Page 267 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Jam Making to Fruit Farming. '
use and quickly ceased to count. On the other hand the railway
facilities, permitting trucks to bo loaded and unloaded under the
works' roof, have proved invaluable. During the jam-making
season as many as 70 wagons a day will bring perhaps 1.50 tons of
fruit right to the JMiddleton pans. . . . The further extension
of jam boiling; by the C.W.S. takes—or will take—us to Readini^.
There the Society has acquired land, and only the slowness of
certain preliminary negotiations has prevented a beginning, ere
this, of the erection of the long-desired Southern jam works.
Deprived of this important department the Crumpsall Works
nevertheless made equal progress. In 1897 Mr. Hayes retired
from office, although he remamed in the works; and the present
manager, Mr. George Brill, was appointed. Under his energetic
rule the entire little group of factories has been extended, rebuilt,
re-arranged, and fitted with new machmery, untU it has become
practically a big new works. Year after year in the present century
the profits have run comfortably into five figures. Although this
belongs rather to the chapter that will deal with all the C.W.S.
workers, a provision for the employees' recreation and social
enjoyment has become a prominent feature at Crumpsall. In 1901
a final reduction of the scheduled weekly working hours enabled
the factory justly to boast itself the only forty-eight hour biscuit
factory in Great Britain.
The commencement of a separate jam factory went with a
new and picturesque departure. In June, 1896, the Committee
announced an agreement to purchase the Roden Estate of 742 acres
of freehold, tithe-free, unencumbered land. This estate included
a small residential hall and five farms, with their buildings, cottages,
and timber, and the price of the whole was £30,000. Although
the back-to-the-land O'Connorites of Jumbo, in the days of their
dejection forty years earlier, might have scouted the possibility
of it, the purchase was a natural step for a Society which could trace
its birthplace as an idea back to their humble farm. " There was
almost perfect unanimity at all the meetings respecting the purchase
of the Roden Estate," said the Co-operative News of the following
week. " There is no mistaking the feeling throughout the whole
co-operative movement at the present time. ' Get hold of the land
is the general cry." Fruit growing for the Balloon Street market
and for the jam works was anticipated, a creamery spoken of, and
cattle rearing proposed. Apart from such prospective developments,
and purely as an investment, the estate was expected to yield from
p 209