Page 237 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Proof of the Pudding.
which the workers had earned ? Nine hundred and seventy stores took it.
What did they do with it ? They gave it to 650,000 members of co-operative
societies. How much did each member get ? You heard Mr. Copeland say
yesterday that it amounted to one farthing and a half each. . . . They
had heard of Judas Iscariot, whose name for eighteen hundred years had been
infamous in the world; he sold Christ to crucifixion; but he had the self-
respect to contract for thirty pieces of silver; while co-operators soil the
workman to the life-long crucifixion of unrequited labour for throe-eighths of
a penny.
The ultimate issue of the long and lively debate lay between a
simplification of the ex-presidential resolutions designed to bring the
C.W.S. into line (Hughes maintaining that Congress had such
authority), and an amendment simply recommending " an alliance "
" on equitable conditions " for the sharing of profits between worker,
capitalist, and consumer in all workshops, and inviting the C.W.S.
and all concerned to adopt the principle. By 213 votes to 160 the
amendment was carried. By this time, however, the federation was
committed to flour milling at Dunston, and the difficulty of
" equitably " sharing profits in this industry already has been sug-
gested.^ Actually, and through no fault of its workers, the Dunston
Mill, as we shall see, had to face deficits reaching in one year to
nearly £18,000. If the Wholesale Society for that year had tendered
to each of the one hundred and fifty millers its little bill of £120 (or
even £60) it would have been something like robbery. Such losses
were not foreseen in 1888, but the possibility indicated by the
existing mills of each man's share m half-profits (only) reaching up
to £2 per week was anticipated. And " the absurdity of it," said
the Co-operative News, " has been realised by Mr. Holyoake, Mr,
Hughes, Mr. Neale, and Lord Ripon, but to Professor Sedley Taylor
"^
it is the most natural, most inevitable, thing in the world.
Nevertheless, the Ipswich Congress of 1889, after the case against
workshops " governed from a central institution " had been put at
its best and strongest by Messrs. Neale and Greening, took the action
from which it had shrunk at Dewsbury, and instructed negotiations
with the Wholesale Society. And in the same year the same pro-
tagonists, as a minority of the special committee for the revision of
the C.W,S. rules then at work, put forward a copartnership scheme

'It must not be overlooked that in this connection " proflt-sharinp: " is a
question -begging term. C.W.S. flour mill proflta are, of course, "shared," the
C.W.S. "dividend" not being a payment to capital (as the word suggests), but,
of course, a giving back of '"profit" to all who buy.
' Mr. Taylor proposed to obviate the diflBculty by reducing prices, i.e., returning
the surplus to the consumer direct, and incidentally cutting prices on a precarious
margin.
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