Items14The creator’s order
  1. 1Robert OwenRobert OwenBorn 14 May 1771The inspiration. Owen ran the New Lanark cotton mills in Scotland from 1800, shortening hours, opening a school and a company store that sold goods near cost, and argued that co-operation should replace competition. He did not found a lasting co-operative himself, and his own utopian community at…0i
  2. 2Franz Hermann Schulze-DelitzschFranz Hermann Schulze-DelitzschBorn 29 Aug 1808Urban credit co-operatives. Schulze-Delitzsch, a Prussian judge and liberal politician, organised loan associations for artisans and small traders from 1850, owned by members who bought shares and shared liability. He insisted on self-help without state support. His model became the German…0i
  3. 3Friedrich Wilhelm RaiffeisenFriedrich Wilhelm RaiffeisenBorn 30 Mar 1818Rural credit co-operatives. Raiffeisen, a village mayor in the Westerwald, saw farmers ruined by moneylenders after the hunger winter of 1846 to 1847 and moved from charity to self-help, founding a credit association at Heddesdorf in 1864 in which members pooled savings and lent to each other under…0i
  4. 4Horace PlunkettHorace PlunkettBorn 24 Oct 1854Farmers' co-operatives in Ireland. Plunkett, an Anglo-Irish landowner who had ranched in Wyoming, set up the first co-operative creamery in 1889 and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society in 1894 to help small farmers process and sell milk together. Hundreds of co-operative creameries…0i
  5. 5Alphonse Desjardins (co-operator)Alphonse Desjardins (co-operator)Born 5 Nov 1854Caisses populaires. Desjardins, a parliamentary reporter in Ottawa, was shocked by a debate on usurious loans and studied European credit co-operatives before opening the first caisse populaire in his home town of Lévis, Quebec, in 1900, run from his house with his wife Dorimène. The network became…0i
  6. 6Edward FileneEdward FileneCredit unions in the United States. Filene, a Boston department store owner, used his fortune to promote credit unions, funding the Credit Union National Extension Bureau from 1921 and pushing for state and federal laws to allow them. He also tried to hand control of his own store to its employees…0i
  7. 7Toyohiko KagawaToyohiko KagawaBorn 10 Jul 1888Consumer co-operatives in Japan. Kagawa, a Christian social reformer who lived in a Kobe slum, helped found consumer co-operatives in Kobe and Osaka in the early 1920s so working families could buy rice and daily goods at fair prices. These grew into Co-op Kobe, one of the world's largest consumer…0i
  8. 8Moses CoadyMoses CoadyBorn 3 Jan 1882Adult education and co-ops. Coady, a Catholic priest at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, led the Antigonish Movement from the late 1920s, organising study clubs where fishermen, miners and farmers learned economics and then set up credit unions, fish-processing and marketing…0i
  9. 9Gottlieb DuttweilerGottlieb DuttweilerFrom private chain to co-operative. Duttweiler started Migros in Zurich in 1925 with five lorries selling a few staples well below shop prices, then in 1941 converted the company into regional co-operatives and gave shares to customers, making them its owners. He barred alcohol and tobacco and…0i
  10. 10José María ArizmendiarrietaJosé María ArizmendiarrietaWorker co-operatives. Arizmendiarrieta, a Basque priest sent to Mondragón in 1941, founded a technical school, and in 1956 five of its former students set up a stove factory owned by its workers, the first of the Mondragon co-operatives. He never owned or ran the businesses; he supplied ideas,…0i