Page 435 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

;

The Health Insurance Section.
friction arising from an old and once-justifiable policy of separate
societies for separat3 functions, co-operators were hardly likely to be
persuaded into even a possibility of creating new difficulties for the
future. Not a separate society, but action by the great business
federations was expected. In the discussion at Portsmouth the
report was challenged by Mr. T. Wood, and defended by Mr. T.
Tweddell, whose view was that of the majority. And already (March,
1912) the C.W.S. Committee had been empowered either to become
an approved society under the Insurance Act or to form a separate
section. The latter course proved to be the practicable one ; and in
September, 1912, it was formally announced that the section had
been formed, and that over 100,000 persons had been admitted. The
membership of this section necessarily being individual, it conferred
no privilege of course in regard to the Society generally. It had been
accepted that the C.W.S. Committee should be the Committee of the
section for the first three years, and committees of the constituent
retail societies everywhere were invited to act as local committees
under the Act. The work of organisation, under Mr. Brodrick as
secretary, was entrusted to Mr. R. Smith, previously of Hartlepool.
In June, 1913, the membership of the section included 165,000
persons. While the C.W.S. thus went forward the C.I.S. also
instituted an approved society, but it attained no great proportions
and in July, 1912, it was merged into the C.W.S. Health Insurance
Section for the EngUsh and Welsh members, and in the Scottish
Co-operative Friendly Society for those beyond the border.
The C.W.S. and C.I.S. controversy related chiefly to fire
insurance ; yet to a democratic movement like the co-operative it is
the insurance of life, and the risks incidental to working life, which
(without minimising the importance of property) will ever be of most
interest. Here is ground that tlie plough from the Lowbands Farm
hardly has broken as yet. The National Insurance Act does not
provide death benefits, although death is a certainty, and the loss
of a bread-winner always is a calamity. The field is maualy occupied
by the wealthy industrial assurance companies; and the cost of
their methods was illustrated in a pamphlet by a barrister, Mr. J. F.
Williams, pubHshed in 1912 by Messrs. P. S. King and Son. According
to the statistics set out by this writer, the ordinary life insurance
companies, deaHng with the middle and upper classes, were then
collecting nearly twenty-nine millions yearly, paying out over
twenty-one millions, and returning less than haif-a-million to share-
holders. The industrial companies, dealing with the poor, collected
34.5