Page 21 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

—
The Earliest '' Wholesale."

taken in Liverpool. The new institution opened for business on
December 12th, 1831. If we may borrow the words used by one of
the company's supporters (the president of the then Halifax Society)
in commending a local manufacturing federation, and apply them
to the Liverpool project, the latter was:
A co-operation of co-operative societies, so that what one society could not
do single-handed a number of them, when united together, might accomplish,
and by this means be better able to employ some of the members of each
society sooner, and be able to bring a larger capital into the manufacturing
field, thereby taking a bolder attitude, and obtaining a firm standing against
the competition we shall have to meet with.
The first report of the committee of the company was presented
to the third Congress in London, 1832. The committee professed
" sanguine hopes " of " establishing a medium of exchange for
co-operative productions, and thus connecting in a close bond of
union the societies of all parts of the kingdom." Twenty-one
societies had joined the company, and thirty-one had commenced
dealing. The sales had reached £1,830, upon which the company
had gained in commission £24. 12s. Id., against expenses amounting
to £51. 7s. 3d. The company's warehouse also was full of co-
operators' manufactures. Apparently, by the ingenious methods
adopted to secure " an exchange of labour for labour," one society
might supply its productions to another having credit at Liverpool,
and receive payment from the centre in the form of provisions.
When the fourth Congress came to Liverpool in October, 1832,
the trustees reported that " not only has the temporary loss which
was sustained by the first four months' trading been covered, but
that, owing to the increased business, a small balance of profit
remains after paying every expense connected with the establish-
ment." Besides a considerable provision business, £400 worth of
co-operative manufactures had been " disposed of at the warehouse
in Liverpool." With the renewed help of Lady Byron, a simul-
taneous bazaar of co-operative productions—the first Congress
Exhibition—was organised by the company. " The bazaar was
visited from day to day by numerous parties of ladies and gentle-
men; " and on the last day the remaining goods " were exchanged
by the delegates among each other, so that very few took back the
goods they brought."
Notwithstanding this cheerful account, we do not sight the
Liverpool enterprise agaui. Owen's paper, the Crisis, in its
report of the Huddersfield Congress of April, 1833, gives no news
of it, nor does its name occur in any subsequent issue. Like many
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