Page 149 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER XIV.

Renewals of Steength.
The Eighties—Caution and Suspicion—The C.W.S. Annualr—Tho Leeds
Saleroom—Depots and Deputations—The Heckmondwike Works Mr.
—
Woodin and the Tea Department " Coming of Age "—Hughes bids
Farewell—Years 1880-4.
IN the last chapter, which, curiously, happened to be the
thirteenth, the C.W.S. , as a means of supplying working-class
homes, was almost lost to sight. During the decade upon which
the Society had now entered this aspect again emerged. The
history of the eighties is, in the main, a plain story of progress in
the unromantic but necessary region of wholesale mutual trading.
" Man is a spiritual being," said E. V. Neale at the Derby Congress
of 1884, " and it is impossible for him to be enthusiastic about the
price of tea and coffee." If the latter clause really follows then we
are threatened with a dull period. Except in the shipping depart-
ment, where a hard fight was made for the realisation of a dream, as
is told in a later chapter, the ten years had Httle of obviously direct
effort towards that " raising of the moral relations of man " about
which, Neale believed, " we can be enthusiastic." It was for the
Wholesale Society a time of consohdation. Depots and salerooms
were opened one after another. Manchester, Newcastle, and
London became hnked by a chain of lesser stations. In these
district capitals warehouse was added to warehouse, and in London
the Wholesale took its tea business into its own hands—all in the
interests of enabling co-operative stores to supply everybody at
first cost.
A similar story could be told of the co-operative movement
generally during 1880-90. The period began with the Co-operative
Congresses discussing the rehgious issues that had stirred English
people in the seventies; it ended with papers on the relation of
co-operation and sociahsm, and Mr. Sidney Webb stating ideas that
were to influence practical politics ten or fifteen years later. Except
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