Page 436 - 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. —

over fifteen millions, paid out only six millions, and retm-ned nearly
three-quarters of a million to shareholders. The ordinary companies
paid over two milHons in surrender values. The industrial companies
gave back to the poor who renounced their claims only one-seventh
of that sum. " On this showing the poor have lost about £3,500,00(>
in a single year." In other words, for every £1 they received in
insurance from the industrial companies, a management working as
economically as the rich men's companies work could have given
them 30s. Through its network of stores the co-operative movement
could save for the poor at least a fair part of this multitude of excess
half-sovereigns, an authorisation to deduct from the quarterly
dividend taking the place of the quarterly cheques of the well-to-do.
In short, the movement has the machinery at hand for meeting every
insurance need Uterally from the cradle to the grave.
A history is not the place for prophecies ; but it may indicate the
direction in which the movements of the past appear to tend. And
this is toward simpler, more direct, and better means of coming to
the public, of meeting all pubhc needs, and maintaining a proper
place in the fuU stream of public hfe. It was said of the insurance
question: " This is not a matter of C.W.S. or C.I.S., but a question
of service to the movement." In fulfiUing the purposes of a banking
department, in producing for co-operators' uses, in insurance, in its
advertising and pubhshing, and in all its functions the C.W.S. to be
entirely successful must more and more reach the actual ultimate
co-operator. And it can do so, not by dominating the co-operative
societies, but by the societies realising what is to be gained from the
local national sections of the one movement working together still
more intimately. To make more dhect the relations of consumer
and producer, to simplify machinery, to ehminate the methods of
circumlocution offices, and to associate the millions of co-operators
in a bond of living conviction, proved by the response of the
machinery to daily uses and more than everyday uses still must
remain the ideal of the practical-minded co-operator.

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