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 annual sales amounting to $1,696,825.  Though the schism of 1853, mentioned above, weakened the body, the agent of the American Protective Union claimed for the divisions comprising it sales aggregating in value over nine and one-fourth millions dollars in the seven years ending in 1859.

It is not possible to tell what might have been the outcome of this cooperative movement had the peaceful development of the country remained uninterrupted.  As it happened, the disturbed era of the Civil War witnessed the near annihilation of all workingmen’s cooperation.

It is not difficult to see the causes which led to the destruction of the still tender plant.  Men left their homes for the battle field, foreigners poured into New England towns and replaced the Americans in the shops, while share-holders frequently became frightened at the state of trade and gladly saw the entire cooperative enterprise pass into the hands of the storekeeper.

This first American cooperative movement on a large scale resembled the British movement in many respects, namely open membership, equal voting by members irrespective of number of shares, cash sales and federation of societies for wholesale purchases, but differed in that goods were sold to members nearly at cost rather than at the market price.  Dr. James Ford in his Cooperation in New England, Urban and Rural,[8] describes two survivals from this period, the Central Union Association of New Bedford, Massachusetts, founded in 1848, and the Acushnet Cooperative Association, also of New Bedford, which began business in 1849.

But the most characteristic labor movement of the forties was a resurgence of the old Agrarianism of the twenties.

Skidmore’s “equal division” of all property appealed to the workingmen of New York because it seemed to be based on equality of opportunity.  One of Skidmore’s temporary associates, a Welshman by the name of George Henry Evans, drew from him an inspiration for a new kind of agrarianism to which few could object.  This new doctrine was a true Agrarianism, since it followed in the steps of the original “Agrarians,” the brothers Gracchi in ancient Rome.  Like the Gracchi, Evans centered his plan around the “ager publicum”—­the vast American public domain.  Evans began his agitation about 1844.