pull them out of their poverty
and desperation.
A Co-op is Born
The writings of Robert Owen and William King had not been lost on the
workers of Rochdale and, actually, in 1830 an attempt at cooperation
had been made in Rochdale by flannel weavers in the Rochdale Friendly
Co-operative Society but failed due to an overextension of credit to
members. In 1843, weavers began meeting to try to start a similar
organization but again faced the problem of how to obtain enough
capital. They originally decided to try to get an advance of twopence
per week from their employers. If the employers would not agree, then
the weavers were to ``strike'' or ``turn out'' those employers and be
supported by a subscription of twopence per week from the weavers who
remained at work [5]. While some employers made the
required advances, many did not, and the effort failed. They then
resolved to take the twopence that they were paying into the Weaver's
Union and collect it into their own fund [6].
However, at twopence per week (240 pence=20 shillings=1 pound) the
accumulation was slow, and members began to despair to such an extent
that some suggested that the fund be dissolved and redistributed back
to the contributors [7].
Finally, on August 15, 1844, a committee of members met and resolved to
form the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. Members would be
required to purchase at least one share in the society at the cost of
one pound per share. The share could be paid in installments of at
least three pence per week until the full pound was collected.
Initially twenty-eight people subscribed to the effort and,
interestingly, many different perspectives from the Rochdale working
class were represented among
these founders.
Several members of
the group had been members of the previous cooperative venture in
Rochdale, while others were well-versed in King's periodical
The Co-operator.
Still others had advocated previous
Chartist (reform via universal suffrage) and and Teetotaller efforts
(reform via abstinence from intoxicating drink) movements.
Furthermore, while over half made their living in the textile industry
not all were weavers (contrary to some accounts); other types of
artisans represented included shoemaker, clogger, tailor, joiner, and
cabinetmaker [8]. Hence the members of this new
group had a significant amount of experience in cooperation and
related reform-minded efforts, and, despite all the hardship described
above, were probably driven more by idealism than by
hunger [9].
 |
| All that remains today of the original Toad Lane in
Rochdale---now a conservation area with the original Rochdale
Pioneers' store as a museum. [I1] |
The group developed a set of rules based in part upon those of the
nearby Manchester Rational Sick and Burial
Society [10] and officially registered with the
Registrar of Friendly Societies on 24 October 1844, thereby
establishing themselves as a legal organization under the acts of
Parliament. By this time the number of subscribers had grown to
forty, and so by December the initial twenty-eight pounds of capital
had been collected. The society arranged to rent the ground floor of
an old warehouse for ten pounds per year (although this was only
agreed to by the owner after one of the members of the society put the
lease under his own name!). After paying this rent and making some
necessary repairs, only fifteen pounds remained. With this amount
they purchased ``twenty eight pounds of butter, fifty six pounds of
sugar, six hundredweight of flour, a sack of oatmeal, and some tallow
candles. One local shopkeeper boasted, with some justification, that
he could come and cart the whole stock away in a
wheelbarrow'' [11].
The Opening
The modest shop officially opened for business on ``the longest evening
of the year,'' December 21, 1844. George Holyoake, one the early
Pioneers and most prominent chroniclers of the Rochdale effort,
painted the following scene:
A few of the co-operators had clandestinely assembled to witness their
denouement: and there they stood, in that dismal lower room of the
warehouse, like the conspirators under Guy Fawkes in the Parliamentary
cellars, debating on whom should devolve the temerity taking down the
shutters, and displaying their humble preparations. One did not like
to do it, and another did not like to be seen the shop when it was
done: however, having gone so far there was no choice but to go
farther, and at length one bold fellow, utterly reckless of
consequences, rushed at the shutters, and in a few minutes Toad Lane
was in a titter. [12]
The "titter" extended to group of lads who had gathered to make fun by
... peeping with ridiculous impertinence round the corners,
ventilating their opinion at the top of their voices or standing
before the door, inspecting, with pertinacious insolence, the scanty
arrangement of butter and oatmeal: at length, they exclaimed in a
chorus, ``Aye, the owd weaver's shop is opened at
last.'' [13]
Yet these ``doffers''-called so because they ``doffed'' or removed
the bobbins from the spindles in the mills-were to be the least of
the shop's problems.
 |
| Recreation of the Pioneers' original store with its
simple fittings. [I2] |
Because of the society's small amount of capital, it had to purchase
products in small quantities, often with the consequence that their
goods were of lower quality and higher price than their competitors.
Hours were limited to Monday evening from 7 pm-9 pm and Saturday
evening from 6 pm-11 pm and the furnishings were
spare [14]. Indeed, even some of the wives of the
Pioneers were initially ashamed to shop there [15].
