Page 426 - 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.
C.I.S. to join with the C.W.S. " in making a more strenuous effort
to enable societies to do all their insurance within the movement."
Mr. Odgers replied to Mr. Bate at the arniual meeting of the
Insurance Society on March 30th, saying that keeping the business
within the movement meant keeping all the losses also. "As it may
be admitted that the profit is made out of the small business, and
not out of the insurance of large risks, co-operators should be chary
of taking any steps which, instead of saving a problematical 3 per
cent, may easily result in serious loss." To this Mr. Archer, of the
Sunderland Society, repHed in the News of April 13th, quoting figures
to prove that " the fear of loss should not deter us from going
forward." And, mainly as a result of a deputation from the Middles-
brough Society to Hartlepools in the summer of 1907, a special
conference of societies interested, from Carlisle to Stockton, was held
in Middlesbrough on November 9th, 1907. Here Mr. R. Smith
read the paper from which we have already quoted ; and Mr. Archer
afterwards proposed the appointment of a deputation to urge an
active poUcy upon the C.W.S. Committee. Despite an amendment
in the interests of the C.I.S. this resolution was carried by a large
majority.
A few weeks afterwards a notice of motion from the Sunderland
Society appeared on the agenda for the C.W.S. Quarterly Meetings,
asking that the C.W.S. executive should be directed to commence
an insurance department for all risks; while Hartlepools, Middles-
brough, and eight other societies put forward another motion
calling upon the C.W.S. to formulate a scheme for placing all the
insurance business of the co-operative movement under one central
authority. But the C.W.S. Committee still were not anxious to take
any action Hkely to be prejudicial to the C.I.S. Only recently the
Wholesale Society had absorbed first the Hosiery Society, then the
Huddersfield Brush Society, and then the Oldham and Rochdale
"
Flour Mills. Outcries had been raised of co-operative imperiahsm,"
and in some quarters the C.W.S. directorate was supposed to
constitute a sort of collective Napoleon. Actually the executive
wished to be nothing of the kind; and an invitation to rise up and
conquer was simply embarassing. When the Committee knew that
a motion for an insurance department would be put forward at the
December meetings it again invited a deputation from the C.I.S. to
discuss the situation (October 26th, 1907). Mr. Barnett, for the
C.I.S., then claimed that " the Insurance Society could take and do
all the business of the co-operative movement except the large fire
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