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103-513: Federal Retail and Trading Services (FRTS) is the central buying group for co-operative retail societies in the United Kingdom . It came into its current structure in 2015, though its predecessor was established in 1993, and it supplies almost all food bought for sale by the over 4,000 co-operative foodstores in the UK. The buying group is owned and controlled by each of its member societies but

206-400: A better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli Whitney responded to the challenge by inventing the inexpensive cotton gin . A man using a cotton gin could remove seed from as much upland cotton in one day as would previously have taken two months to process, working at the rate of one pound of cotton per day. These advances were capitalised on by entrepreneurs , of whom the best known

309-520: A cottage industry under the putting-out system . Occasionally, the work was done in the workshop of a master weaver. Under the putting-out system, home-based workers produced under contract to merchant sellers, who often supplied the raw materials. In the off-season, the women, typically farmers' wives, did the spinning and the men did the weaving. Using the spinning wheel , it took anywhere from four to eight spinners to supply one handloom weaver. The flying shuttle , patented in 1733 by John Kay —with

412-660: A food cooperative directory. Seattle-based R.E.I. , which specializes in outdoor sporting equipment, is the largest consumer cooperative in the United States. Outdoor retailer Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) in Canada was one of that country's major consumer cooperatives. In the Canadian Prairie provinces as well as British Columbia , gas stations, lumberyards, and grocery stores can be found under

515-432: A for-profit enterprise will treat the difference between cost (including labor etc.) and selling price as financial gain for investors, the consumer owned enterprise may retain this to accumulate capital in common ownership, distribute it to meet the consumer's social objectives, or refund this sum to the consumer/owner as an over-payment. (Accumulated capital may be held as reserves, or invested in growth as working capital or

618-670: A groundswell of enterprise and productivity transformed the economy in the 17th century, laying the foundations for the world's first industrial economy. Britain was already a nation of makers by the year 1700" and "the history of Britain needs to be rewritten". Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Rapid adoption of mechanized textiles spinning occurred in Britain in

721-425: A major turning point in history, comparable only to humanity's adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement. The Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists have said the most important effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for

824-548: A means to achieve social reform. They believed such a development would bring benefits such as economic democracy and justice , transparency , greater product purity, and financial benefits for consumers. One of the world's largest consumer co-operative federations operates in the UK as The Co-op , which operates over 5,500 branches of 'Co-op' branded business including Co-op Food (the UK's sixth largest supermarket chain), Co-op Funeralcare , Co-op Travel , Co-op Legal Services , and Co-op Electrical . The Co-operative Group

927-421: A mechanised industry. Other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of yarn increased greatly. Steam power was then applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories. Although mechanisation dramatically decreased

1030-727: A mixture of co-operative philosophy and practical advice about running a shop using cooperative principles. The first successful co-operative was the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers , established in England in 1844. This became the basis for the development and growth of the modern cooperative movement. As the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution forced more skilled workers into poverty, these tradesmen decided to band together to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. With lessons from prior failed attempts at co-operation in mind, they designed

1133-726: A more even thickness. The technology was developed with the help of John Wyatt of Birmingham . Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory opened in Northampton with 50 spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn in Leominster , but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Based on two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it

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1236-609: A new group of innovations in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution . These included new steel-making processes , mass production , assembly lines , electrical grid systems, the large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories. The earliest recorded use of the term "Industrial Revolution" was in July 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto , announcing that France had entered

1339-406: A number of subsequent improvements including an important one in 1747—doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving. It became widely used around Lancashire after 1760 when John's son, Robert , invented the dropbox, which facilitated changing thread colors. Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning frame and the flyer-and- bobbin system for drawing wool to

