Page 376 - 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 CW.S.
Society. The latter body declined, and the CW.S. continued in
occupation. Then the Dairy Society's creditors pressed for pay-
ment. Bailiffs were put in, and the creamery again advertised.
And at this point the CW.S. bought the premises outright, paying
a sum (£850) sufficient to satisfy the creditors. . . . Such wa&
the story of Castlemahon, as told to the Co-operative Congress of
1895 mainly by Mr. Pumphrey, fresh from a visit to the creamery.
" The Wholesale had acted splendidly," said Judge Hughes, " up to
a certain point."
The point of divergence was that the CW.S. went on to create
an auxiUary to Castlemahon and also to erect a new creamery near
Listowel. And this meant working out the federal co-operative
principle of associated consumers controlling their sources of supply.
But the principle of the new Irish Agricultural Organisation Society
was control by the Irish producers. And the leaders of the I.A.O.S,
were quick to see the difference. " They had no quarrel with the
Wholesale Society," Mr. Anderson told the Huddersfield Co-operative
Congress of 1895, " except on a question of principle." Men have
been sent to the stake before now precisely upon such an exception.
However, the Huddersfield Congress again was asked to show its
exclusive sympathy with the idea of co-operation by producers.
Mr. Horace Plunkett moved and IVIr. Anderson seconded an addition
to the report from the Irish Section of the Co-operative Union,
deprecating the acquiring or estabUshing of creameries by the
CW.S. in Ireland. But, although supported by Mr. H. W. Wolff,
Mr. Henry Vivian, Mr. E. 0. Greening, Mr. Swallow (of Leeds), and
other English advocates of copartnership principles, the motion
was lost. The immediate result amounted to a secession from the
Co-operative Union. The Irish Section held only one other meeting,
on July 10th, 1895, and it met simply to pass a resolution of practical
"
resignation, in view of the apparent approval by Congress of the
action of the WTiolesale." And at the next Congress the section
was lamented as " practically lost." What remained of it was
added to the Scottish division. Mr. Lockhead, of Edinburgh, a
friend of both schools, who had visited Ireland for the Union in
this comiection, also said " they had to admit that co-operation
had only been promoted on one line."
Clear-headed and unsentimental (hke many Irishmen), the
leaders of the I.A.O.S., at any rate, saw their course in the interests
This was abundantly shown
of the producer, and meant to take it.
by the formation of the Irish Co-operative Agency Society in 1893.
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