[C. Mackay], ‘Co-Operative Societies’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1867)

For the time being, the working classes, with their rights and wrongs, real or supposed, are lords of the ascendant in political and social discussion. Their relations towards their employers, or, vice versa, the relations of their employers towards them, are deemed of importance enough to be mentioned in the Royal Speech, and recommended to the attention of Parliament. The foregoing particulars apply to the co-operative associations of working men that have been entirely founded and conducted by themselves – in which they have studied their own wants, interests, and idiosyncrasies, and neither sought for nor permitted any aid or direction from persons not moving in their own sphere. The wonder is, that all the benefits of co-operation in marketing should be left to mechanics and day-labourers, and that clerks, shopmen, and professional men with small incomes, and / probably with large families, have not combined, after the fashion of the Rochdale Pioneers, and become their own tradesmen.