first movement of the vehicle he is frantic, and as it clatters, gradually increasing in speed, down the mews, he seems to choke himself; the bark becomes a gasping shriek, jerked out in an undulating movement as he bounds up at the horse's nose, narrowly escaping death by trampling at each jump.

equal quantity of rumble, jingle, and clatter as is to be found in the 'bus and the " growler," they are continuously successive. Firstly, the rumble from the large wheels; secondly, the jingle from the trace-chains which the movement of the horse produces by jerks; thirdly, the clatter of the door-flaps. These succeed each other very regu larly, and the cockney ear would be able to distinguish easily the nature of the conveyance which had turned into the furthest end of the street. The light spring-cart of the butcher, baker, or candlestick maker-that hybrid vehicle, in vogue with town travellers, which is a sort of cross between a mail phaeton, a waggonette, a parcels-delivery van, and a hearse-have one and all their characteristic rattles and rumbles. The jinglers have recently received a wonderful additional interest in the custom that has obtained of decorating horses with bells. This French fashion of unnecessarily in

less and, comparatively, noiseless private equipage a very important competitor of the lumbering waggon. The advantage of india-rubber wheel-tires has been quite negatived by this charming piece of musical ingenuity of our neighbour the Gaul.

The waggon, cart, dray, van, whatever it is, at present is empty; everything is loose about it, chains, pins, awning, springs; the wheels, too, generally want oiling. If the back-board happens not to be fastened (and this is usually the case), it bangs delightfully every instant on its hinges. The chain clanks against the wheel or trails behind upon the pavement. Often there is a noise the true origin of which I have never arrived at, but which in my highly-wrought imagination I conceive to be the product of large thick glass jars, containing loose cylindrical bullets, rolled up and down the floor of the vehicle, crashing at each end, and jolting inces-creasing the uproar of a city has rendered the harmsantly from side to side. It must be something of this kind; hours and days have been spent in coming to this conclusion, but no other concatenation of atoms could bring about such a diabolical tintamarre! This vehicle, or one of its fellows-this car of Juggernaut to my tranquillity of mind--once on the move, appears to perambulate my street at intervals of from five minutes to a quarter of an hour all day up to twelve o'clock at night. It is a sort of running, I might say galloping accompaniment to the rest of the confusion, which has worse than confounded me. It demands this close analysis, for whatever other sounds happen throughout the day, they are but minglings with the row from this eternal cart! Its only variation is caused by its being occasionally heavily laden, when, though it rattles less, it rumbles more, and, like thunder, shakes the house to its foundations. One terrible form it frequently assumes is that of the brewer's dray (for "Deux and Co.'s Entire" is round the corner, quite handy). Starting laden with full barrels, it returns at short intervals at a graceful trot with empty ones, whilst the drayman, seated on the shafts, vigorously cracks his whip. The variety caused by this going to and fro is most delightful, especially if stones are newly laid down for road-mending.

All horses come under the category of clatterers; indeed this class of sound is mainly derived from them, and multitudinous are the varieties which they offer to the distracted and sensitive ear of your now tortured cockney. From the cart-horse before mentioned to the sprightly little pony of the suburban gig, they are all clatterers, varying in tone as they grow large and small, or travel fast or slow over Macadam or pavement. More torture is obtained from sounds which I will call the "shriekers," the whistlers, the groaners, and the hammerers: qualities which may be found in small quantities in nearly every conveyance, but which are chiefly represented by the human adjuncts to the hurly-burly; for under this head is combined street-cries, all noises from street boys, everything in the shape of street music and street and house repairings. My matutinal organ of Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with "Slap, bang,” and the reiterated truth that "Here we are again," "Early in the morning," "Paddling our own canoe," is but a little preceded by the occasions

Another advantage attributable to the neighbour-sweeps" and perpetual “milk.” hood of the brewery is the progress of the grain. cart, which may be classified with, and likened unto, the water-cart-a no mean contributor to the rumbling, as distinguished from the jingling and clattering class of vehicular sounds. Some there are which at once combine the rumble, the jingle, and, the clatter. The three-horsed saloon omnibus is an admirable instance of this, with its loudsounding spring bell at every start and stoppage, The domestic four-wheeled cab elegantly and in a milder degree, likewise combines these advantages. In the two latter instances the sounds are blended, and pretty equally mingled, but when we come to the Hansoms of the period, although we have an

At a warehouse directly opposite, by six or sever a.m., is commenced an unpacking of heavy pack ages on the pavement. Deposited by railway vans and coutaining, as they do, pianos, furniture, paten stoves, and such like, they require a great deal o hammering, wrenching, and banging, ere their oute shell is cracked.

