educate the people who are taking part in that
movement; for unless you educate them you find
they are too easily led away by interested people, the
money-lenders especially of the place, who find that
their interest is going down as co-operation spreads,
and that they cannot get as much out of the co-
operators as they did out of the isolated and helpless
individual workers. Now this was seen long ago in
England, and you have no more striking illustration
of that than the great co-operative enterprise which
is known by the name of the town in which it started,
the name of Rochdale. Twenty poor men founded
that first really co-operative effort. I am not ignoring
what Robert Owen did, but the practical beginning
of it lay with the Rochdale Pioneers. They put by a
few pence week by week until they accumulated the
vast capital of £28, little more than Rs. 400 ; with
that, greatly daring, they opened their first shop, and
they laid down at that time the principles on which
every great co-operative movement since has been
founded ; and if you turn to' what they did, you find
that they made education part of their co-operative
work. They put aside 2^ per cent of their profits and
•devoted that 2\ per cent to education, knowing that
money given to education out of profits is an invest-
ment and not a gift, and that as it is invested in edu-
cation, your next generation will rise up more capable
of managing its own affairs, and so, generation after
generation, power and capacity will spread; and if