ABSTRACT
John Holmes was a trustee of a successful co-operative flour mill in Leeds – the People’s Mill – and a frequent speaker and writer on co-operative issues. In the introduction to this pamphlet, Holmes explained that it had emerged from discussions that had taken place at the inaugural meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science held in Birmingham in 1857, a Liberal middle-class think tank that provided an important forum for the propagation of co-operation and opened up an important space for dialogue across classes in Victorian Britain. The great mass of the people are totally ignorant of even the name of Cooperation. Hitherto the cultured among political economists, have opposed and doubted its effects. Co-operation will do more than it has done, if people will but let it: but it will be wrong to blame Co-operation for failure, wrought by its bitterest opponents, under the guise of being its friends.
