ABSTRACT

Chapter 3 explores the early problems that consumer co-operatives faced in the UK and the continued expansion of co-operative ideas and institutions. These include the questions of capitalization and supply chain management, which highlighted the need to look at co-operative financing and wholesaling. The Rochdale consumer co-operative movement spread into Europe and worker co-operatives developed in France and the Italian states. There were also significant developments in the German states with Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch and Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen promoting their ideas of financial co-operatives to resolve problems for workers and farmers trying to obtain credit following famine and the Revolution of 1848. This period also saw the spread of co-operatives to Europe, North America and Australasia.