Page 240 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER XIX. —

Last Years of Mitchell's Chairmanship.

Wages and Prices—A Battle over Printing— ^Longsight Works—Danish Butter
—American Produce—The Nowcastle-on-Tyno and London Branches
"
Come " of Age —The People's Co-operative Society—The Insurance
Fund in Daager—A Small Dividend—Employees' Purchases again
Farewells to Neale and Mitchell—Years 1890-95, and to 1912.
rriHE last decade of the nineteenth century brings us to a period
JL comfortably within the memories of nearly all men and
women. While it is distant enough for those beyond thirty-five to
foretaste the privilege of age in recalling their part in its events, it is
still as yesterday in the minds that are full of years. If its younger
statesmen are now the elders, many of the names of that day abide,
and some of its political problems also. The labour politics which
now surround us were then foreshadowed by propagandists whose
names remain familiar to the readers of the latest newspaper. The
co-operative movement was passing out of the hands of the genera-
tion which had seen its rise, into the charge of men who had grown
up since the Education Act of 1870, and who are in many instances
still alive. The notable publication in 1892 of Miss Beatrice Potter's
(Mi's. Sidney Webb's) The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain,
with its lucid review of the Wholesale Society as a mature institution,
and its essentiallj^ modern outloolc, marked a state of attainment.
Yet for the C.W.S. the nineties was a period of rapid growth.
The total sales, five times multipUed during the seventies, and
nearly thrice in the eighties, naturall}- could not increase in the
same ratio ; nevertheless the sum was doubled. As in 1878-9 and in
1884-5, however, the increase was broken in 1893-4 by a short and
sUght retrogression reflecting only too faithfully a period of trade
depression with worlcing-class unemployment and decreased spending
power. To this passing cloud the great lockout of miners that
followed a refusal to accept a heavy reduction of wages in 1893
directly contributed. But, like the previous hard times, these of
the nineties were mitigated by a decreasing cost of living. In the
year 1896 the average of wholesale prices touched its lowest point.
Since 1896 the average has risen, ^vith only partial breaks in an
188