ABSTRACT
The Rochdale Pioneer Society was founded on the basis of subscriptions from working men which set up a fund for the purchase of essential items. The so-called Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) was established in Manchester and expanded rapidly, with close links to trade unions. Britain's free trade policy brought the country cheaper food but also more foreign manufactured goods, there by apparently strengthening the case made by E. E. Williams. Conventional accounts of Britain's economic and social transformation tend to concentrate on machine-led production, but manufactured goods do not of themselves a balanced economy make. One historian sees Britain even at the height of the industrial revolution, essentially a commercial, financial and service-based economy whose comparative advantage always lay with commerce and finance. Businessmen had bought land and set themselves up as country gentlemen long before the Industrial Revolution, and the links between land, industry and urban development were generally stronger in Britain than in other European countries.
