Page 367 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Domestic Metal Working.
the capital employed by the C.W.S. being credited with one fixed
and uniformly moderate interest and no more.
The Keighley Ironworks Society was promoted by the local
distributive society, the Keighley Industrial, in 1885. In 1886, with
only four workers, the society began its business of making wi'inging
machines, and succeeded after some initial struggles. The manufac-
ture of bedsteads and v.ire mattresses was added before the C.W.S.
bought out the society in 1908 at a price of 30s. 11 |d. per £1 share.
As at Dudley there was a copartnership " of capital, custom, and
labour," and here, too, the junior partner did not lose by the change.
Under Mr. Whalley and Mr. Lund the management also remained
unaltered. The weaving undertaken by the C.W.S. has different and
curiously contrasting forms—fine cotton cloth and wide sheetings at
Bury, colom'ed cloth at Radchffe, woollen cloth at Batley, flannels
at Littleborough, mat weaving at Leeds, and finally wire weaving
at Keighley.
The Birtley works is near the North-Eastern main line, six miles
south of Newcastle; and its products are tinware, steel and sheet
metal goods of aU kinds, especially flour bins, travelling trunks, and
domestic tinware. The origin of the works under nothing less than
the Northern Co-operative Iron and Tin Plate Productive Society
Limited, was explained at the C.W.S. Quarterly Meetings of
December, 1895. The Blaydon Society then proposed that the
national institution should invest £200 in the Birtley ventm-e. It
was to be the property of a federation of thirty-five co-operative
societies, and there would be " not a single individual member."
The investment was opposed by the C.W.S. General Committee,
who had grown shy of helping to build up productive societies that
ultimately might become obstacles in the way of the main body.
A large majority shared the attitude of the Committee, and the
Blaydon motion was lost. The Birtley works commenced business
in the following year, 1896; and it was acquired by the C.W.S. in
1908, at a price of 28s. 4d. per £1 share.
The history of the manufactm^e of dry goods by the C.W.S.
would not be complete without some reference to the subsidiary
department of leather-bag making at Newcastle, and the important
C.W.S. purchases from the sister federation. The shirt and
collar factory of the Scottish Wholesale Society at Paisley, the
Ettrick Tweed MiUs, and the waterproof factory at Glasgow, all rely
upon a large measure of English support. Managed and financed
by the Scots, and therefore outside the scope of this history, they
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