Page 227 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Leeds Clothing Factory,

thereto from Harper Place. At Holbeck the success has been
continuous. Extension has followed extension almost with every
other year, the last additions being completed only in 1913. The
result of these developments is that the factory now ranks witlv
the very largest factories of its kind in the country. It is a
well-ordered hive of 900 workers. During all these busy years of
increase, until his sudden and lamented death early in 1913, the
wheels were kept running smoothly by Mr. W. Uttley, who has
been succeeded as manager by his son, Mr. T. Uttley, who begins
with the advantage of many years' training under his father.

Cocoa, in some quarters, is considered a dull and heavy drink.
It is notoriously disliked, for example, by jMi*. G. K. Chesterton.
A history of its advertising, however, would prove this opinion of
the beverage to be unreasonable. Wine itself could not have
produced displays more flamboyant. The campaign has sobered,
perhaps, since the days of 1897, when a cocoa firm arranged with
the London 'bus companies to give every lady passenger a sample
tin from hundreds of decorated 'buses. Yet the passion still burns,
and breaks out continually in flaunting assertions of food value and
healthful properties, which it would be shrinking modesty to describe
as exaggerated. Indeed, the recent cheapening of cocoa (by the
simple expedient of extracting the commercially valuable cocoa
butter, and selling the " lean," but quite pure, remainder) has given
an opportunity for a new campaign, so that in 1913 cocoa, perhaps,
is still the most advertised of all commodities. Whisky, in this one
respect, would be its only possible rival.
A heated controversy preceded the C.W.S. manufacture of cocoa.
It was not upon the merits of the bean. The issue arose from a
London productive society claiming the co-operative trade. Mr.
E. 0. Greening and his son, Mr. E. W. Greening, were the chief
opponents of C.W.S. action ; but the productive society also found
one or two supporters as far north as Newcastle. The London Society
had arisen from a meeting promoted by the Labour Association,
held at Toynbee Hall, and addressed by Messrs. E. 0. and E. W.
Greening, in 1885. The ultimate business suggested by the
promoters of the meeting was that of " manufacturing and
packing articles of domestic use in common sale by co-operative
societies; " and Mr. E. W. Greening proposed to begin with cocoa,
" an article in large demand through the stores, and one yielding a
fair gross profit." Messrs. Bland and Hibbert, for the C.W.S.,
N 177