1442-1004: A project to explore potential co-operation with other European co-operative buying groups, including Coop Trading in Scandinavia. The project went nowhere, although Channel Islands Co-operative Society , which led the exploration, now buys a range of French foods from a non co-op. Consumers%27 cooperative Consumers' cooperatives often take the form of retail outlets owned and operated by their consumers, such as food co-ops . However, there are many types of consumers' cooperatives, operating in areas such as health care, insurance, housing , utilities and personal finance (including credit unions ). In some countries, consumers' cooperatives are known as cooperative retail societies or retail co-ops , though they should not be confused with retailers' cooperatives , whose members are retailers rather than consumers. Consumers' cooperatives may, in turn, form cooperative federations . These may come in

1545-410: A reverberatory furnace, coal or coke could be used as fuel. The puddling process continued to be used until the late 19th century when iron was being displaced by mild steel. Because puddling required human skill in sensing the iron globs, it was never successfully mechanised. Rolling was an important part of the puddling process because the grooved rollers expelled most of the molten slag and consolidated

1648-438: A simple, wooden framed machine that only cost about £6 for a 40-spindle model in 1792 and was used mainly by home spinners. The jenny produced a lightly twisted yarn only suitable for weft, not warp. The spinning frame or water frame was developed by Richard Arkwright who, along with two partners, patented it in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built by Kay, who was hired by Arkwright. For each spindle

1751-625: A variety of cotton cloth, some of exceptionally fine quality. Cotton was a difficult raw material for Europe to obtain before it was grown on colonial plantations in the Americas. The early Spanish explorers found Native Americans growing unknown species of excellent quality cotton: sea island cotton ( Gossypium barbadense ) and upland green seeded cotton Gossypium hirsutum . Sea island cotton grew in tropical areas and on barrier islands of Georgia and South Carolina but did poorly inland. Sea island cotton began being exported from Barbados in

1854-479: A vision that went far beyond the simple shop with which they began: That as soon as practicable, this society shall proceed to arrange the powers of production, distribution, education, and government, or in other words to establish a selfsupporting home-colony of united interests, or assist other societies in establishing such colonies. Cooperative Federalists , a term coined in the writings of Beatrice Webb , advocated forming federations of consumer cooperatives as

1957-493: A weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with fluting along the length. The water frame was able to produce a hard, medium-count thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be made in Britain. Arkwright and his partners used water power at a factory in Cromford , Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name. Samuel Crompton invented

2060-430: Is Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by such people as Kay and Thomas Highs ; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power—first horsepower and then water power—which made cotton manufacture

2163-517: Is David McKnight The Co-operative Retail Trading Group (CRTG) was established in 1993 by the Co-operative Wholesale Society to centralise buying power for retail co-operatives in the UK. By 2002 it had become the central buying group for all of the major food retailing co-operatives, after being joined by the last two independent societies. The CRTG lost its complete control over the food co-op sector in 2014 however after

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2266-624: Is by far the largest of these businesses, itself having over 4,500 outlets and operating the collective buying group . In Switzerland , the two largest supermarket chains Coop and Migros are both co-operatives and are among the country’s largest employers. In Ireland , the Dublin Food Coop has been in operation since 1983. In Scandinavia , the national cooperatives Norway , Sweden , and Denmark joined as Coop Norden in January 2002, but separated again in 2008. In Italy ,

2369-485: Is managed by The Co-operative Group on their behalf. It operates by pooling the collective £8.5bn buying power for 18 co-operative societies in the UK, allowing them to negotiate better prices from suppliers, so as to compete effectively with other UK supermarket chains. Federal Retail and Trading Services is a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) . The current FRTS Managing Director

2472-408: Is one of the largest cooperatives in the world. In addition to retail co-ops there are medical, housing, and insurance co-ops alongside institutional (workplace based) co-ops, co-ops for school teachers, and university-based co-ops. Approximately one in five of all Japanese households belongs to a local retail co-op and 90% of all co-op members are women. Nearly six million households belong to one of

2575-783: Is open to everybody. It has franchises under the brand Aliprox not owned by Eroski but sharing its product range. Its origin is in the Basque Country . In its process of expansion, it merged with the Valencia-based cooperative Consum , but the merger dissolved in 2005. It has expanded across Spain and entered France and Gibraltar. After the Spanish crisis of 2008 , Eroski sold several of its supermarkets and hypermarkets. The Co-op Bookshop sold textbooks both online and on university campuses. It also owned Australian Geographic . In 2020 its retail stores closed and its online store

