Page 31 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

An Attempt in the Midlands.

would have been desperate overlapping, or strict boundaries would
have made a national unity impossible.
After the wholesale department was abandoned, the Rochdale
Society continued to do a small amount of wholesale trading,
particularly in yeast, for v/hich it had an agent in Hull. Evidences
remain of wholesale trading by other co-operators. An old counter
bill of the Oldham Industrial Society, dating from soon after 18G1,
bears the style " Wholesale and retail grocery and drapery establish-
ment. King Street." The History of the Gloucester Society states that
in 1862, as a result of a local conference, the Cheltenham Society
bought sugar from the Gloucester co-operators " on very strict
business terms." Wholesale trading of some kind was carried on in
connection with an almost forgotten co-operative movement round
and about Selly Oak, Digbeth, Smethwick, and Hockley, in
Birmingham, between 1846 and 1850. "Upon the passing of the
Industrial and Provident Societies Act in 1862," says Mr. Jackson
in his Industrial Co-operation in Bristol (writing of the then existing
Bristol Industrial and Provident Society), " this society registered
afresh, taking to themselves the title of wholesale and retail dealers,
with power to buy land." The year 1862 brings us, also, to a more
striking development of such wholesale trading.
It originated with the Northampton Progressionists' Industrial
Society. Mr. John Butcher, of Leicester, who was secretary of the
Banbury Society in 1866, states that this was a retail society, which
developed wholesale trading to supply the small societies round
about Northampton. In 1862, the year in which federations of
societies were admitted to legal existence, the Northampton whole-
sale department was separately established as the " Midland Counties
Co-operative Wholesale Industrial and Provident Society Limited."
Its business was that of "general dealers and millers;" its
headquarters were at 59, Grafton Street, Northampton; and it also
shared premises in Wellingborough Road and occupied the St.
Andrew's Mill. Further, it was in some connection with the
Northampton Industrial and Provident Boot and Shoe Manufac-
turing Society Limited, of 53, Grafton »Street. Some fourteen local
societies ultimately became members of the Midland Wholesale. In
a return to William Cooper, when the formation of the Co-operative
Insurance Society was being considered, the membership was given
at 2.714, which evidently represented the total of the federated
societies' members. A minute of the federation of 1867 proves that
sugar was one of the articles supplied to its constituents. From the
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