Page 243 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

A Battle over Printing.
ascending line; but swift as was this reaction after 1896, the
increase of money wages up to 1900 more than counterbalanced it,
so that the year 1900 saw the high-water mark of real wages, and
has remained the standard year for comparison. The average
money wage for that year, as calculated by IVIr. G. H. Wood, F.S.S.,
was 28s. 6d., which, upon a comparative price basis over the hundred
years, meant 22s. 2d. in real wages, as compared with 17s. Id. at the
time of the C.W.S. being registered, and 12s. Gd. in the year of the
Rochdale Pioneers. Hence, while it would be true to sa}'' that at
no time, either in this century or the last, were economic conditions
so favourable to the wage-earners and their Avives as during the
years 1896-1900, it would not be a matter for boasting.
Besides being engaged in production, as described in the last
chapter, the C.W.S. had commenced flour milling at Dunston, was
committed to cabinet making at Broughton, and was in search of a
site for a separate jam factory when, early in 1892, the Gateshead
Society came forward with a resolution instructing the C.W.S.
Committee to commence a printing and stationery business. After
an adjournment this was practically adopted by the executive in a
recommendation that the Society enter into and carry on the trade
of printers and stationers. Now between typewriting and operating
a monotj'pe machine there is no vast difference; and Mr. ShiUito
explained to the delegates that one convenience desired was a
private printing of documents for the use of the Committee and
ofi&cials, instead of a tedious copying. But the space between
copying and printuig had not then become so narrowed, and, much
more important, there existed the Co-operative Printing Society.
From one-third to one-fourth of the business of the latter came from
the C.W.S., and fears existed not only for the loss of this support,
but lest the C.W.S. as printers should go to a logical extreme. A
Norwich delegate gloomily supposed that " the outcome of the
policy would be the establishment of a newspaper in the interest
of the Wholesale and the interest of the consumer; " and a Bolton
delegate described the recommendation as being not for co-operation
but for competition. On the other hand, it was seen that the step
was " bound to come." Already the Scottish Wholesale Society had
commenced its own printmg office, and the Co-operative Newspaper
Society had taken over the printing of the Co-operative News. As
Mr. Slatter, the first president of the Prmting Society, said, the Neus
had been resigned in a friendly spirit, and the C.W.S. business could
be given up to the Wholesale Society equally amicably.
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