Page 353 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Leicester and Rushden.
determined trade unionism. In the region of costs, the year of the
century's lowest general prices had been passed, and the constant
rise in all raw materials resulted in a growing pubhc demand for
cheaper qualities of boots. The effect of this upon the C.W.S. was
to send up the percentage of purchases from private manufacturers.
From 14 per cent in 1895 it reached 27 per cent in 1899. The boot
and shoe mdustry, hke the printing trade, lends itself to specialised
production by relatively small makers or groups of makers. A
number of copartnership boot societies therefore exist, and these
societies, appealing to co-operative sympathies, came increasingly
into competition about this time with the societies' general federation.
The C.W.S. management expressed no fear of meeting any
rivalry, private or copartnership, provided that the trade union
concerned would agree to the C.W.S. employing workers on the same
terms as those sanctioned for manufacturers in general. Many of
the purchases from private sources came from the town and county
of Northampton, and a number of the copartnership societies were
situated in the same shire. Although it might not be admitted in
Leicester, there are many practical men who aver that Northampton-
shire enjoys a pre-eminence in men's boots by reason of an indefinable
something called the Northamptonshire style, quite apart from the
question of wages—a result of specialisation by generations of
workers. Nevertheless, the union rates of wages, both for the
town and the county, were lower than in the borough of Leicester.
To meet the competition it would be necessary for the C.W.S. to
establish itself in Northants and to work under the accepted local
" statement." Would the C.W.S. be at liberty to take this action
on behalf of co-operators without friction with the trade union?
The answer was not taken for granted, because at Endcrby, for
example, the terms were not equal. The Leicester rate was expected
to be forthcoming from the C.W.S., while manufacturers in other
villages upon that side of Leicester worked upon a local level. The
general problem occupied the attention of the C.W.S. Committee
responsible for the works durmg 1897-8, a C.W.S. deputation
having met the local representatives of the Operatives' Union at
Northampton and discussed the matter with them in December, 1897.
The Wholesale Society, however, ultimately did not go to the county
town but to the small town of Rushden, near Wcllingboro', between
Northampton and Kettering. Here a factory was bought in 1899,
the price, including 1,684 square yards of freehold land, being £1,186.
A year later this was added to by a couple of purchases totaUing
277