proportionate distribution of freight
traffic made, "car trusts" formed, and other non-competitive
arrangements made. In banking, clearing-house agreements have been
made, a common policy adopted in times of financial crisis, and
through gatherings of bankers a common influence exerted on
legislation and opinion. Thus in the higher as in the lower stages of
industrial life, in the great business interests, as among workingmen,
recent movements have all been away from a competitive organization of
economic society, and in the direction of combination, consolidation,
and union. Where competition still exists it is probably more intense
than ever before, but its field of application is much smaller than it
has been in the past. Government control and voluntary regulation have
alike limited the field in which competition acts.

*85. Cooeperation in Distribution.*--Another movement in the same
direction is the spread of cooeperation in its various forms. Numerous
cooeperative societies, with varying objects and methods, formed part
of the seething agitation, experimentation, and discussion
characteristic of the early years of the nineteenth century; but the
cooeperative movement as a definite, continuous development dates from
the organization of the "Rochdale Equitable Pioneers" in 1844. This
society was composed of twenty-eight working weavers of that town, who
saved up one pound each, and thus created a capital of twenty-eight
pounds, which they invested in flour, oatmeal, butter, sugar, and some
other groceries. They opened a store in the house of one of their
number in Toad Lane, Rochdale, for the sale of these articles to their
own members under a plan previously agreed to. The principal points of
their scheme, afterward known as the "Rochdale Plan," were as follows:
sale of goods at regular market prices, division of profits to members
at quarterly intervals in proportion to purchases, subscription to
capital in instalments by members, and payment of five per cent
interest. There were also various provisions of minor importance, such
as absolute purity and honesty of goods, insistance on cash payments,
devoting a part of their earnings to educational or other
self-improvement, settling all questions by equal vote. These
arrangements sprang naturally from the fact that they proposed
carrying on their store for their own benefit, alike as proprietors,
shareholders, and consumers of their goods.

The source of the pr