Page 381 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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Too Much Like a Butter Trust."
coming in at all, was a different matter. The price of supplies was
to rise or fall according to the price of butter, and the terms were
satisfactory when the price was high. At other times the store
member who goes bargain-hunting might have been matched in the
persons of those farmers who took the trouble to send milk to a
competitive creamery a mile or two away for the sake of a real or
fancied advantage. Or a personal difference with a creamery manager
would act more disastrously than any economic cause. Moreover,
the C.W.S. creameries had to reckon with the special denunciation
of the Wholesale Society as an exploiter in disguise, and with the
constant appeal against " the foreigner." Mrs. J. R. Green and
other historians have made us ashamed of the record of English
monarchs and rulers in Ireland. Such accounts help us to understand
and even sympathise with mihtant nationahsm. Still it seemed
rather an unfair result of the centuries that the C.W.S. creameries
should be starved of their due supplies of milk. But for one reason
or another the C.W.S. frequently had to receive its payments in
cash. So to offer them was always against the bond ; yet the C.W.S.
would take the money, although silver and gold were less desirable
than plenty of butter cream. The resultant losses were discussed
at Quarterly Meetings and defended, hopefully until 1908, but after
then with a sense of having suffered the common experience of
those Englishmen who seek to pave the bogs of Ireland with good
intentions.
We must now return to the years immediately after 1895, and
the friendly quarrel over principle. At the Peterborough Congress
of 1898 an attack upon the C.W.S. was made by the representative
of the I.A.O.S. It aroused a spirited defence, and a retort that
the Irish movement favoured landlordism and property owners.
Later, it was said that the C.W.S. were prepared to come to an
understanding. At Liverpool, in the following year, the C.W.S.
was again attacked and again defended; but at Cardiff, in 1900,
" reasonable prospects " were reported of the differences being
" of the committees of the
amicably adjusted." A conference
I.A.O.S., the C.W.S., and the Scottish Wholesale, with representatives
of the Co-operative Union, already had met at Liverpool in January
of that year. Mr, Plunkett then had made a very concihatory
speech, appreciative of the C.W.S., and disavowing all intention
in the founding of the Agency Society of it being a rival to the
C.W.S. purchasing depots in Ireland. Schemes were drawn up for
reconciling consumer and producer, and were seriously considered by
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