Page 302 - 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. —
will certainly afford a glad relief to the existing mill. The double
" Sun " will be capable of producing the enormous quantity of
142 sacks, or 39,760 pounds weight of flour every hour. How many
grains this might be in a year we leave to the higher mathematicians.
A new wharf has also been constructed, enabUng the cargoes of the
largest steamers using the canal to be taken up by the mill elevators
and discharged direct into the giant silos. Both the "Sun" and
the " Star " mills are under the one management of Mr. Matthews,
formerly in charge of the " Star," assisted by Mr. Lord, who controlled
the Rochdale mill at the time of its purchase. The Provender Mill
is under Mr. W. H. Slawson.
The hundred years and more since the opening of the Hull
Anti-Mill forms a period of which co-operators need not be ashamed.
Under the revolutionary changes of the century there have been
dissolutions and retirements from business, but no real disasters.
And the close of the chapter leaves co-operative flour milling repre-
sented not merely by survivors from among a host of pioneers, but
also by these modern mills which put the Wholesale Society probably
in the position of being both the largest flour millers and the owners
of the greatest individual mill in the United Kingdom. Night and
day, at the rate of over 250 sacks hourly, this vast machinery
works for the two million or so consumers who are its ultimate
proprietors. When one looks at the boxed-in steel rollers, the steady
flowing of this flour seems very simple to arrange; and it is equally
simple to test the results by the profit and loss account of a balance
sheet. Yet in reality a thousand facts are concealed under either
of these aspects. The varieties of taste in consumers ; the difference
in pocket between North and South and town and country; the
need of home bakers here and machine bakers there; the just title
of consumer's societies to any benefit that will cheapen the workers'
loaf; the equal claim of organised employees to the best possible
wages, hours, and conditions; the necessarj' demands of sound
business; the required consideration for ever}'- co-operative
interest; the difficulties of carriage, of centralisation, and local
sympathies; the limitation of the mills to co-operators, but not of
co-operators to the mills; the constant influences of outside com-
petition and advertisements; the almost endless fluctuations and
variations of a wheat supply that is from all the world ; the intricacies
of milling systems, " flow sheets," and manifold technical details
that, in the midst of all this, co-operators have been able so strongly
to maintain their original ideal is no small triumph.
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