2678-568: Is wholly owned by its customers, reported at 125,000 in 2012. Japan has a large and well-developed consumer cooperative movement with more than 14 million members. Retail co-ops alone had a combined turnover of 2.5 trillion Yen (21 billion U.S. Dollars) in April, 2003. Co-op Kobe (コープこうべ) in the Hyōgo Prefecture is the largest retail cooperative in Japan and, with more than 1.2 million members,

2781-593: The British Agricultural Revolution , to provide excess manpower and food; a pool of managerial and entrepreneurial skills; available ports, rivers, canals, and roads to cheaply move raw materials and outputs; natural resources such as coal, iron, and waterfalls; political stability and a legal system that supported business; and financial capital available to invest. Once industrialisation began in Great Britain, new factors can be added:

2884-611: The Clydebank Co-operative Society left the buying group. After the financial crisis in The Co-operative Group it was decided that The Group should no longer be responsible for the central buying group (the CRTG) as, if it had have collapsed, it could have led to the collapse of the independent co-operative societies as they would have had major difficulties in sourcing produce. Prior to 1998,

2987-654: The Co-Op brand . All credit unions in the United States and Canada are financial cooperatives. Tim Worstall has called the Vanguard Group a customer owned cooperative, since the owners of Vanguard funds are the funds' investors. In Puerto Rico , several Supermercados Fam Coop operate. Industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution , sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution ,

3090-551: The Coop Italia chain formed by many sub-cooperatives controlled 17.7% of the grocery market in 2005. In Finland , the S Group is owned by 22 regional cooperatives and 19 local cooperative stores, which in turn are owned by their customers. In 2005 the S Group overtook its nearest rival Kesko Oyj with a 36% share of retail grocery sales compared to Kesko's 28%. In France , Coop Atlantique owns 7 hypermarkets, 39 supermarkets, and about 200 convenience stores. In Germany ,

3193-576: The East India Company . The development of trade and the rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution. Developments in law also facilitated the revolution, such as courts ruling in favour of property rights . An entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution helped drive industrialisation in Britain, which after 1800, was emulated in Belgium, the United States, and France. The Industrial Revolution marked

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3296-714: The ReWe Group is a diversified holding company of consumer cooperatives that includes thousands of retail stores, discount stores, and tourism agencies. It ranks as the second largest supermarket chain in Germany and in the top ten cooperative groups in the world. In Spain, Eroski is a supermarket chain within Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa . As a worker-consumer hybrid , some of the personnel are hired workers and some are owner-workers. The owners include workers and mere consumers, but buying

3399-411: The bylaws or organizing document of the cooperative. Most consumer cooperatives hold regular membership meetings (often once a year). As mutually owned businesses, each member of a society has a shareholding equal to the sum they paid in when they joined. Large consumers' co-ops are run much like any other business and require workers, managers, clerks, products, and customers to keep the doors open and

3502-401: The labour movement . As employment moved to industrial areas and job sectors declined, workers began organizing and controlling businesses for themselves. Workers cooperatives were originally sparked by "critical reaction to industrial capitalism and the excesses of the industrial revolution." The formation of some workers cooperatives was meant to "cope with the evils of unbridled capitalism and

3605-488: The spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves 's spinning jenny in the same way that a mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey . Crompton's mule was able to produce finer thread than hand spinning and at a lower cost. Mule-spun thread was of suitable strength to be used as a warp and finally allowed Britain to produce highly competitive yarn in large quantities. Realising that

3708-582: The technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent ; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal , through the activities of

