ABSTRACT
The lower-salaried classes have on the whole held aloof even when their own occupation has had nothing to do with competing branches of distributive industry, and when, therefore, some bias against the movement might have been expected. If the classes 'above' felt that Industrial Co-operation could offer them advantages that would be as real to them as to the rank and file of the existing members, there is no reason to think that these advantages would not be secured, and the 'upward' borders of the movement be rapidly extended. According to the secretary of the Co-operative Union, 'it is well known that the bulk of the membership of co-operative societies consists of persons who are not in receipt of taxable incomes'. Thus, from various causes, social, economic, and moral, the co-operative store movement has run its sturdy course almost exclusively in the fairly well-defined channels of the 'better sort' of working men and women, artisans and mechanics, miners and mill-workers.
