Page 160 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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The Story of the C.W.S. — ;
Quarterly Meeting of December, 1884, the then Bishop of Manchester
(Bishop Eraser) took the chair in the Balloon Street meeting-room,
while Abraham Greenwood presented the author of Tom Brown's
Schooldays, and Mrs. Hughes, with the watch and casket of jewels
subscribed for in addition to the existing Oriel scholarship.
Acknowledging the gift, the old Christian Socialist of '48, " the good
Tom Hughes," bade farewell to activ^e propaganda work in the
movement, saying
You have laid it down as the basis of your union that men are meant to be
fellow-workers, not rivals, and that justice, and not the higgling of the markets,
must regulate exchange; so that you have only put the Christian Socialist
formula into different words meaning the same thing. ..." Concert,"
if we must have a single watchword, concert is that word, to be set foot to
foot against competition in every department of human life, never to yield an
inch, but to stand as for the dear life till the battle is won. ... I
wish I could impress upon all the tremendous import for Great Britain of this
battle. How long shall we remain at the head of the nations if commerce and
industry continue in the old grooves ? The critical time has come. One
universal cry of distress is going up from every great trade and industry in
the land. What is that cry ? Surely, my friends, the strangest that ever
went up from any great trading community. " Too much com, too much
cotton, too much labour, too much wealth," while two-thirds of our people
are underfed, badly clothed, miserably housed. Power is rapidly passing
into their hands. How long, with all their patience, can this state of things
last ?
After illustrating from current politics the principle of action by
agreement and emphasising the need of enthusiasm and faith if the
principle was to become triumphant over trade, that " citadel of
competition," Hughes continued:
Take my word for it, brother co-operators, or, rather, don't take my word,
but take the word of all history, that no great cause was ever triumphant
without these two—faith and enthusiasm. . . . Are we still men who
Ijelieve in concert and brotherhood with all our hearts, and will go for them with
all our might ? If not, we may just as well fall out of the ranks. . . . With
the trumpet tone of the advance of 1849-50 still sounding in my ears, I seem to
listen in vain for the true ring in these later days. I have seen old comrades
disappearing, and often their places filled by those in whom the electric spark
had never been kindled, who neither believed, nor loved, nor hated as they
must believe, and love, and hate who would win this battle. But then some
article in our paper, some trait of devotion and self-sacrifice in our associations,
has flashed out again and again to prove that, in spite of appearances, there are
men enough left who never have bowed and never will bow the knee to Baal
and I would only implore these not to keep back their testimony in this solemn
crisis in the labour movement.
Spoken in 1884, just after the close of the first period of C.W.S.
existence, these great words ring none the less truly to-day. Hughes
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