Page 39 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Making History at Jumbo.
open ground hares were hunted, and over the Moss the silk weavers
would trudge, wallet on back, to the warehouses of Manchester.
To-day the woods have gone, the fields are uncheerful enough,
electric cars traverse a cottage-lined road, and large mills choke the
valley toward Middleton. An old jargonelle pear tree made a
glorious hillock of snowy blossom almost opposite the site of the
Lowbands Farm in April, 1912, but it seemed to have put forth in
noble defiance of chcumstance. Probably the rural characteristics
were beginning to disappear in 1860, for a railway through Jumbo
had been recently built. Nevertheless, it was amidst such pleasant
surroundings as these suggested that the conferences commenced
from which arose the C.W.S. in the first place, the Insurance Society
afterwards, and, finally, in conjunction with London co-operators,
the Central Board, which developed into the Co-operative Union.
Tea was served in the barn, with the help of an unorganised
women's guild consisting of the wives of the men present. The
modest provisions would be supphed from the Jumbo store. Mr.
Holyoake has told of "a solid and ponderous load of succulent
joints " despatched overnight from Oldham, but there is reason to
suspect that the originator of this tribute to Lancashire gastronomic
power meant to impose upon the usually shrewd historian. Either
on his own responsibiUty or as manager of the farm, George Booth
was the host, and to him belongs the honour of having introduced
the subject of a Wholesale Society. According to Mr. Nuttall's
statement to the Congress of 1869, William Cooper, of Rochdale,
supported the idea, while WiUiam Marcroft urged the impossibility
of a federation of stores until societies could obtain power as corporate
bodies to invest capital in other societies. To this Cooper is said to
have rephed that no Act of Parliament could stop them if only they
did what was " reet." A majority, however, agreed with Marcroft,
and eventually, with this preliminary of greater legal powers in
view, those present decided to meet again at Oldham.
The attitude of William Cooper, if correctly reported, is a little
mystifying. He was the writer of a short history of the Rochdale
District Corn Mill; and the corn mill, as a federal institution, was a
continual witness to the need of new legislation. It was at Cooper's
request that Abraham Greenwood, the first chairman of the mill,
wrote to an M.P., a few months after the Jumbo meeting, putting
the difficulties of the mill very succinctly. The Pioneers' Society
had a very large surplus capital, but it could not invest this in a
federal society except through individual "representatives." Each
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