ABSTRACT
It has been usual for historians of the co-operative movement to divide its development into two distinct phases. Sidney Pollard has written that the first phase began
with the publications of Robert Owen in the second decade of the century, rising to a peak of influence in the years 1828-34 and ending with the failure of Queenwood, in 1846; and the second, heralded by the foundation of the Rochdale Pioneers’ Society in 1844, registering an expansion around the year 1850 and becoming established about ten years later.1
