Page 368 - 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.
are worked under an agreement to pay over profits to Manchester,
or recover losses therefrom, in proportion to the Enghsh purchases.
" This agreement includes the idea of support to the fullest possible
extent from the C.W.S. ; and (says the S.C.W.S.) this has always
been loyally given." The Ettrick Tweed and Blanket Mills at
Selkirk came into the possession of the Scottish Wholesale Society in
1895; the shirt and collar business began at Leith in 1901. The
waterproof factory is at Paterson Street, Glasgow. At the end of
1912 the three factories, taken together, employed 465 workers,
their supplies for the year amounting in value to £89,140, of which
total over one-third was for the EngHsh federation.

The story told in this chapter and the last includes no great
controversy between co-operators. Even the boot works in their
later history aroused no conflict of principles at Co-operative
Congresses. Except the loud echoes from the eighties that were
heard at the national co-operative festivals (to which reference will
be made later) there were no partisan alarms. Yet the old issue of
producer and consumer was no less alive. We have seen it rising
again under a new form. The conflicts at Leicester and elsewhere
were its creation. Abandoning the idea which the Christian
SociaUsts championed, the idea of emancipation by self-governing
workshops, the spirit of the revolt of labour has passed into miUtant
trades unionism, and into ideals of justice for labour strongly upheld.
Rediscovering the labour ideahsm in co-operative history, this
renascent spirit demands from the C.W.S. a special treatment of
labour. It asks that the C.W.S. shaU become part of the labour
movement, a lever in the hands of labour for raising working con-
ditions. But when this point is pressed a reply becomes inevitable.
It was made by the C.W.S. officials when they, as responsible for the
commercial success of their departments, protested against obstacles
which were not put before their private competitors. Such a reply
was not inspired by ideahsm. On the contrary, it was accounted as
low and unworthy. Certainly it surrendered one ancient dream,
the dream of the co-operative movement becoming self-sufficient,
and making its own miniature paradise, its " home colony," within
the howling wilderness of the world. And yet it was a reply
pointing toward a larger future for co-operation, and one that might
also be a nobler future.
There is a possible ideahsm toward which the co-operative move-
ment always has been bUndly driven—to which it does not yet seem
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