ABSTRACT
The association of consumers has, its own distinctive social task, and in some of its aspects no plan of financial partnership has much value, either economic or moral. Especially is this so on the more propagandist side of the movement, and in the extension of distributive co-operation, with its attendant social advantages, to those low down in the industrial scale. Invaluable as an instrument in the process of industrial evolution, and still often indispensable, the modern trade union can hardly be said, in itself, to represent the most satisfactory and the most durable relationship. The commonest type of co-operative productive society in England, apart from those started by the consumer's associations, rarely rests upon the basis of individual membership, and finds its chief support in the distributive societies themselves, which, subscribing a portion of the capital and, with similar societies, being generally the chief customers of the productive society, naturally take an important share in its management.
