Page 301 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Rising of the ^^Sun/^
the consequences have been loyally accepted, and a C.W.S.
flour trade is discouraged in the district of the West Yorkshire
co-operative mills. It may be added that no question arose of buying
the few mills still rimning practically as local societies' departments.
At one of the Quarterly Meetings during the early days of this
nine years' flour-milHng movement the then competition between
the Rochdale and the Oldham mills was touched upon. A delegate
suggested ending it by letting the C.W.S. take both, and his remedy
was received with laughter. Yet in this way the old Rochdale mill
(or 19s. in the £ of its share capital) was saved from the pressure
of the Star; while the owners of the Star themselves escaped a new
menace. The making of the Ship Canal meant a reconsideration of
Manchester as a modern milling centre, and a consequent depreciation
of a locality seven miles too far from the Avaterway. With the
opening to builders of the Trafford Park estate on the banks of the
canal any difficulty about sites vanished. And in 1906, when the
C.W.S. Committee went to inspect land adjoining the waterway on
the Old Trafford side of Manchester, a large firm of Liverpool millers,
doing business with co-operative societies, had just completed a big,
new mill. The Committee were within a week of deciding their own
purchase, when they learnt that (no doubt in view of the Wholesale
Society's forward action) the owners of the recently equipped and
desirably placed " Sun " Flour and Provender Mills would be willing
to negotiate for a sale, and a retirement from the field. Response
was made promptly, and with such effect that a gathering of five
hundred co-operators rejoiced over the Sun Mills as a new C.W.S.
possession a full month before the buying of the building, machinery,
and 5,659 square yards of freehold land, for £80,000, could be approved
constitutionally by the Quarterly Meetings. The mills indeed
were taken over on April 28th, 1906, and formally inaugurated on
May 10th, while the purchase was regularised by the delegates on
June 10th and 17th. After the years that had preceded the building
and acquiring of the other mills, such celerity proved astonishing,
" What next V
and co-operators rubbed their eyes and asked
What has followed in flour milling is tha.t the C.W.S. having gone
from " Star " to " Sun " has proceeded to create a pair of luminaries
after the fashion of other solar systems than ours ; in short, a double
sun. To meet " Wholesale " needs the buildings were extended
and packed with machinery, and the capacity was thus increased to
72 sacks per hour. At this point began the building of the second
Sun Mill, the opening of which is likely to be a jubilee event, as it
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