Page 230 - 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. —

by all the English and Scottish Wholesale buyers concerned, and its
approval would lead ultimately to four such factories in various
widely-separated districts. This, briefly, ^^as the case for the
Committee; but it met with great opposition. One delegate was
amazed at a proposal to employ American labour in competition (he
declared) with Cheshire farmers. But the majority simply distrusted
the starting of factories outside the British Isles. Added to their
opposition was that of Messrs. Neale and Holyoake. They moved
an adjournment, not in antagonism to the extension, but because
the C.W.S. made no promise to share profits with its prospective
American workmen. Their "theorising" was attacked; but here
it must be admitted that they were on firm ground, since the absence
of a consumers' co-operative movement in America would have
made the alternative impossible—the alternative of the proposed
cheese factory employees sharing profits and control through
membership of co-operative stores. And it is notable that at this
meeting the good sense of Mitchell would not allow him to agree
with the " practical " men in their professed scorn of all theory.
As chairman of the Manchester assembly, amidst laughter and
applause, he said of the intellectuals:
We rejoice in all the theories which they pron:iulgate, and so far as wo are
able we put them into practice ; but if we cannot put them into practice we put
them on one side. I never have, and I hope I never shall, express universal
condemnation of theorists. Theories are the basis of universal practice; and
while the theorists think and we act, we trust that there wU be permanent
and beneficial association between the thinker and the actor as long as tlie
co-operative movement shall stand.
At this meeting (September, 1887) " the ayes certainly had it," and
the proposed American cheese factories, the discussion of which
nominally was adjourned for twelve months, were not heard of again.

Underneath all the controversies aroused by this development
of production there lay a very confused issue. It was a large and
historic problem across which the co-operators had stumbled almost
without suspecting it. In a more primitive stage of European
civilisation than ours it was possible for every other worker to be
a master craftsman, owTiing his instruments of production. Against
the final destruction of this industrial freedom the Owenite movement
was a last great unavailing protest. Yet the tradition of workers*
self-employment did not die with Owen. Always powerful on the
Continent, it inspired the French Socialists of 1848, and through
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