Page 416 - 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.

funeral society, co-operative soap works and sugar refineries, and a
co-operative circulating library. He deserves to be remembered, if
only for his warning not to mistake " the Pisgah heights for the very
Land of Promise." From this suggestion other correspondence
arose in the Co-operator, while the formation of a special society
further was discussed in connection with the movement for an
extension of wholesale co-operation to Scotland. Thus encouraged,
no doubt, the conference committee (as it had become) requested
William Cooper, early in 1867, to send out a form of inquiry to every
co-operative society. Favourable answers and statistics being
received, a conference was called to meet in the "large room" of
the Manchester and SaLford Society, Downing Street, Manchester,
chiefly to discuss rules for the new company. Ninety-eight delegates,
"
representing 65 societies, some from places as distant as London
and Glasgow," assembled on Good Friday, April 19th, 1867,
Abraham Greenwood presiding. It has been supposed that these
conferences then met yearly, after the fashion of the present
Congresses. But in those days co-operators only gathered when
there was substantial business to be done, and the conference of 1867
was the first to follow those which had decided upon the Wholesale
Society, and for this good reason WilHam Cooper in 1867 read the
minutes and gave details of all the meetings of the committee since
1862. One hundred and fifty-one societies, it was stated, had made
returns. The societies held insured property to the value of £27 1 ,765
they were paying £651. Is. lO^d. in premiums; and the losses by
fire, presumably during all the years down to the time of the returns,
had totalled £970. 12s. 7d.^ The individual membership of the
hundred and fifty societies numbered 69,641; and therefore it
appeared that an entire destruction of the insured property would
result in an average loss of £4 per member. No one present seemed
to share the views of the prophet Baxter concerning an imminent
end of the world, so, on the basis of these figures, it was assumed
that a guarantee of £1 per member probably would be " amply
" of human
sufficient to meet all possible losses within the range
vision. Since legislators still looked so dubiously upon co-operative
societies as to prohibit them from undertaking insurance business,
the new organisation now agreed upon was to be incorporated under
"
the Companies' Act. Little was said as to the necessity of such
an association, the delegates unanimously concurring as to its
desirabihty." The draft rules, largely worked out in correspondence
' Co-operator, May loth, 1867.
332