The operations of the Association cover all manner of commodities excepting butcher's meat, it having been found that there are insuperable difficulties in the way of dealing in butcher's meat over so wide an area. These difficulties do not exist in the case of what the French call _charcuterie_. A central pork butchery has been established just outside the _octroi_ at Anzin, and the business done in that line now averages about 30,000 kilogrammes a year, the difference per kilogramme between the buying and the selling prices averaging about eighteen francs. It is the iron rule of the Association never to sell at a figure beyond the average ruling retail prices in the shops, it being quite clear that if it should now and then be necessary, in order to cover the Association, to sell at prices equivalent with the shop prices, the members would still have a real advantage in the eventual distribution of the profits. It is impossible to examine the statutes, and the rules adopted under them, without being struck by the precision, clearness, and efficiency of the methods prescribed to keep the accountability of all the different agents of the Association within easily definable limits, and to simplify, in the final adjustment, the necessarily complicated accounts of so many stores dealing with customers many of whom must, from the force of circumstances, be allowed a credit of a fortnight as cash. The proof of all such methods, of course, is the net result. In the case of the Co-operative Association of Anzin this proof is conclusive in favour both of the methods and of the men by whom they have for now more than twenty years been administered. The operations of the Association for the first semester of its existence closed on February 22, 1866, with sales amounting to 71,020 fr. 10 c., and with the payment to the members of an 8 per cent. dividend, amounting in all to 8,228 francs. From that day to this, the semi-annual dividend has never fallen below eight per cent., excepting for the half-year ending August 22, 1868, when it was declared at 7-1/2 per cent. By August 1872 it readied 12 per cent. and stood there for three semesters. It then fell to 10 per cent., and stood there from February 28, 1874, to August 28, 1878, when it rose to 11. By August 31, 1879, it rose to 12, and by February 29, 1884, to 13 per cent., at which figure it has stood ever since down to February 28, 1889, with two exceptions--August 31, 1884, when it rose to 14, and February 28, 1887, when it fell to 12-1/4. The total amount of sales made to the members between February 1866 and February 1889 was 38,864,999 francs; and the total amount of dividends paid to the members during that period has been 4,585,557 fr. 69 c., showing an average dividend during these twenty-three years of 11.80 per cent.