3811-599: The "Network Movement" ("Tokyo Seikatsusha (it means "Living Persons") Network", "Kanagawa Network Movement", and so on). They depend on consumers movement, feminism, regionalism, and prefer to anti-nuclear. These parties keep small but steady sections in prefecture and municipal assemblies. In the United States, the PCC (Puget Consumers Cooperative) Natural Markets in Seattle is the largest consumer-owned food cooperative . The National Cooperative Grocers Association maintains

3914-614: The 1,788,000 Han groups . These consist of a group of five to ten members in a neighbourhood who place a combined weekly order which is then delivered by truck the following week. A strength of Japanese consumer co-ops in recent years has been the growth of community supported agriculture in which fresh produce is sent direct to consumers from producers without going through the market. Some of co-op organisations, for example, in Tokyo metropolis and Kanagawa prefecture , manage their local political parties from 1970's; generally names itself as

4017-441: The 1650s. Upland green seeded cotton grew well on inland areas of the southern U.S. but was not economical because of the difficulty of removing seed, a problem solved by the cotton gin . A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to Natchez, Mississippi , in 1806 became the parent genetic material for over 90% of world cotton production today; it produced bolls that were three to four times faster to pick. The Age of Discovery

4120-453: The 1780s, and high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurred after 1800. Mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France. An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to

4223-691: The CRTG faced competition within the retail co-operative movement from another grocery buying group: the Consortium of Independent Co-operatives (CIC), which was led by Co-operative Retail Services until its merger with the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Several of the larger regional co-operatives of the time were members of CIC: Portsea , Scotmid , United , and Yorkshire . In 1998, the CIC supplied £1 billion of goods annually, and

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4326-468: The CRTG £2.5 billion. A new buying group, Federal Retail and Trading Services, was established in 2015 and differs from its predecessor most notably in that each member co-operative has equal control over the business, whereas previously control was proportional to total amount purchased (giving The Co-operative Group dominant control). Although each member now has an equal voice, FRTS continues to be managed by The Co-operative Group. In 2016, FRTS commenced

4429-496: The Indian industry. Bar iron was the commodity form of iron used as the raw material for making hardware goods such as nails, wire, hinges, horseshoes, wagon tires, chains, etc., as well as structural shapes. A small amount of bar iron was converted into steel. Cast iron was used for pots, stoves, and other items where its brittleness was tolerable. Most cast iron was refined and converted to bar iron, with substantial losses. Bar iron

4532-480: The Industrial Revolution, thus causing the Great Divergence . Some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts , have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and that the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians. Six factors facilitated industrialisation: high levels of agricultural productivity, such as that reflected in

4635-722: The Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society (1973) and the South Suburban Co-operative Society (1984). Consumer cooperatives utilize the cooperative principle of democratic member control , or one member/one vote. Most consumer cooperatives have a board of directors elected by and from the membership. The board is usually responsible for hiring management and ensuring that the cooperative meets its goals, both financial and otherwise. Democratic functions, such as petitioning or recall of board members, may be codified in

4738-577: The Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, was the most important development of the 19th century for saving energy in making pig iron. By using preheated combustion air, the amount of fuel to make a unit of pig iron was reduced at first by between one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal; the efficiency gains continued as the technology improved. Hot blast also raised the operating temperature of furnaces, increasing their capacity. Using less coal or coke meant introducing fewer impurities into

4841-556: The Western European models in the late 19th century. The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s, the following gains had been made in important technologies: In 1750, Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton, most of which was spun and woven by the cottage industry in Lancashire . The work

4944-498: The business running. In smaller businesses the consumer/owners are often workers as well. Consumers' cooperatives can differ greatly in start up and also in how the co-op is run but to be true to the consumers' cooperative form of business the enterprise should follow the Rochdale Principles . The customers or consumers of the goods and/or services the cooperative provides are often also the individuals who have provided

5047-494: The capital required to launch or purchase that enterprise. The major difference between consumers' cooperatives and other forms of business is that the purpose of a consumers' cooperative association is to provide quality goods and services at the lowest cost to the consumer/owners rather than to sell goods and services at the highest price above cost that the consumer is willing to pay. In practice consumers' cooperatives price goods and services at competitive market rates. Where

