The scheme of organization called for a local council including members from the town or district, a state council, comprising representatives from the local councils and a National Council in which the States were represented.  The president of the National Council was the founder of the Order, William H. Earle.

Success accompanied the efforts of the promoters of the Sovereigns of Industry for a few years.  The total membership in 1875-1876 was 40,000, of whom seventy-five percent were in New England and forty-three percent in Massachusetts.  Though the Order extended into other States and even reached the territories, its chief strength always remained in New England and the Middle States.  During the last period of its existence a national organ was published at Washington, but the Order does not appear to have gained a foothold in any of the more Southern sections of the country.

In 1875, 101 local councils reported as having some method of supplying members with goods, 46 of whom operated stores.  The largest store belonged to the council at Springfield, Massachusetts, which in 1875 built the “Sovereign Block” at a cost of $35,500.  In his address at the fourth annual session in Washington, President Earle stated that the store in Springfield led all the others with sales amounting to $119,000 for the preceding year.  About one-half of the councils failed to report, but at the Congress of 1876 President Earle estimated the annual trade at $3,000,000.

Much enthusiasm accompanied the progress of the movement.  The hall in “Sovereign Block” at Springfield was dedicated amid such jubilation as marks an event thought to be the forerunner of a new era.  There is indeed a certain pathos in the high hopes expressed in the Address of Dedication by President Earle, for, though the Order continued to thrive until 1878, shortly after a decline began, and dissolution was its fate in 1880.

The failure of the Sovereigns marked the latest attempt on a large scale[11] to inoculate the American workingmen with the sort of cooperative spirit which proved so successful in England.[12]

This failure of distributive cooperation to gain the strong and lasting foothold in this country that it has abroad has been accounted for in various ways by different writers.  Great emphasis has been laid upon the lack of capital, the lack of suitable legislation on the subject of cooperation, the mutual isolation of the educated and wage-earning classes, the lack of business ability among wage earners, and the altogether too frequent venality and corruption among cooperators.