"The formation of some workers cooperatives were designed to "cope with the evils of unbridled capitalism and the insecurities of wage labor".The first documented consumer cooperative was founded in 1769, in a barely furnished cottage in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society.