Page 257 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

E. V, Neale and T. W. Mitchell.
J.
leaders in the one big co-operative controversy of their time. If
Neale " grew weary of rolling the stone (of profit-sharing) up the
hill," it was because Mitchell was there to turn it down again. Yet
they had one religion in common—although even here it took different
forms. For whatever was to be said against mammon-worshippers
and dividend -hunters fell harmlessly about Mitchell. In absolute
integrity, purity of purpose, and unworldliness of personal motive,
he was the equal of the noblest among his opponents. While the
evil which men do lives after them, no one to-day would say any
less of Mitchell than was said by his graveside in 1895. Mr. WilHam
Maxwell, the ex-president of the Scottish Wholesale Society, told the
story of the life of his brother chairman in the C. W.S. Annual for 1896.
He described the obscure birth in Rochdale; the fatherless child-
hood; the profound affection between the boy and the mother to
whom he owed so much; the growing up in a humble Rochdale
beerhouse and workman's lodging-house; the attraction of the
solitary youth to Sunday (School attendance and temperance
advocacy; the young man's espousal of co-operation and the
interest in the educational work of the Pioneers; the path from
the Rochdale Society to the Wholesale Society's chairmanship;
and the gradual relinquishing of private busmess prospects in
devotion to the C.W.S. Mitchell remained unmarried because of
an honourable faithfulness, and the mode of his celibate life was
simple to the point of austerity. ]\Ir. Maxwell has said—
A visit to his house showed distinctly that if he provided Uberally for his
friend he had no thought of himself. His own bedroom was furnished with
some of the old furniture his mother had when he was a boy, humble in the
extreme. Piles of reports and balance sheets took the place of ordinary
literature. The portraits of a few dear friends who had passed away, to be
looked at occasionally, also his well-read Bible and hymn book, completed the
furnishings of the room in which he lived and died.
With these rigorous habits it might be supposed that the Wholesale
Society possessed in its teetotal and non-smoking chairman a man
of severe mind. In so far that he would tolerate no laxity high or
low (and high especially) this was true. But when no danger existed
of geniality being substituted for principle, Mitchell (as all bear
witness) was fellowship itself. After listening for three hours to the
disposal (" easily and good-humouredly ") of a Quarterly Meeting
agenda, a correspondent of the Bradford Observer wrote in March,
1891:—
I wish I covild give a picture of the chairman of the Wholesale, the verj'
genius of despatch and good nature. Mr. Mitchell is a titanic person. His
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