By eight o'clock the din becomes pretty con tinuous. The next marked feature of it, fou times a week all the year round, proceeds frou an unfortunate man, whose vocation it is to men cane and rush-bottomed chairs. He is only half man, however, having no legs, but with a voic which frequently lifts me out of bed; and if i

wise, after the inevitable confusion consequent upon a start for a fire has subsided, more than ten minutes surely would elapse ere the whole row was repeated by the "return;" nor can I possibly believe that a fire happens every other Sunday morning at least, soon after nine o'clock. Who does not know the peculiar noise and excitement produced by this apparatus-doubled as it is now a-days by the supplement, or van, which carries the firemen after the engine? And who amongst us is not able to recollect a thousand incidental ingredients to street sounds that I have not set down?

Hubbub, row, shindy, clatter, rumble, jingle, hammer, bang, clash, howl, squeak, screech, yell, rattle, whistle, gurgle, rush, hullabaloo, call it what you like, this deafening cacophany is a thing to study, mark, and think of; for it is but the result to the ear of that ceaseless, inward motive power which is for ever, whether by honesty or dishonesty, by fair means or foul, by shuffle or straightforwardness, by chicanery or knowledge, impelling man forward on that inevitable path we all tread in obedience to nature's great law, that "to live is to labour." W. W. FENN. :

ON SOME NEW FORMS OF INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION.

EXCEPT in benighted Welsh boroughs like Brecon, where it was lately made a crime against Lord Alfred Churchill that he had spoken kindly of cooperative stores, what are termed co-operative principles, whether as applied to consumption or production, have ceased to be ranked, in general English society, among the seven deadly sins, and it needs now to be a man of middle age to rememDer the days when a co-operative store was deemed of necessity a focus of atheism, when to suggest that workers might be associated to their employers' profits savoured of the most blood-thirsty Red Republicanism, and the attempt amongst workingmen to manufacture on their own account, in self-governed bodies, was held to lead straight to a community of wives. The law has been altered in many directions, so that instead of being all but prohibitory on the formation of co-operative bodies, as it was less than twenty years ago, it now offers two or three distinct modes in which they may be constituted. The intellect of the country, moreover, is now fixed upon their practical development, and new modifications in their constitution are almost daily being introduced.

tion of the co-operative movement of the present day which, almost exclusively confining itself to retail trade, and to those processes of industry which are carried on in immediate connection with retail trade, such as baking, butchering, or corngrinding, group themselves under the "Industrial and Provident Societies' Act," and whose history is yearly recorded in the returns of the Registrar of Friendly Societies. The last of these, for England and Wales alone, (ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 15 June, 1866), shows us that the number of societies certified to December, 1864, minus fifty-two then dissolved, was 599; that deducting 182 which had made no returns, the number of members in the 417 which had made such returns, was, on the 31st December, 1865, no less than 145,586, holding together 761,313% of share capital, besides 112,733. borrowed, and whose business during the year had amounted, for goods bought, to 3,063,088., and for goods sold, to 3,373,8371., giving a profit for the year of 279,2267. The following table, which is confined to returning societies of more than 2000 members, will further show the magnitude obtained by such establish

It is not my purpose here to dwell upon that por- | ments in individual cases :—

which, as it seems to me, may be drawn the infer-operative Manufacturing Society," with 1773 memence, that whilst selling at a cheap rate, they were bers, and a capital of 90,9411., doing business in realising a handsome, though not exorbitant profit sales to the extent of 133,8957, But this body has out of an economically managed capital. confessedly given up the attempt to solve the problem of a better system of retribution for labour, by dividing all its profits on shares. It was founded by working men; but they have chosen to deal with their fellows as capitalists only.

