Page 292 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Story of the C.W.S. —

with Lancashire and Yorkshire these mills left the Northern co-opera-
tors only slightly provided for. The feeling in favour of C.W.S.
action persisted, and in December, 1883, proved strong enough to
secure a resolution of the Quarterly Meetings to the effect of a flour
mill on the Tyne being " desirable." After a favourable report of
the Branch Committee the proposition was keenly debated early in
1884. Many delegates wanted " our friends in the North to do this
for themselves." The latter were to be independent, to find their
own capital, build their own mill, and so on, like the stalwarts
of Lancashire and Yorkshire. That the Wholesale Society was
"themselves " did not dawn upon these very self-reliant advocates
of parochialism. At the Newcastle meeting itseK the Newbottle
Society's resolution calling for a mill was barely carried by forty-one
votes to thirty-nine. At Manchester it was adjourned. Three
months later the battle was fought again. The Wholesale Society,
it was said, had not the capital to do this for the North, and a London
delegate had generously to assert that " Newcastle were part and
parcel of the Wholesale." Democracy is often spoken of con-
temptuously as the rule of the odd man. Upon this matter wisdom
rested each time with an even two. NeAvcastle were in favour by
forty-two to forty; London by twenty-one to nineteen. The
Manchester meeting carried the resolution unanimously. But, with
a depressed state of trade necessitating grants in aid of distress in
the North, no further action was taken until December, 1885. The
Committee, hardly content with the previous bare majority, then
asked for authority to establish a mill. Again a separate federation
was advocated, and the official proposal was adjourned. The
Northern Section of the Central Board (Co-operative Union) then
called a conference at Newcastle of the societies concerned. Papers
were read for separate and for C.W.S. action, but the discussion that
followed showed that the delegates already had made up their
minds. Mr. Tweddell, speaking for Hartlepool, forcibly put the
main point of only C.W.S. action being adequate :
At one time it was sufficient to put a coffee mill on the top of a mill dam,
and it ran; but to-day the man who did the flour trade for the mass of the
population was the man who had the position, the machinery', and the capita)
to do it with. Wliere were they likely to get capital for this purpose except
through a federation such as the Wholesale? . . They had got the men,
tliey had got the machinery, and they had got the money, too.
The voting showed sixty delegates for the C.W.S. against fourteen
for independent action. This was in February, 1886. At the March
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