“In 1801 no Assize was held, and it was left to the bakers to sell bread at such price as they could afford.” It is probable that in the results of this decision the reason for the starting of Co-operative societies is to be found, for human nature and the practices of the times being what they were, we may be sure that the bakers saw to it that, however much their profits might increase, they did not go down at all. Mr Cleland goes on to say:— “During the last fifteen years, when no Assize has been fixed in Glasgow, the bakers have uniformly proportioned the price of bread to the price of wheat, similarly to what it would have been had the Assize been sitting. There are instances, however, of individual bakers selling their bread somewhat lower than the general run of the trade; and baking societies have been established in the suburbs who uniformly sell their bread one penny, twopence, and sometimes even threepence on the quartern loaf lower than the bakers’ price. These societies do not sell their bread to anyone but their own members; they give no credit and receive neither profit from the concern nor interest on their capital; besides, the members are subjected to the risk of loss incident to the breach of trust in their servants. The greater part of these societies make no household or coarse bread, and no loaf less than quartern; by which arrangement it is evident the lower classes are excluded, as they neither can advance their share of capital nor at all times purchase a quartern loaf. Moreover, the bakeries belonging to these societies being all situated outside the royalty, the flour is exempt from ‘multures,’ a tax to which the flour baked within the royalty is subject, amounting to one eighty-fourth of the whole. As the Assize laws wisely determined (for the sake of the lower classes of the people) that bread shall be baked from a peck loaf down to a quarter-quartern loaf, in exact proportion, and that the twopenny and penny loaves shall be of a weight exactly corresponding to the price of the quartern loaf, it is evident that the person who manufactured the small and the coarse bread, from which the labouring classes of the community are generally supplied, all bearing the same proportion to the wheaten quartern loaf, cannot sell so cheap as the societies; among other reasons because the additional labour is very considerable, and in weighing out the aliquot parts, unless some allowance is made in the dough, the small bread will be deficient in weight when it comes out of the oven; besides, the regular baker must support his family, pay his business, and pay local taxes; he has also to run the risk attending credit, and frequently to give one penny to the shilling discount to chandlers who retail his bread.”