Page 136 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER XIII.
Lean Years and Critical Days.

A Process of Hardening—Newcastle Failures and Financial Straits—Co-opera-
tive Collieries—Reckoning Losses—The New Determination—Years
1876-81.
GHOSTS and wraiths, spectres and shades of thhigs half-
forgotten necessarily must give such substance as they can to
this chapter. The Ouseburn Engine Works, the Industrial Bank,
the paper companies, the Eccleshill, Main Coal, Spring Vale, and
Bugle Horn Collieries, the building and productive societies that
failed—such apparitions haunt the period through which this
narrative is now due to pass. Notoriously the outlining of incor-
poreities is not easy. To deal with cheerful, substantial objects
like the C.W.S. Bank or the Crumpsall Biscuit Works is a hghter
task. But the existing developments which originated in the
years 1877-80 are few. They include the Cork Depot, of which
we have heard, the shipping department, with the Plover (1876)
and the Pioneer (1879), of which more will be told in another chapter,
and certain seaport and Continental depots that came with an
increasing overseas trade. The Heckmondwike Boot Works also
dated its existence from 1880. It was the first new venture after
the period of retrenchment, as the extensions of 1876 at the Leicester
(West End) Boot Works marked practically the last of the series of
additions following the previous period. Apart from these, the
forward movements of the time were confined to purchases of land
around the Manchester headquarters and at Liverpool. But the
latter acquisition was re-sold, the Committee putting it on record
in 1877 that, "considering the present condition of our funds, we
deem it inexpedient to commence preparing plans for a warehouse."
A fit memorial of the time is not any active business, but a
ruin such as might have held the attention of Dickens. Half a
mile from the centre of Newcastle the road and railway to North
Shields are carried by separate viaducts over a deep hollow. The
span of the roadway forms the Byker Bridge. Steep banks faD
102