By this same device on purchases, and the
automatic accumulation of part of the profit in the capital of each
society and in that of the Wholesales, it has demonstratedly added to
the personal wealth of the manual working class, and has, alike in Great
Britain, and in other countries, afforded both a valuable financial
reserve to the wage earners against all emergencies and an instrument
for their elevation from the penury to which competition is always
depressing them. By making possible the upgrowth of great business
enterprises in working class hands, the Cooperative Movement has,
without divorcing them from their fellows, given to thousands of the
manual workers both administrative experience and a well-grounded
confidence; and has thus enabled them to take a fuller part in political
and social life than would otherwise have been probable."--_New
Statesman_, May 30, 1916. "Special Supplement on the Cooperative
Movement."
Indeed the success of the consumer's cooperative movement in European
countries has been marvellous, even measured by bare figures. In all
Europe in 1914, there were about 9,000,000 cooperators of whom one-third
lived in Great Britain and not less than two and a half millions in
Germany.
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