Excerpt from Manual for Co-Operators: Prepared at the Request of the Co-Operative Congress, Held at Gloucester, in April, 1879; And Revised 1888 It is needless to give in any detail the history of the movement in the first years after the passing of the Act which legalised industrial societies. They grew and thrived apace under its protection, but soon began to understand from their own individual experience that some union between them was necessary, if the full benefit of the Act was to be realised. What each society had done for its individual members, a central organisation to which all might belong might do for the societies as a body. The chance of injurious rivalry between them might thus be avoided, commercial advantages might be obtained, and the sound principles and high tone which characterised the early associations might be preserved and extended to the whole body. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.