Eugen Richter 
Co-Operative Stores [PDF ebook] 
Their History, Organization, and Management

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. They immediately proceeded to work, and that same evening a paper was drawn up, on which twelve men set their names to an agreement to pay twenty pence a week into a common stock. Only a few out of the twelve were able to pay that sum the same evening, but they proudly named this novel associ ation, The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. Our weavers assumed this name of Pioneers, as significant of their purpose to break, through the tangled thicket of distress and want which encompassed them, a new path for their brethren of the working class, along which their feet might find the way to a better condition of life. They at once issued a programme for the new Society, which read substantially thus.