of the journeymen
cordwainers of Lynn do we discover an undertaking which can with
certainty be considered as an effort to achieve distributive
cooperation. Several germs of cooperative effort are found between 1833
and 1845, but all that is known about them is that their promoters
sought to effect a saving by the purchase of goods in large quantities
which were then broken up and distributed at a slight advance above
original cost in order to meet expenses. The managers were unpaid, the
members' interest in the business was not maintained, and the stores
soon failed, or passed into the possession of private owners.

It was the depression of 1846-1849 which supplied the movement for
distributive cooperation with the needed stimulus, especially in New
England. Although the matter was discussed in New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even as far west as Ohio and Illinois, yet
in none of the industrial centers of these States, except perhaps in New
York, was it put into successful operation.

In New England, however, the conditions were exceptionally favorable. A
strike movement for higher wages during a partial industrial revival of
1843-1844 had failed completely. This failure, added to the fact that
women and girls were employed under very unsatisfactory conditions,
strengthened the interest of humanitarians in the laboring people and
especially in cooperation as a possible means of alleviating their
distress.

Under the stimulus of these agitations, the New England Protective Union
was formed in 1845. Until 1849, however, it bore the name of the Working
Men's Protective Union. As often happens, prosperity brought disunion
and, in 1853, a schism occurred in the organization due to personal
differences. The seceders formed a separate organization known as the
American Protective Union.

The Working Men's Protective Union embodied a larger conception of the
cooperative idea than had been expressed before. The important thought
was that an economy of a few dollars a year in the purchase of
commodities was a poor way out of labor difficulties, but was valuable
only as a preparation for something better.

Though the resources of these laborers were small, they began the work
with great hopes. This business, starting so unpretentiously, assumed
larger and increasing proportions until in October, 1852, the Union
embraced 403 divisions of which 167 reported a capital of $241,712 and
165 of these announced an