5150-471: The coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. (The foundry cupola is a different, and later, innovation.) Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce wrought iron until 1755–56, when Darby's son Abraham Darby II built furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley where low sulfur coal

5253-409: The coke pig iron he made was not suitable for making wrought iron and was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods, such as pots and kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. In 1750, coke had generally replaced charcoal in the smelting of copper and lead and was in widespread use in glass production. In

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5356-467: The column of materials (iron ore, fuel, slag) flowing down the blast furnace more porous and did not crush in the much taller furnaces of the late 19th century. As cast iron became cheaper and widely available, it began being a structural material for bridges and buildings. A famous early example is the Iron Bridge built in 1778 with cast iron produced by Abraham Darby III. However, most cast iron

5459-523: The cooperative as would appear in any other company. This is one critique of consumer cooperatives in favor of worker cooperatives . Many advocates of the formation of consumer cooperatives—from a variety of political perspectives—have seen them as integral to the achievement of wider social goals. For example, the founding document of the Rochdale Pioneers , who established one of the earliest consumer cooperatives in England in 1844, expressed

5562-441: The cooperative movement stemmed from such socialist writers as Robert Owen and Charles Fourier . Robert Owen , considered by many as the father of the cooperative movement, made his fortune in the cotton trade, but believed in putting his workers in a good environment with access to education for themselves and their children. These ideas were put into effect successfully in the cotton mills of New Lanark , Scotland , where

5665-495: The cost of cotton cloth, by the mid-19th century machine-woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand-woven Indian cloth, in part because of the fineness of thread made possible by the type of cotton used in India, which allowed high thread counts. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand-spun and woven fabric in low-wage India, eventually destroying

5768-542: The cotton textile industry in Britain was 2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801, and 22.4% in 1831. Value added by the British woollen industry was 14.1% in 1801. Cotton factories in Britain numbered approximately 900 in 1797. In 1760, approximately one-third of cotton cloth manufactured in Britain was exported, rising to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781, cotton spun amounted to 5.1 million pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800, less than 0.1% of world cotton cloth

5871-427: The country. Steam engines made the use of higher-pressure and volume blast practical; however, the leather used in bellows was expensive to replace. In 1757, ironmaster John Wilkinson patented a hydraulic powered blowing engine for blast furnaces. The blowing cylinder for blast furnaces was introduced in 1760 and the first blowing cylinder made of cast iron is believed to be the one used at Carrington in 1768 that

5974-456: The eagerness of British entrepreneurs to export industrial expertise and the willingness to import the process. Britain met the criteria and industrialized starting in the 18th century, and then it exported the process to western Europe (especially Belgium, France, and the German states) in the early 19th century. The United States copied the British model in the early 19th century, and Japan copied

6077-607: The early 1840s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanised spinning and weaving, slowed as their markets matured; and despite the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, and hot blast iron smelting . New technologies such as the electrical telegraph , widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s in the United Kingdom and the United States, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of economic growth. Rapid economic growth began to reoccur after 1870, springing from

6180-421: The early 19th century and by 1830 there were several hundred co-operatives. William King made Owen's ideas more workable and practical. He believed in starting small, and realized that the working classes would need to set up co-operatives for themselves, so he saw his role as one of instruction. He founded a monthly periodical called The Co-operator , the first edition of which appeared on 1 May 1828. It gave

6283-465: The expiration of the Arkwright patent would greatly increase the supply of spun cotton and lead to a shortage of weavers, Edmund Cartwright developed a vertical power loom which he patented in 1785. In 1776, he patented a two-man operated loom. Cartwright's loom design had several flaws, the most serious being thread breakage. Samuel Horrocks patented a fairly successful loom in 1813. Horock's loom

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6386-637: The first co-operative store was opened. Spurred on by this success, Owen had the idea of forming "villages of co-operation" where workers would drag themselves out of poverty by growing their own food, making their own clothes, and ultimately becoming self-governing. He tried to form such communities in Orbiston, Scotland and in New Harmony, Indiana in the United States of America , but both communities failed. Similar early experiments were made in

