Page 346 - 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.

trade of about £75,000 yearly, of which only one-third (between
£23,000 and £24,000) was supplied by the Leicester Hosiers.
The time thus being ripe for a C.W.S. Hosiery Factor j'', the
Wholesale Society made a counter proposal to buy out the Mid-
landers. The property, machinery, and fixtures stood in then'
balance sheet at £15,236, for wliich the C.W.S. ultimately offered
£29,000. With this offer went a promise to take over every employee,
and to guarantee continuance of employment for twelve months.
Employee-shareholders were to have facihties for re-investing in the
C.W.S. Bank at 3h per cent. These terms the committee of the
Hosiery Society agreed to recommend to the members. The latter
body met on November 8th, apparently to hear for the first time of
negotiations which had been going on for twelve months. The
Leicester Hosiers " being one of the largest, oldest, and most
successful of the copartnership societies," the news came to many
people in that camp as something more than a surprise. One
Avriter in the Co-operative News urged that the Hosiers' committee
had no more right to sell the business than Parhament would have
to dispose of England to America. The meeting was adjourned, the
committee promising in the meantime to consult all the societies
interested. At the next meeting, on November 29th, repUes from
116 out of 380 societies were available as evidence. Seventy-eight
of these, whose united purchases during 1901 had amounted to
one-half of the Hosiery Society's output, were in favour of the
transfer ; and twenty-four others were neutral. Some five hundred
delegates and shareholders attended this meeting, amongst them a
large number of the employees. The proceedings were reported as
"
degenerating into a perfect Bedlam of noise." A number of
youths and girls interested as shareholders only to the extent of a
£1 share apiece, were held to be responsible for the disorder, and in
some quarters their possession of voting poAver against large share-
holders was severely commented upon, although the principle of
votes for persons and not for capital is at the root of co-operative
democracy. On the voting the Hosiery committee's resolution was
lost by 286 to 204, whereas a tliree-fourths majority was required by
the society's rules. Although the employees greatly swelled the
opposition forces, it was stated by Mr. Aneurin Williams, Mr. Amos
Mann, and others that had all the emploj^ees abstained the requisite
proportion still would not have been secured.
After this vote the C.W.S. Committee could only withdraw their
recommendation to purchase. " The course of the Wholesale was
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