Page 443 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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Untabulated Benefits.
means a payment of wages above the trade union rates—a payment
made when especially needed, since overtime in most trades occurs
before hoHdays. Further, co-operative employment is, in the
main, more regular than the average. This is not to say that
fluctuations in seasonal trades have no evil consequences for C.W.S.
workers, but that individual customers, stores, and warehouses
usually are all willing to put up with some inconvenience in
the interests of a better-regulated demand. " We have had
practically no short time from the commencement of these works,"
reported the manager of the Rushden Boot Factory in 1905; " we
are inundated with applications for employment." And (in the
following year) " the regularity with which we are enabled to run
these works—without either short time or overtime—no doubt
has much to do with the large number of applicants we now have
waiting for employment." Again, there is as a general rule nothing
in the shape of driving. " Two or three years back," said the
Wheatsheaf of September, 1905, "the case of a girl weaver com-
mitting suicide through being driven at her work called out a storm
of indignation in North-East Lancashire. In the C.W.S. Weaving
Shed there is no driving—no bullying." No fines or deductions
from wages are enforced in any of the works or factories, and dining-
rooms exist where the distance that workers may have to travel
renders that provision necessary. Perhaps few people outside
Manchester and the East End of London know the kind of dining-
room to which great numbers of girls and women are limited ; and,
tlierefore, we may be pardoned this further quotation from the
pages of the same magazine:
In such a place as Manchester, where, every morning, thousands of
machinists come in from the suburbs, numbers of cheap eating-dens and
" tuck shops " are hidden away in the by-lanes of the city. They are popularly
supposed to be " gold mines " for their proprietors. Certainly they pay high
rentals. You leave the murky daylight of the street and drop into a cellar.
You are met by the blended ascending fumes from cooking meats and fish, a
gas stove, a dozen incandescent burners, and the mingled breath of crowded
fellow-creatures. A procession of poorly-clad, anaemic girls, each bearing a
jug, enters with you. They wait what seems an interminable time at the
"
counter, then depart with their " dinner —bilious-looking pastry or teacakes,
" chips," perhaps a piece of chocolate, and the inevitable jug of tea. Where
is it eaten ? Better not inquire. Probably in a workroom, in air vitiated by
a morning's toil, where the windows must be kept closed for the comfort of the
diners, and where inadequate heating makes the evil of ill-ventilation seem a
good.
* "Shirts and Shirtmakers," Wheatsheaf, March, 1913.
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