6489-528: The first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe 's water-powered silk mill at Derby , operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, because the Italian silk industry guarded its secrets closely, the state of the industry at that time is unknown. Although Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk from Italy

6592-400: The first successful cylinder for a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1776, he was given an exclusive contract for providing cylinders. After Watt developed a rotary steam engine in 1782, they were widely applied to blowing, hammering, rolling and slitting. The solutions to the sulfur problem were the addition of sufficient limestone to the furnace to force sulfur into the slag as well as

6695-407: The form of cooperative wholesale societies , through which consumers' cooperatives collectively purchase goods at wholesale prices and, in some cases, own factories. Alternatively, they may be members of cooperative unions . Consumer cooperation has been a focus of study in the field of cooperative economics . Consumer cooperatives rose to prominence during the industrial revolution as part of

6798-534: The general population in the Western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians agree that

6901-451: The increasing use of water power and steam power ; the development of machine tools ; and the rise of the mechanised factory system . Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth . The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested. Many of

7004-640: The insecurities of wage labor." The first documented consumer cooperative was founded in 1769, in a barely-furnished cottage in Fenwick, East Ayrshire , when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society . In the decades that followed, several cooperatives or cooperative societies formed including Lennoxtown Friendly Victualling Society, founded in 1812. The philosophy that underpinned

7107-517: The iron industries during the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal ; for a given amount of heat, mining coal required much less labour than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal , and coal was much more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before the enormous increase in iron production that took place in the late 18th century. In 1709, Abraham Darby made progress using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale . However,

7210-496: The late 19th century, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee , whose 1881 lectures gave a detailed account of the term. Economic historians and authors such as Mendels, Pomeranz , and Kridte argue that proto-industrialisation in parts of Europe, the Muslim world , Mughal India , and China created the social and economic conditions that led to

7313-467: The mass of hot wrought iron. Rolling was 15 times faster at this than a trip hammer . A different use of rolling, which was done at lower temperatures than that for expelling slag, was in the production of iron sheets, and later structural shapes such as beams, angles, and rails. The puddling process was improved in 1818 by Baldwyn Rogers, who replaced some of the sand lining on the reverberatory furnace bottom with iron oxide . In 1838 John Hall patented

7416-486: The merger of many independent retail societies, and their wholesale societies and federations. In 1863, twenty years after the Rochdale Pioneers opened their co-operative, the North of England Co-operative Society was launched by 300 individual co-ops across Yorkshire and Lancashire . By 1872, it had become known as the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS). Through the 20th century, smaller societies merged with CWS, such as

7519-506: The now-famous Rochdale Principles , and over a period of four months they struggled to pool one pound sterling per person for a total of 28 pounds of capital. On December 21, 1844, they opened their store with a very meagre selection of butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal and a few candles. Within three months, they expanded their selection to include tea and tobacco, and they were soon known for providing high quality, unadulterated goods. The Co-operative Group formed gradually over 140 years from

7622-599: The number of cotton goods consumed in Western Europe was minor until the early 19th century. By 1600, Flemish refugees began weaving cotton cloth in English towns where cottage spinning and weaving of wool and linen was well established. They were left alone by the guilds who did not consider cotton a threat. Earlier European attempts at cotton spinning and weaving were in 12th-century Italy and 15th-century southern Germany, but these industries eventually ended when

7725-418: The onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history since the domestication of animals and plants. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes . According to Cambridge historian Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Britain was already industrialising in the 17th century, and "Our database shows that

7828-411: The purchase of capital assets such as plant and buildings.) While some claim that surplus payment returns to consumer/owner patrons should be taxed the same as dividends paid to corporate stock holders, others argue that consumer cooperatives do not return a profit by traditional definition, and similar tax standards do not apply. Since consumer cooperatives are run democratically, they are subject to

7931-501: The race to industrialise. In his 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society , Raymond Williams states in the entry for "Industry": "The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen , between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the [19th] century." The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change