The common features of the system itself, as exhibited by the return in question, are as follows :— A capital generally inconsiderable, formed by gradual accretion, but capable of indefinite expansion, in shares which very seldom exceed 1. each, and still more rarely fall below that amount; a generally healthy trade, in which credit is, in the greater number of instances, neither taken nor given, whilst the borrowing of money is equally in the greater number of instances avoided, and the amount due on loans is seldom of any magnitude; frequent auditing ing of accounts generally quarterly, some times even weekly;-the remuneration of sharecapital by a fixed rate of interest, which appears to average 5. per cent.; and, what is perhaps the most characteristic feature, division of the bulk of profits on the amount of purchases, though often with deductions for a reserve or depreciation fund, sometimes for educational * or other purposes, And whilst, as before observed, the application of the system is generally confined to retail transactions, yet the remarkable instance of the "North of England Co-operative Wholesale Industrial and Provident Society," at Manchester, shows that it is equally applicable to a wholesale trade, as carried on by the stores themselves.

We must, in short, travel out of the field of action of the Industrial and Provident Societies Act into that of the Joint Stock Companies Act, in order to find the leading examples of industrial co-operation in production. The chief reason for this seems to lie in the circumstance that the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1862, limits the interest of individual members, to 2001, thus rendering its provisions inapplicable to any large concerns in which individual employers or capitalists hold a preponderant or only a considerable share. In other respects I must say that its machinery is, in my judgment, simpler and more advantageous, besides being far less expensive, than that of the Joint Stock Companies Act,

But in the case of bodies more or less co-operative, formed under the Joint Stock Companies Act, we have no longer the advantage of such a return as that annually drawn up by the Registrar of Friendly Societies in reference to Industrial and Provident Societies the co-operative companies, if I may so term them, being mixed up with a crowd of others which have by no means such a character; so that no general statistics are available, and only a few individual instances of the working of the principle can be pointed out. For the details which follow, I shall borrow many of my facts from a paper by Mr. E. O, Greening, of Manchester, intended to have been read by him at the last Congress of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, but since separately published, and from the mouthly reports issued by him, at present under the name of "The Industrial Partnerships Record." Before, however, proceeding to refer to the instances selected by him, I would observe, that very many cases have long since been known in which the working-men of our manufacturing counties have formed partnerships or companies constituted on the ordinary system of allowing labour wages only, and reserving all profits to capital. A large engineering establishment, once well known in the trade as that of the "Forty Thieves," from having been founded by forty working-men during a strike, affords an early instance to this effect, whilst later ones are supplied by various spinning or weaving mills in Lancashire, often termed co-operative.

The problem of co-operation in consumption may thus be considered as solved; but what of co-operation in production? Will the leading feature of the co-operative store-that of a division of profits purchases-be here applicable? It may be, in those cases where a small amount of labour is eeded to supply a large local demand for the article produced, as in the case of the co-operative corn-mills, bakeries, &c., the shoe-making, clog g&c, departments of many co-operative stores. But when the amount of labour, and consequently of capital, required is large, and the customers are few or scattered, there the co-operative-store system ceases to be applicable; the co-operation specifically needed is that of producers, not of consumers; the interests mainly demanding to be harmonised are those of the buyer and seller, not of goods, but of labour. And although the machinery of the Industrial and Provident Societies Act is quite adapted (within certain limits) to co-operative production, the number of establishments for such purposes (except corn-mills, &c.) which have been formed under it does not, so far as appears from the return, amount to two dozen, and of them by far the greater number have made no return, the Every such experiment has, of course, a value, few that have being of small dimensions, with the both by educating the working-man into the masingle exception of the "Mitchell Hey Mills Co-nagement of business and the responsibilities of the capitalist, and by the personal interest which it gives him, so long as he is both a worker and a shareholder, in the efficient working of the concern.

to

Thirty-nine returning societies out of 417 (or rather less than Lin 10), have an educational fund, and spend znder 1740, on it. Of this amount, however, Pioneers alone.

Together ributed by the Rochdale Equitable But experience seems to show that these benefits

VIII-18

are not more than individual and temporary; that