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This history of the York Co-operative Society was written for its centenary in 1959. The Society was established, as the York Equitable Industrial Society Limited, on 26th August, 1858 and commenced trading on 16th March, 1859. A significant text about the Society is "A Brief Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Society", issued in 1896 and written largely by the founders. The standard work is the Jubilee History of the Society (by George Briggs, Secretary to the Society, printed by the Co-operative Wholesale Society's Printing Works, Longsight, Manchester, 1909) - long out of print. (The early sections of the present book draw heavily upon it.) The Society's 10,400 members of 1909 received a free copy of the Jubilee History. A similar gesture may not have been realistic in 1959, with a membership of 33,000. In fact, the work does not seem to have been published at all. Ordinary members have no recollection of it; a Director at the time, Councillor Cyril Waite, remembers (1999) the work being circulated to the Board for comment but does not think it was issued; and the Librarian of the Co-operative Union Archive in Manchester has kindly searched the database of her own and other library holdings of Co-operative documentation and can find no reference to it. There are other reasons for feeling that this was an early draft. It is uneven, with a variable sense of audience, and with later sections lacking the polish of the earlier ones: these give the impression of having being dictated directly to a typist. Nevertheless, this Internet presentation of the book may be found interesting for several reasons. I have been unable to find a really detailed account of the development of a Co-operative Society on the Internet. The York Society seems a good choice to remedy this. It is typical of the wave of the 250 Societies formed in the wake of, and influenced by, the publication in 1857 of Holyoake's account of the Rochdale pioneers. It is remarkable, however, for its rate of expansion: when in the1890s a threefold increase of membership was typical, that of the York Society increased thirty-ninefold! Moreover, the history of the York Society dovetails neatly with the seminal Rowntree research into social conditions. I found a copy of the typescript of this book among my father's papers. He was for many years a Director of the York Co-operative Society. It bears no name, and I have been unable to find an author or authors. This Internet presentation at present reproduces the typescript unedited. The document (127K) is a single page of very simply formatted .html, for reasons of economy, and to facilitate searching. Its main sections may be accessed from a Contents page. Both may be viewed together (recommended) in browsers which support frames. |