Page 196 - 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.
owes some of its strength, together with the control of the village
inn, to the late earl and his successor. Further away, at Rugby,
Peterborough, Kettering, and elsewhere, and in the town of
Northampton, societies have growTi great of recent years through
railway and general industrial developments, as well as through
enlisting rural support.
The C.W.S. came into the boot-making town during com-
paratively recent years. In 1890 Mr. Baker, who had been the
London Branch traveller for the district, was put in charge of a
saleroom at 18, Guildhall Road. It was literally "a one-man
show," open only on Wednesday and Satm-day mornings. But,
as in the case of the original saleroom in Manchester, and for the
same reasons, the need of a warehousing centre became evident.
The want was met for the time being when the C.W.S. opened its
own building in Guildhall Road on February 10th, 1897, and
this again was extended in 1904. Since that date the drapery
department located at the depot has had to find space across the
street, while the bacon stoves are higher up the road. A department
for auditing societies' accounts, under Mr. Kay, adds to the
completeness of the C.W.S. settlement. The employees at the
depot, v/hich, after fifty years, has fully made up for the failure of
the old Midland Counties Wholesale Society, numbered thirty-four
at the close of 1912.
Eastward of Northampton there is no saleroom or depot as yet,
the large society at Norwich, and the growing, but rather scattered,
societies of Norfolk and Suffolk being served by and from the
extended range of warehouses in London.
The territory allotted to the London Branch hes south of a line
zigzagging from the Wash to Aberystwyth. Within the Manchester
area, northv/ard of this division, the first saleroom was the Leeds
establishment, of which the origin was given in Chapter XIV. Less
than three years after the Leeds opening in August, 1885, it was
arranged that a C.W.S. representative should attend on alternate
Tuesdays in a room upon the Huddersfield Society's premises. Soon
afterwards a move was made to Lion Chambers. Here, in rooms
only to be reached by a narrow and tv/isting staircase, business was
done dm'ing 1886 to the amount of £267,000. Larger premises
were afterwards taken at Railway Street, and eventually, when the
business was nearing haK a million, the transference of a C.W.S.
Brush Works to Leeds enabled the Huddersfield Saleroom to occup}'
the present roomy buildings at Upperhead Row and Spring Street.
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