In addition, some of the members of the store were reluctant to shop
there fearing reprisals by other local shopkeepers to whom they were
in debt [16]. Yet the majority opinion was that the
extra inconvenience and cost were worth the ``pure quality, good
weight, honest measure, and fair dealing with the establishment,
buying without higgling, and selling without
fraud'' [17]. This was important because
adulteration of goods was
a common practice by many shopkeepers of the day. Examples ranged from the
harmless additions of water to milk, alum to flour (to whiten it), and
potatoes, beans, and peas to flour (to bulk it out) to the more
extreme cases of adding ground limestone to flour, opium to beer,
white arsenic to gin, and (allegedly) burnt bones in
bread [18]. The purity of the goods sold by the
Pioneers would later become one of their primary selling points to the
general public.
Conclusion
Growth was slow but after three months ``they were able to open every
weekday evening except Tuesday, and they added tea and tobacco to
their stock'' [19]. At the end of the first year, the
total takings were a modest 710 pounds, the membership had risen to
74, their capital had grown to 181 pounds, and they had made a surplus
of 22 pounds [20]. Six years later in 1850
membership had increased to 600, capital was more than 2299 pounds and
sales exceeded 300 pounds per week. The reasons for the success of
the Pioneers in this cooperative venture are numerous and come from
both the their Rochdale principles and general circumstances.
Side Bar: List of the Rochdale Founders
Holyoake lists the twenty-eight
original members of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers
to be [21]:
| James Smithies | John Scrowcroft |
| Charles Howarth | John Hill |
| William Cooper | John Holt |
| David Brooks | James Standring |
| John Collier | James Manock |
| Samuel Ashworth | Joseph Smith |
| Miles Ashworth | William Taylor |
| William Mallalieu | Robert Taylor |
| George Healey | Benjamin Rudman |
| James Daly | James Wilkinson |
| James Tweedale | John Garside |
| Samuel Tweedale | John Bent |
| John Kershaw | Ann Tweedale |
| James Maden | James Bamford |
Miles Ashworth was the first president of the society [22].
 |
| Three of the original Pioneers---William Cooper,
Charles Howarth and James Smithies. [I3] |
Side Bar: Rochdale and Housing Cooperatives
 |
| Probably the first ever attempt at Co-operative
housing---the Rochdale Land and Building Company cottages at the rear
of Spotland Road, Rochdale. [I4] |
After the establishment of a cooperative store, the Rochdale Pioneers
had the goal of establishing housing for their members. It took time
to establish the necesary capital and organization, but in 1861 the
Rochdale Land and Building Company was formed. Its aim was to build
``a superior class of dwelling for the working
man'' [23]. The company was registered as a private
limited company but it hoped that most of the shares would be
purchased by prospective tenants. It built 25 small cottages on Spotland
Road in Rochdale, although due to the high cost of the land and
construction most of the houses were still too high for the common
worker. In 1867 the main Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society also
began building a cooperative estate consisting of 84 houses in five
blocks (naming two the streets Pioneer St. and Equitable St.) and in
1869 took over the Land and Building Company [24].
By the end of the nineteenth century, the society owned over 300
houses and had also established the Co-operative Building Society
which became a major lender to those members who wished to build their
own homes [25].
References
- [1]
-
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class,
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1968)
[as quoted in Johnston Birchall, Co-op: The People's Business
(Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 1994), p. 34].
- [2]
-
Johnston Birchall, Co-op: The People's Business
(Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 1994), pp. 38-39.
- [3]
-
Birchall, p. 35.
- [4]
-
Birchall, pp. 35-37.
- [5]
-
G. J. Holyoake, The History of the Rochdale Pioneers,
(Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1918), 10th ed., p. 4.
- [6]
-
Birchall, p. 41.
- [7]
-
Holyoake, p. 9.
- [8]
-
Birchall, p. 42.
- [9]
-
Birchall, p. 42.
- [10]
-
Holyoake, p. 11.
- [11]
-
Birchall, p. 43.
- [12]
-
Holyoake, p. 13-14.
- [13]
-
Holyoake, p. 14.
- [14]
-
Holyoake, p. 18.
- [15]
-
Birchall, p. 43.
- [16]
-
Holyoake, p. 14.
- [17]
-
Holyoake, p. 15.
- [18]
-
Birchall, p. 13.
- [19]
-
Birchall, p. 43.
- [20]
-
Birchall, p. 43.
- [21]
-
Holyoake, p. 86.
- [22]
-
Holyoake, p. 156.
- [23]
-
Almanac of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society (1861)
[quoted in Birchall, p. 50].
- [24]
-
Birchall, pp. 50.
- [25]
-
Birchall, pp. 50.
Image References
- [I1]
-
Birchall, p. 42.
- [I2]
-
Birchall, p. 44.
- [I3]
-
Birchall, p. 41.
- [I4]
-
Birchall, p. 49.
Copyright 1999 by Ronald Kumon
Laurel House Co-op & Laurel Net Cooperative /
Austin, Texas, USA /
Created 11 Mar 1999 / Updated 02 May 1999
This page is published by Laurel Net Cooperative, a registered student
organization. This page is not an official publication of The
University of Texas at Austin and does not represent the views of The
University or its officers.
