It remained to be seen whether this elimination of money could actually be realised in practice. An experiment to that effect was tried in London with the establishment of the National Equitable Labour Exchange. This was the most interesting experiment in the whole movement, although Owen himself was not very proud of his connection with it. It took the form of a co-operative society with a central depot where each member of the society could deposit the product of his labour and draw the price of it in labour notes, the price depending upon the number of hours of work the product had cost, which the member himself was allowed to state. These products, or goods as they were now called, marked with a figure which indicated the number of hours they had taken to produce, were at the disposal of any member of the Exchange who wished to buy them. All that a member had to do was to pay the ticketed price in labour notes. And so every worker who had taken, say, ten hours to make a pair of stockings was certain of being able to buy any other article which had also cost ten hours’ labour. In this fashion everyone got whatever his product had cost him, and every trace of profit automatically disappeared. The profit-maker, whether industrial or commercial or merely an intermediary, was effectively removed, because producers and consumers were brought into direct contact with one another, and so the problem was apparently solved.[523] The experiment, which had about the same measure of success as the attempts to establish a communal colony in America, did not last very long. The slightest acquaintance with the laws of value would have convinced the reformer of the futility of his attempt. But it marks an important departure in the history of economic doctrines as being the first of a long line of experiments designed to solve the same problem, but with very different methods. It is the same idea that inspires Proudhon’s Bank and Solvay’s _Comptabilisme social_. The particular mechanism wherewith the elimination of profit was essayed is really of quite secondary importance. But the essential idea which lay behind the whole attempt—namely, the abolition of profit—is at least partly realised in that solid and useful institution which is now found all over the world, and which was bequeathed to us by this experiment of Owen’s—the co-operative stores. Their first appearance dates from 1832, the year of the Bank of Exchange experiment, but it was not until ten years later that they assumed their present form as the outcome of the efforts of the Rochdale Pioneers.