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. In England and Scotland alone, the 1400 stores and two
Wholesale Cooperative Societies controlled in 1914 about 420 million
dollars of retail distributive trade and employed nearly 50,000
operatives in processes of production in their own workshops and
factories.




CHAPTER 3

THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
LABOR


With the practical disintegration of the organized labor movement in the
seventies, two nuclei held together and showed promise of future growth.
One was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor" and the other a small
trade union movement grouped around the International Cigar Makers'