Page 215 - 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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Greek Merchants and British Taxes.
Greek merchants, Turks and Levantines, fig gardens and camel
trains, the old countries of the Mediterranean and the new lands of
the West, and including also its annual festivals from end to end
of the kingdom, with dinners and music and greetings of friendly
buyers, and the contributions through a thousand local societies
of fruit and peels and delicacies for the million feasts of co-operators
each English Christmas—this trade, with its history continuous
for twenty-eight years, itself could form the subject of a book.
Here one can only hint at the oppositions of interested parties in
Greece and elsewhere, at the surprise and gratitude of Greek
suppliers when they found their mistakes rectified to their own
advantage, at the successful efforts of the Wholesale Society to
prevent the fraudulent marking of cheap currants as "Vostizza,"
and at the recognitions of C.W.S. action, as when Messrs. Mitchell
and Tweedale, at the request of the King of Greece (in 1893), were
decorated by the Greek Consul in Manchester with Greek orders
of knighthood. One episode, however, may be quoted in full for
its bearing on fiscal questions. In 1890 the duty upon currants
was reduced (by the Conservative Government) from 7s. to 2s.
When the C.W.S. buyers arrived in Greece a few months later,
expecting to purchase at about the same prices, they found the
English consumer forestalled :
The Greeks had got the idea they should have the full benefit of the
reduction in duty, because they had given the English the full equivalent in a
reduction of the duties on cotton goods. We endeavovired to show them that
if the reduction in duty was to benefit Greece it must be by an increased
consumption of currants in England, and in order to bring that about it would
be necessary to reduce the retail price at home by ^d. per lb., which could not
be done if the price was much increased in Greece.
However, the Greeks were obdurate, and although the Englishmen
reserved their purchasing for a time, in the end they were obliged
to pay from Is. 6d. to 2s. above the prices of the previous year.
Because of the trouble with the Customs that year, and " the serious
interference with trade " on account of a duty that as regards
currants only yielded £100,000 gross, the C.W.S. unsuccessfully
sought from the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) an
entire remission of all the duties on dried fruits. ... In the
Spanish branch of the business it is to be noted that a permanent
establishment has been set up. The old town of Denia, seventy
miles south of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast, is a centre for
the Valencia raisin trade, and, as a result of buyers' visits to Spain,
premises in fruit-packing were rented in this town in 1896 Twelve
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