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Their humble customers paid so much a week to the tradesmen, who charged them nothing for keeping it, and at the end of the agreed period they took out the total sum in goods dead or alive; eatable, drinkable, or wearable. Denry conceived a universal slate-club. He meant it to embrace each of the Five Towns. He saw forty thousand industrial families paying weekly instalments into his slate-club.
They bring him no profit; they are not a useful capital that can be renewed with interest. At the Christmas "share-out" he does get back a part of the twenty-six shillings contributed to the slate-club during the year; but the two pounds a year paid to the benefit society are his no longer; they cannot be "realized"; they are gone beyond reclaiming.
He saw his slate-club entering into contracts with all the principal tradesmen of the entire district, so that the members of the slate-club could shop with slate-club tickets practically where they chose. He saw his slate-club so powerful that no tradesman could afford not to be in relations with it.
The slate-club is managed upon lines as businesslike as those of the national benefit society. The "Institute" has its secretary, and treasurer, and balance-sheet, and printed rules; the very cricket club is controlled by resolutions proposed and seconded at formal committee meetings, and duly entered in minute-books.
To cover loss of wages during sickness, they pay into a benefit society. The more careful, indeed, pay into two the Oddfellows or the Foresters, or some such society and a local "slate-club."
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