ABSTRACT
The first Association in connection with the movement, the Working Tailors' Association, was started in Castle Street East, Oxford Street, as Hughes has related in the second ‘Tract on Christian Socialism’ on the 11th February 1850, with 12 associates under Walter Cooper as Manager. When the Tract itself was published there were already four other associations whose addresses were advertised on its cover— the North London Needlewomen's Association (afterwards the Working Needlewomen's Association) a body of a less democratic character, with a superintending committee of ladies,—two associations of Working Shoemakers, and one of Working Printers. In June of that year Lechevalier was delivering a course of lectures in the small room at Exeter Hall, Neale projecting an agricultural colony, and there were eight associations at work, comprising besides those already named a Working Bakers' Association, a Working Builders' Association (succeeded by a North London Working Builders' Association), an additional Association of Shoemakers, and the London Co-operative Stores afterwards developed into the Central Co-operative Agency. Two of the three Working Shoemakers' associations however soon came to grief, and had to be amalgamated into one, which now became simply the Working Shoemakers' Association…