8034-406: The same problems typical of democratic government. Such difficulties can be mitigated by frequently providing member/owners with reliable educational materials regarding current business conditions. In addition, because a consumer cooperative is owned by the users of a good or service as opposed to the producers of that good or service, the same sorts of labor issues may arise between the workers and

8137-418: The slag from almost 50% to around 8%. Puddling became widely used after 1800. Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of iron imported from Sweden and Russia to supplement domestic supplies. Because of the increased British production, imports began to decline in 1785, and by the 1790s Britain eliminated imports and became a net exporter of bar iron. Hot blast , patented by

8240-457: The smelting and refining of iron, coal and coke produced inferior iron to that made with charcoal because of the coal's sulfur content. Low sulfur coals were known, but they still contained harmful amounts. Conversion of coal to coke only slightly reduces the sulfur content. A minority of coals are coking. Another factor limiting the iron industry before the Industrial Revolution was the scarcity of water power to power blast bellows. This limitation

8343-528: The supply of cotton was cut off. The Moors in Spain grew, spun, and wove cotton beginning around the 10th century. British cloth could not compete with Indian cloth because India's labour cost was approximately one-fifth to one-sixth that of Britain's. In 1700 and 1721, the British government passed Calico Acts to protect the domestic woollen and linen industries from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric imported from India. The demand for heavier fabric

8446-415: The use of low sulfur coal. The use of lime or limestone required higher furnace temperatures to form a free-flowing slag. The increased furnace temperature made possible by improved blowing also increased the capacity of blast furnaces and allowed for increased furnace height. In addition to lower cost and greater availability, coke had other important advantages over charcoal in that it was harder and made

8549-406: The use of roasted tap cinder ( iron silicate ) for the furnace bottom, greatly reducing the loss of iron through increased slag caused by a sand lined bottom. The tap cinder also tied up some phosphorus, but this was not understood at the time. Hall's process also used iron scale or rust which reacted with carbon in the molten iron. Hall's process, called wet puddling , reduced losses of iron with

8652-410: The water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fibre which was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly longer than the fibre length. Too close a spacing caused the fibres to break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top rollers were leather-covered and loading on the rollers was applied by

8755-457: Was 7,800 tons and coke cast iron was 250,000 tons. In 1750, the UK imported 31,200 tons of bar iron and either refined from cast iron or directly produced 18,800 tons of bar iron using charcoal and 100 tons using coke. In 1796, the UK was making 125,000 tons of bar iron with coke and 6,400 tons with charcoal; imports were 38,000 tons and exports were 24,600 tons. In 1806 the UK did not import bar iron but exported 31,500 tons. A major change in

8858-407: Was a means of decarburizing molten pig iron by slow oxidation in a reverberatory furnace by manually stirring it with a long rod. The decarburized iron, having a higher melting point than cast iron, was raked into globs by the puddler. When the glob was large enough, the puddler would remove it. Puddling was backbreaking and extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40. Because puddling was done in

8961-598: Was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution . Beginning in Great Britain , the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States , from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines ; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes;

9064-606: Was available (and not far from Coalbrookdale). These furnaces were equipped with water-powered bellows, the water being pumped by Newcomen steam engines . The Newcomen engines were not attached directly to the blowing cylinders because the engines alone could not produce a steady air blast. Abraham Darby III installed similar steam-pumped, water-powered blowing cylinders at the Dale Company when he took control in 1768. The Dale Company used several Newcomen engines to drain its mines and made parts for engines which it sold throughout

9167-608: Was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui 's description in 1837 of la révolution industrielle . Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society". Although Engels wrote his book in the 1840s, it was not translated into English until

9270-414: Was converted to wrought iron. Conversion of cast iron had long been done in a finery forge . An improved refining process known as potting and stamping was developed, but this was superseded by Henry Cort 's puddling process. Cort developed two significant iron manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784. Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost. Puddling

