Man, the social creator / by Henry Demarest Lloyd.

  • Henry Demarest Lloyd
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Man, the social creator / by Henry Demarest Lloyd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hope, intelligence, is the incarnation in an economic realisation of the inspired and prophetic love for humanity which burned so pure a flame in Robert Owen and in the Christian Socialists like Kingsley, Thomas Hughes, Ludlow, Maurice, and in the humble but immortal pioneers, the weavers of Rochdale. Spurred to their enter¬ prise by bitter poverty, these sublime men put on their first programme, in their little back room used for a shop in Toad Lane, that their purpose was to help their fellow- workers form other societies, to found industrial cities, and to reform government and education. Their capital of brotherhood, plus a few pence, has grown into a business of $350,000,000 a year—the greatest economic marvel of the nineteenth century, far more remarkable than the trusts and gigantic aggregations of the ordinary commerce. The latter has only grown higher powers of an old institution, but in co-operation there is some¬ thing new in motive and something new in results. The co-operators are only men, and their movement to-day shows the plain signs of that loss in intensity which always comes with extension. But no one can go among them, read their literature, hear them speak in their meetings, see the sacrifices that they make in money and energy in their devotion to their propaganda by journals, lectures, personal effort, and not be stirred both as an idealist and an economist. “ It is a real piece of the Kingdom of God actually arrived,” said an Oxford visitor, after seeing the co-operative work at Kettering. On the front of handsome buildings in England, put up, owned and operated by co-operative men and women, one sees carved in stone the motor words of the movement— “The Helping Hand”—“Unity”—“ Equality’’—“All for each and each for all.” And these fine sentiments of brotherhood are backed up by advances in cash, not as
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