Page 310 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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The Story of the C.W.S.
weekly. All the three works are under the senior supervision of
]Mr. Green, who is at once an " F.I.C." and an " F.C.S.." a business
manager, and a popular chief. In 1911 the hours of the normal
working Meek at the three factories were reduced to 48. While the
general body of workers naturally benefited, certain others, being
paid by the hour, stood to lose slightly during weeks when no
overtime was worked, despite an advance of from 6d. to 7Jd. per
hour. At Dunston this issue became sufiBciently acute to be referred
to the Joint Committee of Trade Unionists and Co-operators. In
issuing its report this committee first expressed " its appreciation
of the action of the Co-operative Wholesale Society Limited in
reducing the hours of labour to 48 per week ;" and then recommended
a further concession to the appellants, a concession duly effected.
We have not yet finished with C.W.S. soap, but before coming
to the most recent large episode in its history, we must stay to
notice other developments in connection with the main centre.
Candle making, originally undertaken for a brief period at Durham,
was recommenced at Irlam in 1896. This was on the initiative of
the Ashington Equitable Society, in Northumberland, " owing to
the large consumption of candles by the members of the Co-operative
"
Wholesale Society —who, be it said, were not necessarily Eskimos
To make a modern self-snuffing candle is by no means a simple
business, for, as a Wheatsheaf writer has demonstrated, "a candle
is a much more wonderful thing than a lamp." At the end of 1912
the Irlam works was producing 75 tons of candles, night hghts,
and tapers every week. Some ten years after the commencement
of this C.W.S. industry separate factories for making starch and
for refining lard were added to the Irlam group, and since then have
worked successfully. Washing blue is another manufacture which is
in course of organisation. The total ground area under cover at Irlam
has thus grown from three acres in 1895 to eight acres in 1912. The
C.W.S. Soap Works also possess in the Sydney Oil and TaUow Factory
a sort of outlying department, on the other side of the globe. In
1897, following the visit to Australasia of a C.W.S. deputation, a
permanent C.W.S. representative was placed in Sj'^dne}', and as a
sequel to the direct purchasing so begun a small factorj'^ for receiving,
refining, and exporting cocoanut oil and tallow was purchased at
the end of April, 1901; Fiji subsequently being explored by the
C.W.S. Sydney representative in the quest of copra. A full supply of
raw materials is essential to successful soap making, and no vegetable
oil-producing country is, in 1913, escaping the survey of the Society.
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