Page 397 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Statistics of Increase.

(of Huddersfield, vice-president of the Society at the time of
liis
retirement), Amos Scotton (of Derby), Alfred North (of Batley),
James Fairclough (of Barnsley), John Lord (of Accrington), WilHaiu
Bates (of Eccles), and, more recently, Thomas Hind (of Leicester).
So great a number of losses in twelve years meant an unusual
proportion of changes in the personnel of a Committee numbering
only thirty-two at its largest.
The general statistics of the C.W.S. afford proof of enormous
increases durmg the present century. The sales for the year 1901
for 1900 they barely
totalled less than eighteen miUions sterUng ;
exceeded sixteen mihions. In 1905 the sum of twenty milhons was
reached. The returns halted in 1907-8 at less than twenty-five
millions; and then, in 1909-12, climbed steadily to little less
than thirty miUions—£29,732,154. The share of the productive
works in this amount was £7,556,821. Although the expense of
conducting this volume of business grew from £335,183 in 1901 to
£601,884 in 1912, the rate per £ of sales was only ^. more than in
1901, the figures being 4|d. and 4|d. respectively. Li 1910 the rate
was 4|d. In 1888 this figure was 4d., and in 1874 3d. The net
profit—collective savmg—which was £14.000 in 1874, £82.000 in
1888, and £288,000 in 1901, reached the half miUion in 1909. It
was then precise^ £549,080. The surplus fell away from this record
by some £80,000 the next year; but it increased again to £579,913
in 1911, and from this to yet another highest figure of £613,007 in
1912. Meanwhile the co-operators of the country, those terrible
" dividend-hunters," have been content to leave their increment
from the saving fixed at 4d. in the £ on their purchases. It is
true that in 1908 the Warrington Society moved for a fivepenny
—
dividend "they had no desire for the extra penny, but they
brought forward the amendment to test the feeling of the delegates."
But the Committee then insisted upon the wisdom of preferring a
further strengthening of the reserve funds of the Societ}^ and the
amendment everywhere was lost by large majorities. Only one year
later the soundness of the official poUcy was demonstrated. In
March. 1909, after the productive losses of 1908, the Committee were
obhged to draw over £12,000 from the reserve fund to pay the assured
dividend of 4d.
Old-fashioned co-operators used to trumpet the virtues of
co-operative dividends, but in relation to this feature of the
co-operative system the present-day spokesmen frequently are
too modest. Some, indeed, affect a kind of moral superiority to
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