Tenants' co-partnership societies.

One of the most recent and promising developments of English
co-operation is the tenants' co-partnership movement for the common
ownership of groups of houses, which the society owning them lets out to
its members. These societies are but few as yet, but they have sprung up
rapidly and promise great usefulness and extension. Somewhat similar
societies have long been a recognized branch of co-operation on the
continent of Europe.

The movement outside Britain.

Such, then, are the history and present extent of co-operation in Great
Britain. Turning abroad we find in almost all civilized countries,
besides other forms of co-operation, important and growing movements
roughly similar to those above described, but on the whole less
identified with the working classes and less coloured by their social
and economic ideals. In France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and
elsewhere, there are very important co-operative distributive movements
looking to Rochdale as their prototype; and in the United States of
America there are at least continual attempts to spread Rochdale
co-operation. Of these foreign stores, however, many exhibit important
modifications, such as unlimited liability, and selling at cost price,
or between that and market prices. On the whole we may say that Rochdale
Co-operation is the most extended and the most typical. It, and the
workshop movement springing from Fourier, and the socialist co-operation
of Belgium and elsewhere, are certainly the forms which have most of the
ideal of democratic equality and social reconstruction. Other forms look
more to the money benefits accruing to the members, seeking to
supplement the present order of society, rather than to bring in a new
order. Among these other forms--separate in origin, in methods, and
largely in spirit--the most important are credit co-operation, or
people's banking, and agricultural co-operation, two forms until
recently unknown in the British Islands.

Germany and credit co-operation.

Confusion has sometimes arisen from the fact that while Rochdale
Co-operation sets itself against "credit," continental co-operation is
more concerned with obtaining credit for its members than with anything
else. But credit is used in two senses. The English workman employed for
wages is against the credit which means spending them before they are
earned: continental co-operation seeks by collective credit to put into