Page 128 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Story of the C.W.S.
Committee in getting the best possible butter direct from the pro-
ducers during those months when the farmers chose to make it.
By 1870 the Society had become the most considerable exporter
from Ireland, albeit the trade was controlled in their spare time,
or in time granted by retail societies, by a committee of working
men, who for the most part had never seen the sister isle.
The chief centre for Irish salt butter was, and is, Cork. The
butter market of that city was estabhshed by charter in the
eighteenth century. Yet, while extending in Ireland, the Wholesale
Society was cautious about setting foot in Cork. There was evidence
in the failure of other English firms to prove that nothing but disaster
would ensue. When the Committee began to show determination
in 1875, the head of the firm of receivers and exporters which supplied
the Society came over from the neighbourhood of the blarney-stone
"
to exhibit all his figures. He did not want to lose our trade, and
would leave it for us as honourable people to say what remuneration
he ought to have." The net result was a concession by the merchant
that saved the C.W.S. £300 a year. But the Society received com-
plaints of short weights, the reason of which subsequently appeared.
In the course of a general investigation two C.W.S. buyers were sent
to Cork, and they found that an agent could gain an advantage by
buying cheaply at certain seasons, and selling stored butter as fresh.
Shrinkages from the original weights duly marked on the casks
explained both the trick and the complaints.
The Scottish Society joining forces with the C.W.S., a special
committee meeting at the end of 1876 resolved on an establishment
at Cork. The previous agents at once came out as resolute com-
petitors for the trade of co-operative stores, and " two organised
cliques " did their best to keep the Wholesale out. On the other
hand, the C.W.S. buyer (Mr, W. H. Stott) met few of the anticipated
obstacles to entering the name of the Society upon the roU of
the Cork Exchange. The real difficulty was otherwise. In all its
business operations the most serious impediment to the Society has
come from an inevitable limitation in its territory. Even two
million co-operators do not constitute the whole community; and
it sometimes happens that the Society cannot supply its otvti
organised market at first cost without receiving goods for which the
demand hes outside. So it was at Cork. In getting first-class butter
the C.W.S. buyers were obhged to take inferior quahties also, and
these were troublesome to dispose of. Nevertheless, the success of
the Cork business exceeded expectations from the first.