[11] There were many cooperative stores in the eighties and a concerted
effort to duplicate the venture of the Sovereigns was attempted as late
as 1919 under the pressure of the soaring cost of living.

[12] Where Consumers' Cooperation has worked under most favorable
conditions as in England, its achievements have been all that its most
ardent champions could have desired. Such is the picture presented by
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in the following glowing terms:

"The organization of industry by Associations of Consumers offers, as
far as it goes, a genuine alternative to capitalist ownership, because
it supersedes the capitalist power, whether individual or joint-stock,
alike in the control of the instruments of production by which the
community lives, and in the absorption of the profits, which otherwise
support a capitalist class. The ownership and control are vested in, and
the profits are distributed among, the whole community of consumers,
irrespective of their industrial wealth. Through the device of dividend
on purchases the Cooperative Movement maintains an open democracy,
through the control of this democracy of consumers it has directly or
indirectly kept down prices, and protected the wage-earning class from
exploitation by the Credit System and from the extortions of monopolist
traders and speculators. 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,