9373-566: Was cut off to eliminate competition. In order to promote manufacturing, the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which were exhibited in the Tower of London . Parts of India, China, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have a long history of hand manufacturing cotton textiles, which became a major industry sometime after 1000 AD. In tropical and subtropical regions where it

9476-403: Was designed by John Smeaton . Cast iron cylinders for use with a piston were difficult to manufacture; the cylinders had to be free of holes and had to be machined smooth and straight to remove any warping. James Watt had great difficulty trying to have a cylinder made for his first steam engine. In 1774 Wilkinson invented a precision boring machine for boring cylinders. After Wilkinson bored

9579-559: Was done by hand in workers' homes or occasionally in master weavers' shops. Wages in Lancashire were about six times those in India in 1770 when overall productivity in Britain was about three times higher than in India. In 1787, raw cotton consumption was 22 million pounds, most of which was cleaned, carded, and spun on machines. The British textile industry used 52 million pounds of cotton in 1800, which increased to 588 million pounds in 1850. The share of value added by

9682-544: Was followed by a period of colonialism beginning around the 16th century. Following the discovery of a trade route to India around southern Africa by the Portuguese, the British founded the East India Company , along with smaller companies of different nationalities which established trading posts and employed agents to engage in trade throughout the Indian Ocean region. One of the largest segments of this trade

9785-569: Was grown, most was grown by small farmers alongside their food crops and was spun and woven in households, largely for domestic consumption. In the 15th century, China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth. By the 17th century, almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing. Almost everywhere cotton cloth could be used as a medium of exchange . In India, a significant amount of cotton textiles were manufactured for distant markets, often produced by professional weavers. Some merchants also owned small weaving workshops. India produced

9888-479: Was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822, and these were produced in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co. Roberts was additionally a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer in the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement. The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the Southern United States, who thought upland cotton would be a profitable crop if

9991-660: Was in cotton textiles, which were purchased in India and sold in Southeast Asia , including the Indonesian archipelago where spices were purchased for sale to Southeast Asia and Europe. By the mid-1760s, cloth was over three-quarters of the East India Company's exports. Indian textiles were in demand in the North Atlantic region of Europe where previously only wool and linen were available; however,

10094-400: Was later used in the first cotton spinning mill . In 1764, in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny , which he patented in 1770. It was the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles. The jenny worked in a similar manner to the spinning wheel, by first clamping down on the fibres, then by drawing them out, followed by twisting. It was

10197-437: Was made by the bloomery process, which was the predominant iron smelting process until the late 18th century. In the UK in 1720, there were 20,500 tons of cast iron produced with charcoal and 400 tons with coke. In 1750 charcoal iron production was 24,500 and coke iron was 2,500 tons. In 1788, the production of charcoal cast iron was 14,000 tons while coke iron production was 54,000 tons. In 1806, charcoal cast iron production

10300-419: Was met by a domestic industry based around Lancashire that produced fustian , a cloth with flax warp and cotton weft . Flax was used for the warp because wheel-spun cotton did not have sufficient strength, but the resulting blend was not as soft as 100% cotton and was more difficult to sew. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving were done in households, for domestic consumption, and as

10403-413: Was overcome by the steam engine. Use of coal in iron smelting started somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames playing on the ore and charcoal or coke mixture, reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulphur ash) in

10506-425: Was produced on machinery invented in Britain. In 1788, there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising to 7 million over the next 30 years. The earliest European attempts at mechanised spinning were with wool; however, wool spinning proved more difficult to mechanise than cotton. Productivity improvement in wool spinning during the Industrial Revolution was significant but far less than that of cotton. Arguably

10609-557: Was sold to Booktopia . The Wine Society (Australian Wine Consumers’ Co-operative Society Limited), established in 1946, now has more than 58,000 members. It sources and sells premium wines under the Society label, runs comprehensive wine education courses, and recognises excellence from young winemakers. Bank Australia was formed in 2011 as the Members and Education Credit Union. It changed its name to Bank Australia in 2015. The bank

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