Page 275 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Tea Warehouse Opens.
" rumours of a motor car," said the Co-operative News, " sped
freely in the crowd." Loaded with delegates the vehicles started
in procession, for lunch—or, in democratic language, dinner—at
Olympia. Unfortunately for massed effects, working people's best
clothes frequently have to be of the kind which is also useful at
funerals; and since this was still more widely the rule some years
ago, the News reporter found it " a sombre, not to say mournful,
parade." They would have done it more brightly in Hungary.
Yet, although " none of the speakers realised the toast list," but
" spoke as if to resolutions," there was nothing mournful about the
after-dinner fehcitations of Messrs. Bates, Shillito, Maxwell, Gray,
Tweddell, Hawkins, Murphy, and others. . . . Two months
after this celebration the London Branch and tea department
employees, whose wives brought the number of the company to over
a thousand, were entertained by the C.W.S. at the Crystal Palace,
in remembrance of the opening.
The question of the C.W.S. sending out all goods to societies
carriage paid was a persistent problem from the early days of the
Society. Although a minor point it could always be counted
upon to raise a discussion. The opposition between the apparent
simplicity of the proposal and its real complexity, where goods of a
thousand kinds subject to a hundred circumstances were concerned,
was sufficient to create arguments that are still heard. Where
practicable the C.W.S. Committee met the desire for carriage-free
parcels. Li 1897 they so arranged in regard to the Middleton
productions ; while in other cases the fact of a general equality of
prices, regardless of whether goods were ordered from branches,
depots, or works, prevented any hardship to small societies. In 1898
the Committee extended the practice of free carriage to packages of
tea over 961b. weight. A more important development in connection
with the department was a better-defined partnership between the
C.W.S. and the Scottish C.W.S. A joint committee, three-fourths
English and one-fourth Scottish, was to be formed for the control
primarily of the tea department, but also of any other busmess
mutually entered upon. Profits would be divided between the two
organisations half yearly; and, in general, overlapping would
entirely be prevented. These proposals, which superseded a more
primitive arrangement obtaining since 1890, and involved a change
of rule, were unanimously adopted in December, 1900.
We have all met with those extraordinary tea shops the windows
of which are filled with cheap crockery, furniture, drapery, or
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