undation two large and successful societies were started
in Oldham, having between them by 1860 more than 3000 members, and
doing a business of some L80,000 a year. In Liverpool, Manchester,
Birmingham, and other cities similar societies grew up at the same
period. In 1863 there were some 454 cooeperative societies of this kind
in existence, 381 of them together having 108,000 members and doing an
annual business of about L2,600,000. One hundred and seventeen of the
total number of societies were in Lancashire and 96 in Yorkshire. Many
of these eventually came to have a varied and extensive activity. The
Leeds Cooeperative Society, for instance, had in 1892 a grist mill, 69
grocery and provision stores, 20 dry goods and millinery shops, 9 boot
and shoe shops, and 40 butcher shops. It had 12 coal depots, a
furnishing store, a bakery, a tailoring establishment, a boot and shoe
factory, a brush factory, and acted as a builder of houses and
cottages. It had at that time 29,958 members. The work done by these
cooeperative stores is known as "distributive cooeperation," or
"cooeperation in distribution." It combines the seller and the buyer
into one group. From one point of view the society is a store-keeping
body, buying goods at wholesale and selling them at retail. From
another point of view, exactly the same group of persons, the members
of the society, are the customers of the store, the purchasers and
consumers of the goods. Whenever any body of men form an association
to carry on an establishment which sells them the goods they need,
dividing the profits of the buying and selling among the members of
the association, it is a society for distributive cooeperation.

A variation from the Rochdale plan is that used in three or perhaps
more societies organized in London between 1856 and 1875 by officials
and employees of the government. These are the Civil Service Supply
Association, the Civil Service Cooeperative Society, and the Army and
Navy Stores. In these, instead of buying at wholesale and selling at
retail rates, sharing the profits at the end of a given term, they
sell as well as buy at wholesale rates, except for the slight increase
necessary to pay the expenses of carrying on the store. In other
words, the members obtain their goods for use at cheap rates instead
of dividing up a business profit.

But these and still other variations have had only a slight connection
with the working-class cooeperative movement