ice to the worker, and the worker who follows that
advice and who lives from hand to mouth easily becomes a pauper. For
him a short spell of unemployment means starvation and despair. This is
evidently a state of affairs which Socialist agitators favour because
it will increase their following.--Another prominent Socialist writer
says: "Among the many quack remedies for poverty, the most venerable
and the most illusive is thrift or saving. The habit of saving is
always represented by the rich as the highest of social virtues; but it
is one they are careful rarely to practise themselves"[856]--If the
rich are so wasteful, how is it then that the national capital, held by
the rich, as the Socialists tell us, has increased from
_4,000,000,000l._ to _12,000,000,000l._ during the last sixty years,
notwithstanding huge capital losses caused by suffering industries? The
decay of agriculture alone has caused a capital loss which approximates
_2,000,000,000l._

The great co-operative movement in England was created by the
celebrated Rochdale Pioneers, the name given to the weavers of
Rochdale who started it. On a rainy night in November 1843, twelve men
met in the back room of a mean inn and commenced the co-operative
movement by organising themselves as "The Rochdale Society of
Equitable Pioneers." They agreed to pay twenty pence a week into a
common fund, but only a few of these twelve men were able to pay their
pence that evening. They began by buying a little tea and sugar at
wholesale prices, which they sold to their members at little more than
cost. In a year their number had grown to twenty-eight, and they had
collected _28l._, with which they rented a little store and stocked it
with _15l._ worth of flour. During the first year they made no profit.
In its second year the society had seventy-four members, _181l._ in
funds, _710l._ of business, and made _22l._ profit, 2-1/2 per cent. of
which was used as a fund for education.[857]

Gradually but constantly growing, this movement has branched out in
every direction, and the result is that there are now in Great Britain
1,685 co-operative societies with 2,263,562 members. These
co-operative societies are manufacturers, ship owners, bankers,
brokers, factors, merchants, millers, printers, bookbinders, and
shopkeepers of every kind on the largest scale. The rapidly growing
assets of the various undertakings represent a value of about
_50,000,000l._, the combined nominal capi