Page 398 - 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.
" divi.," forgetting that, except co-operators, there are none to
do it justice. The two most authoritative of modem cheap
dictionaries, the Concise Oxford and Chambers's Twentieth Century,
both reflect the general opinion of the outside world by defining
dividend as the sum w^hich is divided amongst the shareholders in
a joint-stock company. A consumers' co-operative society, retail
or wholesale, is not a joint-stock company, and, in consequence,
it does not declare a dividend upon its capital. Unlike all other
commercial bodies to which the public is admitted and that are
described as " limited," a consumers' co-operative society has no
shares of fluctuating value. During forty-nine years, from 1864
to 1912 mclusive, the C.W.S. profits, increasing from £267 to
£613,000 annually, and totalling nearly eight millions in all, resulted
in no person being either one penny the richer or the poorer by
reason of any buying or selling of shares. Automatically, the store
movement abolishes stock exchange gambhng, with its "bulls,"
"bears," "corners," panics, "bucket shops," and all such machinery
of something for nothing at someone's expense. In all probabihty
no clergyman, editor, or pubUc man ever has commended the
Wholesale Society on this account, and yet it is no small account.
Too famiUar for notice by most co-operators, there are details in
the co-operative system that would still be news to half the world.
With the larger growth of the Society more than one question
arose afiiecting its constitution. " For many years," said a
Co-operative News editorial of March 11th, 1905, "the subject of
the revision of the system of appointing and continuing the
dhectorate of the English Co-operative Wholesale Society has
been discussed at conferences and around committee-tables." In
November, 1902, the No. 1 District of the Northern Section of the
Co-operative Union proposed to consider the constitution of the
C.W.S. , but the section as a whole disagreed. The matter was judged
to be proper to a C.W.S. meeting purely. Unconvinced, the district
committee printed the paper which had been prepared, and organised
a special conference out of the funds at their disposal. Over and
above half-a-dozen minor points stood the relation of the branch
committees to the General Committee of the federation. "Although
they had a third of the business of the C.W.S.," said Mr. Shotton
at this independent conference, " they from the Newcastle district
had only a representation of two out of sixteen." The legal
executive body actually consisted of twenty members—sixteen from
the Manchester district and two chosen from the eight Directors of
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