Page 283 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Advertising and the Wheatsheaf,
department, under the Secretary and Mr. II. Gill. In the main,
such advertising has been self-defensive, and through " co-operative
channels." Yet some of the largest halls in the country have been
easily filled by C.W.S. exhibitions; Avhile during recent years the
success of exhibitions held throughout the summer months at
Blackpool has resulted in the Society buying the building in
Lytham Road formerly known as the Cohseum. Earlier chapters
of this history have shown that, since the days of Owen, exhibitions
of co-operative productions have played a leading part in
co-operative advertising, and of lectures the same may be said;
while the showcards of the C.W.S. have aimed at leaving no excuse
for other displays.
In 1894 the C.W.S. chairman told the delegates that the appeals
for advertisements in societies' monthly journals would oblige the
Committee to take further action. A month or so later the tea
department committee took up the question, and, in 1896, decided
upon the issuing of a monthly magazine or " record." But it was
by the General Committee of the Wholesale Society that in June of
that year the publication of the magazine was finally announced.
The intention, said the Committee's report, was to " diffuse a
knowledge of the Wholesale and its productions amongst
co-operators; " the hterary matter was to be "interesting to the
general co-operative reader; " there would be space for local
societies' own matter, and the price would be nominal. Said the
Committee: " We think the Record can be made the means of
valuable propagandist work." In July, 1896, the first issue of the
monthly appeared under the name of the Wheatsheaf, and at
once it attained a circulation of 77,000 copies. In that month
129 societies ordered local pages totalling 370. Six years later the
circulation had risen to 170,000 copies monthly, since which time
original contributions and first-class illustrations have made of it
(within its fixed limits) a general as well as a co-operative magazine.
By 1913 the average monthly circulation was in excess of 470,000,
while some 1,700 to 1,800 local pages were being added each month
for about 500 societies. Edited from Balloon Street, the whole of
the printing is centraHsed at Longsight. Gratuitously distributed,
the magazine nevertheless is sold to societies by the C.W.S. on terms,
however, that cost the Wholesale Society some £10,000 in 1912.
The bulk of this subsidy went to the small societies, for whom the
issue of a journal of their own would be otherwise out of the
question.
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