Page 235 - 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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Workers^ Control or Public Control.

preferring " the main chance " to the ideal. But, as Mitchell told
the Dewsbury Congress, on one occasion " the Wholesale bought
£1,000 worth of goods from a productive society, kept them in
stock for a time, and the productive society used the money to make
other goods, and sell them, at five or six per cent less, directly to
the customers of the Wholesale." Such details enabled the federal
school to realise that, whatever the grossness of its mind, it had no
monopoly of the commercial spirit. Had the C.W.S. trustfully
resigned its market to the productive societies one of two things
would have happened. Either independent groups of workers and
small capitalists would have sprung up endlessly to compete in the
manufacture for co-operators of every profit-bearing domestic article,
or existmg groups, refusing in Congress to permit overlapping, would
have claimed the co-operative preference as their exclusive
possession. And the great instrument of the co-operative public
would have been left to undertake the least fruitful industries, just
as in the capitalistic state it used to be an absolute rule that all
profit-bearing undertakings belonged naturally and rightfully to
private owners, and that it is the duty of the public to carry on the
rest at the public expense.
However, the Wholesale Society was resolute for the co-operative
action of consumers going beyond the store. The supporters of
independent production therefore took a second line of attack
or, as it seemed to them, of defence. They sought to lodge their
principle within the Wholesale system. Ultimately, it was meant to
transform that system. The Co-operative News of 1887 (page 550)
printed a manifesto by Judge Hughes which closely defined his ideal.
The individual workers were to become at least joint-owners of
each factory by means of contributions to its capital ; they would
participate in profits and losses, and themselves elect their manager.
The election of managers was practically a new point, very dubiously
supported by the instance of Mr. Joseph Greenwood at Hebden
Bridge ; otherwise Hughes's scheme was in line with that dealt with
in Chapter X. . . . But, as in 1874, the test demand was for
" profit-sharing," which again became reduced to the rather sterile
idea of " bonus." Here, with less sincerity in the leaders, it would
have been easy apparently to fall into line by conceding the pay-
ment of a certain part of wages in this form, for as yet the C.W.S.
Committee hardly had developed a theoretical objection to profit-
sharing. The General Committee of the C.W.S. had given it up in
1875 simply on practical grounds, and in 1883 the Drapery Committee
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