Page 204 - 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.

still was represented by very modest central premises. Yet, while
departments were cramped for space, and were rearranging and
exchanging between themselves in the effort to make much of httle,
the Society possessed daily credit balances v/hich rarely fell below
£200,000, and often stood at a quarter of a million. Until September,
1885, delegates objected to any investment in consols, preferring
that the Committee should employ the capital in co-operative
enterprise. The most immediate possible investment was in land
around the C.W.S. headquarters, and the Committee missed no
reasonable opportunity of purchasing. A similar policy was being
pursued at Newcastle and London. At the end of 1885 the chairman
was able to tell the delegates that £90,000 was being expended upon
extensions in these centres. Obedient to the still-existing spirit of
caution, he was careful to point out that the £340,000 so far spent
upon premises had been depreciated by £93,405, hence the new
outlay could be said to involve no real addition to the capital sunk.
Later purchases, however, needed no special apologies. With the
devotion of the Society in the main purely to its own business,
qualms and doubts were set at rest, so that in 1888 the Co-operative
News was able to comment on the remarkable absence of all
opposition to additional purchases of land for future extensions of
central premises.
Out of the £90,000 a sum of £40,000 represented developments
in Manchester. These provided new opportunities for the furnishing
department. The inabihty of small societies and the reluctance of
large ones to keep such stocks as a furnishing trade demands has
always tended to convert the C.W.S. furniture warehouses into
salerooms for retail buyers armed with societies' permits. In 1887
the number of orders ran to 20,000 yearly, making the additional
room that became available in July of that year particularly welcome.
The boot and shoe department still had to rent warehouse space,
but by 1891 the new structures reaching tov.-ard Corporation Street
became consoHdated in one block. In London, by this time, the
C.W.S. was housed in a handsome building. Externally, although
not unattractive, the now extensive Manchester premises still had
something in common with Portia's leaden casket. Yet they
possessed at least one fine apartment within, this being the large,
light chamber which two hundi^ed clerks were glad to occupy in
place of their previous crowded and stuffy quarters. The designs
for these extensions were prepared, and the work done by, the
C.W.S. own building department. This department had arisen from
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